With less than three weeks until Election Day and early voting already underway, we dug into a busy debate week.
We started with President Trump’s two planned Iowa visits, Sioux City on October 22nd and again on November 1st, and why the 4th District matters for turnout. We also talked about the risks for Ashley Hinson of sharing a stage with him.
Then we broke down the second governor’s debate between Rob Sand and Zach Lane, the Hinson and Josh Turek Senate debate, and the 4th District matchup. We covered the fight over Turek’s missed votes, Hinson’s explanation of her family’s stock holdings, and Turek’s immigration tightrope.
We closed with a look at the newly scheduled 3rd District debate between Zach Nunn and Sarah Trone Garriott on October 27th on KCCI, and why late debates may be less risky than they seem.
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Auto-generated transcript below:
Kathie: Hello, and thanks for joining us on the Iowa Down Ballot podcast. I’m Kathie Obradovich, your temporary host again this week while our stalwart leader, Dave Price, is on assignment. Thanks to those of you who reached out after my TB-worthy performance on last week’s show. Rest assured, I’m still alive, if not entirely well, but maybe I can get through this week without hacking up a lung. With me to help are Laura Belin of Bleeding Heartland and longtime political consultant, advisor and man about town, Eric Woolson.
Eric: Great to be here.
Laura: Good to be here with you.
Trump returns to Iowa
Kathie: It’s now less than three weeks before Election Day. We’re recording on Friday afternoon, and Iowans are already voting. One development this week is the announcement that President Trump is coming back to Iowa, not once but twice before the election. The first visit is next week, October 22nd, in Sioux City, and then he’ll be back on November 1st. Eric, Sioux City is in the 4th District, which is already red. Why go there?
Eric: Obviously, Chris McGowan, the congressional candidate up there, doesn’t need him, but it really helps with turnout. Remember the governor’s race between Kim Reynolds and Fred Hubbell. Hubbell led much of the night until we got to western Iowa, and that’s where the Republicans began to run up the total. Midterms are as much decided by which voters participate as by moving undecideds. Trump has made the point that he’s not on the ballot and his support tends to fall off, so he needs to motivate those voters to turn out. There are an awful lot of them in the 4th District.
Kathie: His approval rating is underwater in Iowa, as in other states. Talk about the risk as well as the reward for Republicans, Laura.
Laura: If he’s coming at all, it has to be the 4th District. That’s where he can do the most good. The statewide polls show his approval is underwater, but it’s very likely still positive in that district, so I think it can only help Republicans overall. It could be risky for Ashley Hinson to campaign with him, though. If you’re on a statewide ballot and there are lots of places where Trump isn’t popular, she may not want those visuals. And you never know what he’ll say at one of these rallies. He doesn’t stay on script, and she could be standing right there when he says something that makes national news in a negative way.
For Zach Nunn and Mariannette Miller-Meeks, it’s easier to have an excuse not to go all the way to Sioux City. They’re busy campaigning in their own districts, and I’d say that’s a wise move. Joe Mitchell, I don’t really know. He has campaigned using the Trump name more than some other Republicans, so he might go even though it’s far from the 2nd District.
Kathie: Do you think Hinson will be on stage with Trump next week?
Laura: I think she will. She hasn’t broken with the president on the Iran war, and she said this week that she’d welcome Trump coming to campaign, so she’s not pushing him away with both hands. She didn’t go to J.D. Vance’s event in Council Bluffs a few weeks ago, but she doesn’t have a good excuse this time. I also think Zach Lane, the candidate for governor, needs to be there. He needs that sky-high turnout in the 4th District, as Eric said. That’s what saved Kim Reynolds in 2018.
Governor’s race: second debate
Kathie: We have several debates to hash over. First, we want to send our condolences to Rob Sand and his family after the death of his brother-in-law, Walter Lauridsen. That’s a terrible, sad event for any family, and our hearts go out to them.
The candidates for governor met in their second debate, this one on KTIV in Sioux City. Laura, did you notice any changes from the first debate, any change in temperature?
