We split up this week: Laura hit the Wing Ding in Clear Lake, Dave went to the Field of Dreams game. Both nights ran long.

Wing Ding drew its best crowd since 2019, about 750 people, with Mark Kelly headlining and fueling more 2028 speculation. Over in Newton, RNC Chair Jeff Kaufmann made the case that Republicans only need to flip a handful of seats nationally, two of them right here in Iowa. Laura’s not so sure the math holds, she counts at least three competitive Iowa districts.

We also flagged the odd, limited-media visit from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, campaigning for Miller-Meeks and Nunn under the guise of official business.

And the Libertarian ballot saga rolls on. New candidates, a likely court fight ahead.

Plus a preview of what we’re watching for at the Register Soapbox at the state fair this week.

Want to sharpen your writing and get the inside scoop on Iowa politics at the same time? Join us September 27-30 at the Okoboji Writers’ & Songwriters’ Retreat on beautiful West Lake Okoboji, featuring Iowa Down Ballot analysts Laura Belin and Kathie Obradovich. They’ll walk you through finding public information, getting your opinion pieces published, and plenty more. Spots are limited, so scan the QR code at the beginning and end of the video or head to okobojiwritersretreat.com to sign up. If you’d like to make a donation to help the Iowa Writer’s Collaborative which supports this show please click the button below. Thanks!

Auto-generated transcript below:

Dave Price: Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Iowa Down Ballot podcast, our weekly confab of all things politics in Iowa, and some other things that impact Iowa politics — the people, the places, the issues, the events, this big campaign, all that kind of stuff. We talk about it here on the podcast. I’m Dave Price, joined by my Iowa Writers’ Collaborative colleagues, Kathie Obradovich, the czar, the queen of the Iowa Capital Dispatch...

Kathie Obradovich: And...

Dave Price: ...Laura Belin, the founder, the creator, the editor, the writer...

Dave Price: The bookkeeper. Did I get them all? At Bleeding Heartland

Laura Belin: Most of them, yes.

Dave Price: Most of them, yes. It just depends on me. How are you both? And I love your peach, Kathie.

Kathie Obradovich: Oh, well, thank you. Yeah, happy Friday. It doesn’t feel like Friday, because I think we’re going to be going all weekend, right? At least with the Saturday State Fair.

Dave Price: Indeed. I feel like I need to pre-apologize just in case for how this podcast goes. We were recording on Friday morning. Laura went to the Wing Ding, which we’re going to talk about, at Clear Lake — that ain’t close to Des Moines. I went to Dyersville for the Field of Dreams game with my son — that is not close to Des Moines either. So not to whine, but we both had very short nights and took a good extended nap, separately. Do you drink caffeine, Laura?

Laura Belin: I do not. I get all the caffeine I need from chocolate.

Dave Price: Okay.

Laura Belin: But I got home at about 11:30 last night, and then I was just wired, so I couldn’t go to sleep right away, because it was a highly stimulating environment up there at the historic Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake.

Dave Price: Oh, man, I’m jealous — you beat us by an hour and a half. We walked in just a couple minutes before... before wine. My 16-year-old, he’s like the Energizer bunny — he slept almost the entire three-hour drive back. Now, he did drive us there so I could work while we drove, but I guess 10:30 was his knockout point, so it was just me and a silent car for three hours on Highway 20. But here we are. All right, how about we leave...

Kathie Obradovich: And I didn’t do anything.

Dave Price: Not bragging.

Laura Belin: So you edited a bunch of stories, I did — late.

Kathie Obradovich: I watched Field of Dreams on Netflix — not to give it a plug or anything. And yeah, I did edit the Wing Ding story when it came in, and I drank some wine, so today I have my baseball mug for my caffeine.

Dave Price: May I just say it’s good to be the boss working at home when you can drink? I’m not going to allege that you drank your wine while you edited Robin’s story from the Wing Ding — that’s for everyone else to figure out, and this is not a confessional here — but regardless of the order, that’s the way to make that night work.

Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, I think so. I haven’t been doing this for almost 40 years for nothing, babe.

Dave Price: Amen. All right, Laura — since you were the one of the three of us physically present at the Wing Ding, give us a little intro, because you’ve gone to a bunch of these things. Talk about what happens there first, and then, as they usually do, they had a high-profile guest — in this case, Arizona Senator Mark Kelly. What’s the atmosphere like when you get into the Surf Ballroom?

Laura Belin: The Iowa Democratic Wing Ding is a fundraiser put on by a bunch of county Democratic Party organizations across northern and western Iowa, but it draws people from well outside that region too — I saw people from Scott County, Polk County, and lots of places. They said last night there were about 750 people there, and it certainly looked it — the room was very full. They said it was the best-attended Wing Ding since 2019, when they had more than a dozen presidential candidates there. I was at that one too, and it was kind of wild with the presidential-candidate sign wars.

This time, since it’s after the primary, there’s no Democratic competition, so they had most of the statewide nominees speaking — except not Rob Sand or Dave Muhlbauer, but all the other nominees for statewide office: Chris Jones, Taylor Wedick, John Norwood, Nathan Willems and Ryan Peterman running for Secretary of State. Then they always have two congressional candidates — Lindsey James, the nominee in the 2nd District, and Dave Dawson in the 4th. And, as you mentioned, Mark Kelly, the keynote, gave kind of a rally-the-troops speech. Last year’s keynote was Harry Dunn, the Capitol Police officer who was there on January 6th, and he gave a more introspective speech than Kelly did. Oh, and I forgot to mention — Josh Turek, the Senate candidate, was there too, speaking. The crowd was very into the speeches. Afterward, talking to activists, there’s a lot going on the ground — coordinated campaign offices open in several counties across the 2nd and 4th Districts. People seem pretty fired up.

Dave Price: The one thing I thought was interesting about what Kelly was talking about — this is where I feel like Democrats are a little split, at the DC level. Kelly talked about the importance of Democrats getting back into the majority so they could investigate the alleged corruption of the Trump administration. Some Democrats don’t really want to talk about that — they may not want to talk about Trump at all, or about possible impeachment, corruption, and all that. What was your take on how that played with the crowd?

Laura Belin: He didn’t talk about impeachment. But if you’re Mark Kelly, and you were threatened with prosecution over that video he and other members of Congress recorded telling service members they don’t have to follow illegal orders, I think you almost can’t avoid talking about the Trump administration a little bit. But it definitely wasn’t the focus of his remarks. He was really trying to say we’ve got to get things under control. He told a story I’ve heard him tell before, about going with his daughter — who’s about 30 now — to visit the house where he and his wife lived when she was born. It was a four-bedroom house in a nice neighborhood that he could afford to buy as a young Navy officer, which nobody in his daughter’s generation can afford at her age in a neighborhood like that. So I’d say he emphasized economic issues more, though he did touch on the investigations and what Pete Hegseth is doing. Later, after his speech, he did a segment on MS NOW where he talked more about allegations involving the Abraham Lincoln in the Gulf — he didn’t dwell on that during his speech. But I think a crowd like that does want to hear about investigating the Trump administration. Though that’s definitely not something — I don’t think I’ve ever heard Josh Turek say “send me to the Senate so I can investigate Trump corruption.”

Kathie Obradovich: Dave, you said exactly what I was thinking — it was an interesting choice, given that I think there’s a definite thought among at least some of the party that you don’t want to focus on Trump. But I also agree with Laura that from Kelly’s perspective, given that he’s been investigated, people would think it was weird if he didn’t mention it. So you’ve got two things there. It may not have been the focus of his speech, but it was probably the focus of a lot of the media coverage. The second thing I’d point out: he hasn’t ruled out running for president — he’s actually said he’s thinking about it. So having him headline the Wing Ding takes on added significance, since we’re always looking ahead to the next presidential race, even though we’re not over the hump of the midterms yet. These kinds of events are kind of the unofficial start of the 2028 cycle. A colleague of mine in Arizona asked, “Do you think Mark Kelly’s going to run?” I said, “Well, he’s making the moves.”

Laura Belin: Yeah, well, he... I’m sure he was booked before the DNC made the calendar decision that left Iowa out of the early window — he probably committed to the Wing Ding before that. But he did do the obligatory “I have an Iowa connection” — it turns out his wife’s brother was a Cyclone, a kicker for the football team, and actually held the record for the longest field goal for 45 years. He said that record was just broken last year.