Laura: Definitely. The moderators helped guide it early by asking a viewer question: are you going to stop with the personal attacks? That got both of them on the record. Eric, what did you see?
Eric: I’d like to see every debate start with that question. It was a compelling way to begin and it put the candidates on notice. I’d also extend my condolences to Rob Sand and the family. It underscores something people don’t realize, just how dangerous and demanding campaigning can be. You’re on the road late at night and early in the morning, you’re tired from campaign events, and you’re often out late in areas that aren’t well traveled. Frankly, it’s surprising at times that we don’t see this happen more.
Kathie: Do you think the debate moved the needle for Zach Lane?
Eric: It’s so hard to tell with debates. You have a small audience. Some air statewide, some don’t, and even when they do, I don’t think the audience is tremendously large. A lot of people tune in just so they can say, my guy won, or my woman won. So I don’t think it moves the needle much. But it’s important for Lane because more voters got to see him beyond the campaign commercials. It’s really an introduction. The same is true for Sand. If you asked people on the street who the state auditor is, I’m not sure what the numbers would be. So this was a debate the voters won, but it was probably a wash in terms of which candidate can claim victory.
Laura: Both sides got social media clips they could pull, but there were no game-changing moments and no big gaffes. Lane is the one most in need of something that changes the dynamic, because he’s still trailing in the polls. He didn’t make any mistakes, but I don’t know if he did enough, and Sand didn’t make a mistake that would help him in any significant way. I thought it was a substantive discussion on the state budget: how do you fund your priorities, given that the revenue estimating conference met this morning to talk about where the state budget is headed? There was also a good exchange on how to fund education, given decisions already made about the size of incoming revenues. These debates typically live online afterward, too. This one aired at 9 p.m., which is after my bedtime.
Eric: I’m a night owl. I’m just getting started at night.
Kathie: It also aired at the same time as another debate, the 4th District one or the Senate one, I lose track. Two debates were broadcast simultaneously this week, so I had to split my time. On education, Rob Sand is proposing a 5% increase in state aid, while Zach Lane is proposing to eliminate property taxes on primary residences. Both will need to explain how they’d pay for those proposals, and perhaps we’ll hear more in the next two weeks.
Laura: Interestingly, Sand said he could only promise the 5% increase in the first year, and after that it depends on the state budget. He’s talked about legalizing and taxing marijuana to raise money, but he can’t do that on his own. He’s also talked about restructuring special education, which could be really expensive.
Senate race: Hinson vs. Turek
Kathie: The second debate I want to talk about is Ashley Hinson and Josh Turek, also their second of the cycle. This race has been close all along, regardless of which poll you believe. Laura, did you see anything that could change its trajectory?
Laura: I think both could be pretty happy with how it went. Both made the points they wanted to make, neither made a major mistake, and there was plenty for supporters to get excited about. To me it seemed like a wash.
Eric: I concur. Congresswoman Hinson showed her TV background. She’s a former anchor, polished and comfortable on TV, able to keep returning to her points. But Representative Turek did a nice job of holding his own and showed he can compete in that setting. He’s gotten better with each debate. His first debate was a lot better than he was in the primary, and the second was better than the first.
Two things stood out on the negative campaigning. First, Hinson, I think for the first time, really explained the difference between the publicly traded stock she says she divested and the private stock her family still owns from the sale of her husband’s business. She finally got into the weeds. I’m no Warren Buffett, but if you hold private stock, I think you could still potentially trade on insider information. It’s still illegal, but you could take advantage of it. I think Turek has gotten some traction with his talking points on that.
Laura: MSNOW did a focus group of Trump voters that I saw yesterday. They couldn’t have explained all the details, but they had heard that Hinson owned some stock and her family got wealthier while she was in Congress, and they saw that as a negative. As they say in politics, if you’re explaining, you’re losing.