Kathie Obradovich: But it’s a good Iowa connection — coming from a Cyclone and an Ames native.

Dave Price: The search for any potential presidential candidate to find some kind of real or obscure Iowa connection is kind of like what people are doing now with Quincy, Illinois, where they sold that billion-dollar-plus Powerball ticket — “man, I need to have a great-aunt who lives there, I need to go through my family lineage, because somebody in Quincy — I hope I’m related to them.”

No Wing Ding for me, but earlier this week I went to Newton, where the RNC chair — Jeff Kaufmann for the Republican Party of Iowa — was there, along with Marianne Miller-Meeks, Derek Wolf (the lieutenant governor candidate), and a few local state house candidates. It was kind of a coordinated effort.

I need to interrupt myself for a second, because the Scott Bessent visit was odd to me — the Treasury Secretary. He did a couple of events, one with Miller-Meeks and one with Congressman Zach Nunn, but it was limited media. Apparently a few outlets did preview stories and then were able to cover it — I don’t really know how it all went down. I was trying to play catch-up. It’s rather embarrassing not to know the Treasury Secretary is coming — I didn’t find out until the evening before, or something like that. Generally you get a heads-up for that. I don’t know what you two thought of it — I appreciate that the Trump administration’s probably not calling...

Laura Belin: Welcome to my world, Dave. I absolutely didn’t know either. I also didn’t know about the event in Newton, otherwise I would’ve gone.

Dave Price: I work for nine television stations that broadcast in Iowa, so I assumed we’d be part of that coverage — but it was limited, and some things got built as exclusives. I mean, this is semantics, I suppose, but as we’ve seen, sometimes a White House uses a cabinet official technically for an “official visit,” but let’s be honest — it’s campaign season, and you’re here for two competitive seats. I don’t want to get us too far into a side tangent, but I found it odd. I had six hours in the car going to Dyersville and back, so I was ruminating on it. I can’t remember a time when a cabinet official was here and you weren’t really able to cover it as a traditional member of the media. Kathie, can you go through your mental Rolodex — did you find that unusual?

Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, there have been times — and yeah, we didn’t get notice either. It’s not just Laura, so you’re not alone on this one. But yeah, I think it’s unusual. Why not get the most bang for the buck if you’re going to fly somebody out here? It was a busy day, who knows if we’d have had time to cover it anyway. There have been occasions with the Trump administration where they’ve restricted media — like when Trump himself went to the Westside Conservative Club in Urbandale. You can understand you may not be able to pack as much media into the Iowa Machine Shed restaurant as you’d want. But yeah, during campaign season, when you’re really trying to promote a candidate, it just seems like an odd choice.

Dave Price: Anyway, I essentially interrupted my own story, but that was on my mind. So, back to that Newton event — the speech by the RNC chair was interesting to me, and honestly, I thought it was very effective. Jeff Kaufmann gave kind of his traditional speech, portraying Democrats as “crazies” and those kinds of things — he gives these fired-up speeches. The RNC chair — that’s not his style, I think he’s from Florida — his speech was all about unity: the election’s over, the primary’s over, let’s all get together. It went over well with the crowd, several dozen people there.

The RNC chair was doing math — talking about how in the House you have 435 members, and there are only about 18 truly competitive seats. When you look at Cook Political Report’s forecasting, he made the pitch that Republicans really just need about six of those 18. Standing in the back of the room watching it, I thought that seemed like a pretty effective way to communicate to the crowd — essentially saying, “it’s a tough environment” — he acknowledged midterms don’t usually go well for the party in power — “but here’s what we really only need to focus on.”

He mentioned two competitive seats here in Iowa — I think he said two, not three; I don’t think he counted Hinson’s congressional seat. I’m curious if you’ve heard any other prominent Republican use that kind of pitch. Marianne Miller-Meeks isn’t a screamer or a rah-rah type — she largely did her biographical speech, mixed in some patriotism, got emotional a couple times. She joked she was hopped up on Diet Coke before the event — she walked in with this huge Diet Coke, confessed it wasn’t her first of the day — but her speech was effective with this group too. Going back to the RNC chair’s pitch about “here’s the atmosphere, here’s really all we need to focus on” — have you heard that kind of message from other prominent Republicans?