Eric: That’s exactly true, Laura. But if you sell stock in a private company, you’re going to get richer. If my family built a business over 20 years and I sold it during the campaign, you could argue I got richer while my spouse was in Congress, but it was the result of years of work, in this case by Hinson’s husband. If I own a heating and plumbing company, say, and venture capital comes in and buys it, which we’re seeing these days, I may hold that private stock. That doesn’t mean I did anything with insider trading, or that anyone wrote laws to benefit me. So it’s a complicated issue. If you’re explaining, you’re losing, but there are times you have to explain, and I think Congresswoman Hinson has begun to do a good job of that.
Kathie: Hinson also kept emphasizing the main theme of her ads against Turek: that he missed a significant number of votes in the Iowa legislature, 58% here. The moderators finally had Turek admit that when he was gone, he was campaigning for the job he’s currently running for. I think we all knew that, and it’s not a big revelation, but he said it on camera, and Republicans picked it up on social media. Does that make a difference, Laura?
Laura: I don’t know. I think Turek made a mistake. The first time they asked, he immediately said he’s proud of his work in the legislature and the bipartisan things he accomplished. If you’re going to pivot like that, first briefly answer the question, then pivot. Instead the moderators came back, which put more emphasis on it: but when you missed the votes, were you campaigning? We did know. I remember the last marathon weekend of the legislative session. There were votes supposedly coming, but the caucus went on endlessly, and there was a campaign event on his schedule, so he eventually left for it. But with millions of dollars already spent on this, I’m not sure how much more they get out of it. They clearly think it’s their strongest point.
Eric: It’s not my job to defend the Democrat on this podcast.
Kathie: I know my job. I’m so sweet.
Eric: But I covered the legislature for nine years as a journalist, and there’s a difference between missing votes in a 51-49 legislature, where legislation can fail because you missed a vote, and being in the minority when the other party has a supermajority or close to it. Your presence doesn’t make a lot of difference. You can make floor speeches about how terrible the majority is and why a bill shouldn’t pass, but we used to watch three or four hours of debate, and at the end they’d open the voting machine and it would go 37, 38, 39. The minority still has 39 votes, and the vote was 61 to 39. Turek is in that situation. Even if he cast votes 100% of the time, it wouldn’t make a difference.
Kathie: I’ve been waiting for him to say that. They’ve run a clip of him in some other setting saying he’s not sure how much Iowans care about it, which was poorly phrased. He probably should have said it wasn’t going to make a difference to the outcome, and I don’t think he’s said that clearly in some of these settings.
Laura: I don’t think he has. And Lindsay James had the same thing used against her by Joe Mitchell’s campaign. She was in a three-way Democratic primary this year and missed a lot more votes than in the past, close to 50%, I think. I watched both of their debates, and she never came out and said, look, nothing was riding on my vote, we have 33 seats out of 100. They clearly made a strategic decision not to say it that way, but maybe it would have been better if they had.
Eric: There’s the truth and there’s the whole truth. The truth is, we always say every vote counts. The whole truth is, when you’re in a 33-member minority, it doesn’t count for much.
Kathie: It counts at the ballot box, not necessarily at the statehouse.
Eric: Exactly.
Kathie: Before we move on, Turek has also been on a tightrope on immigration. He voted for the bill in the legislature that essentially made it illegal to return to Iowa after being deported. He took a lot of flak for that in the primary, and now he’s using it to defend himself against attacks that he wants to open the borders. Laura, some of the more progressive Democrats didn’t love that about him. Is he in danger of turning off that base by pushing to the middle?
Laura: I hear a lot of negatives from people on the left. I don’t know how many will go so far as to withhold their vote, but it’s probably cost him some volunteers. He’s run at least three different TV ads that emphasize immigration in one way or another, and they’re not well received on the left. But most Democrats understand the bind he’s in. Republican groups are outspending Democratic groups on the Senate race, and a lot of their ads, if they’re not about missed votes, are about immigration. So most Democrats are cutting him some slack, but every time he comes out with a new ad centered on this issue, I see negative comments on social media.
Kathie: Anything to add, Eric?
Eric: You mentioned the middle, and that’s exactly what this is about. The candidates are saying, I’m bipartisan. Hinson’s ads stress that she’ll work with people, and that was some of the focus of the Senate debate: who will work with the other side? Of all the issues for Turek to pick to talk about working with Trump, I know that surprises a lot of people. But in such a close race, you have to figure out how to move independents your direction or, in Turek’s case, maybe pick off some Republicans who aren’t very happy right now. Clearly that resonates with that group.
4th District debate
Kathie: Let’s quickly acknowledge that there was also a 4th District debate this week. I watched the whole thing. I may have been the only one.
Laura: I went down to the Iowa PBS studio and watched from the Maytag Theater, because I was hoping the candidates would take questions in the lobby afterward, but only Dave Dawson did. I was the only reporter there. Kudos to both candidates. They’ve had some civil debates, and Kathie, you could talk about that, but the civility in that race has been most impressive to me.
Kathie: Very much so. I thought both did a really good job with their conversational ability, discussing the issues and getting into depth. I was a little surprised that McGowan didn’t hedge at all in saying Trump was wrong on making a deal with Russia on buying diesel. He has nothing to gain or lose in that district by criticizing or praising Trump, but I was a little surprised.
Laura: I was very surprised as well. He also didn’t seem to agree with removing temporary protected status for Ukrainian immigrants. I felt Dave Dawson was very effective in both debates, especially this one. Whatever your politics, other candidates could learn from what he did. He kept bringing the conversation back to the war in Iran and how important it is to end it. It could be any issue you want to emphasize, but he kept redirecting toward his issue without robotically repeating the same phrasing.
More debates ahead
Kathie: We’re not done with debates. Next week there’s one in the 1st District and the last gubernatorial debate. And in the 3rd District, where we didn’t think there’d be a debate, now there is. Just Thursday, Sarah Trone Garriott, the Democrat, and Zach Nunn, the Republican, who have been beating each other up over not being able to schedule a debate, announced one for exactly one week before the general election: October 27th on KCCI. Eric, risky, no?
Eric: Not as risky as you’d think. Some candidates want debates very early so they have time to recover from a mistake. Some want them very late so a mistake doesn’t make much difference. Early voting has started, so a lot of ballots will already be in the box before that debate. Again, it’s a question of how many people will see it. You have two experienced candidates, so a major misstep is unlikely. They can check the box: yes, I debated, I’m not afraid to debate my opponent. Close to the election, it’s hard to cut ads if somebody makes a major faux pas, like Jerry Ford giving Poland away to the Russians. The ad consultants move fast, but getting ads up in that last week would be difficult. So I’d be less worried about a debate that close to the election than one three or four weeks out.
Laura: Zach Nunn has been pushing for an earlier debate, and Sarah Trone Garriott’s campaign said a week or so ago that they’d agreed to October 27th but Nunn hadn’t. I’m not sure what got his campaign to agree. I understand why Nunn would want it earlier. Most candidates who feel they’re in trouble want the debate as early as possible, before people start voting.
Kathie: I was happy to see the pressure on them to schedule a debate. It would have been easy to say, we couldn’t agree, and leave it at that. Both campaigns felt pressure, and they would have been the only congressional candidates who didn’t debate. Even if it doesn’t move the numbers, those debates help establish some accountability. Voters get to hear on TV exactly what candidates say they’re going to do.
Wrap-up
Kathie: That’s all we have time for. Thanks to Laura and Eric, and thanks to everyone for tuning in. We appreciate those of you who have become new or continuing financial supporters. You’re helping us cover our production costs and keep the lights on. We also appreciate everyone who likes, shares and subscribes, which helps us grow our audience. Thanks to our producer, Spencer Dirks, and to musician extraordinaire D’Artagnan Brown for composing our snappy theme song. Have a great week ahead, and we’ll talk to you next week.