Kathie Obradovich: It seems a little bit like a perverse message, in the sense of — “we really only need to focus on 6 of 18 of these seats” — to me, not having heard it, it’s like, “relax, people, we’re really in great shape, we only have to get less than half of these.”

Dave Price: Let me interrupt — sorry — I should have underscored: he immediately followed up by saying two of the six are right here in this state, and this is the most important state. Sorry to interrupt.

Kathie Obradovich: No, that helps. I think there are probably folks that kind of framing appeals to — presumably party insiders. I’d be curious whether he goes to some other state and says “two of the six are right here” there too. But yeah, it’s a different way of talking about the race, for sure.

Laura Belin: I think 18 is very low. Even with all the gerrymandering that’s reduced the number of competitive districts, if it turns out to be a wave election, I think there are a lot more than 18 seats truly in play. While you were talking, Dave, I went back to double-check my memory — the National Republican Congressional Committee, the main campaign arm for U.S. House Republicans, added Iowa’s 2nd District to their target list in March. They put Joe Mitchell on what they call their “Maga Majority” program. So they’ve officially acknowledged Iowa has three competitive districts. And Joe Mitchell, last month at the Family Leadership Summit, made a comment along the lines of — “Ashley Hinson’s been great, but the only problem is she made a lot of people think this district isn’t really competitive, but it is.” So I’d say there are definitely three competitive districts in Iowa, and I wouldn’t go along with only 18 being competitive nationwide.

Dave Price: Speaking of Nunn — he’s been touting that he’s one of the most bipartisan members in the U.S. House, which reminded me of when he was running in his first primary. I talked to a Republican strategist type back then — and, as we all know, I had that debate moment with Nunn during his congressional primary, where I’d asked, spur of the moment, who wants to ban all abortions, and Nunn kind of looked around at the other candidates and eventually raised his hand. That became a campaign commercial that probably still runs today — I wish it would go away, my kids joke about it, and it’s about a very serious topic. But I remember a Republican strategist telling me at the time: “Nunn’s doing what he’s got to do to get through this primary, but he’s going to pivot — he understands the district, he knows it’s a purple district and will stay purple, and he’s really going to push bipartisanship.” Now, he’s still a Republican, of course — he’ll do videos supporting President Trump and so on — but it can’t hurt to have a list come out ranking him the third-most-bipartisan member of the U.S. House, in a very competitive seat, in a very competitive year.

Kathie Obradovich: I wonder what their criteria were for bipartisanship, because whenever I look at voting records, the Iowa Republican delegation votes with the majority — I’d say probably more than 90% of the time. It’s got to be something other than voting records.

Dave Price: What they’ve sponsored, probably.

Laura Belin: Part of it is co-sponsoring bills — I think he co-sponsors a bunch of bipartisan bills that don’t go anywhere, but then he gets credit for being a bipartisan member of Congress. I don’t know the specific criteria, but I’ve seen that pattern on lists like this before. And speaking of the cabinet official coming here for an ostensibly “official” event that’s really connected to the campaign — Zach Nunn has been doing a lot of ribbon-cutting ceremonies for earmarks that were actually finalized back in January or March, but the ribbon-cuttings are happening now. Those are all official events, not campaign events, but he’s getting a ton of media coverage from them, which can only help his campaign.

Dave Price: Yeah, and he’s definitely taking advantage of the recess while Congress isn’t meeting. It feels like he’s had two or three of these a week the last couple of weeks — I was going to tally them up for a story I haven’t done yet.

Okay, so — related to campaigns — how many weeks in a row have we talked about the Libertarians? But seriously, every show we’ve had some new development. We need, like, a soap-opera theme song — “As the Libertarian Turns” or something.

Kathie Obradovich: Who would have thought that getting kicked off the ballot would be the most free media the Libertarian Party gets? For anyone who hasn’t followed this saga: two of the Libertarian tickets got kicked off the ballot by the state objection panel. One was lieutenant governor candidate Jules Cutler, which put the whole ticket in jeopardy. The second was 3rd District candidate Marco Battaglia, who got kicked off because his actual legal name is Mark Anderson — who knew? The party has been fighting this in court. Battaglia then announced a medical emergency and dropped out of the race. So the Libertarians held a convention and nominated Charles Aldrich — a name well known to Libertarians and political followers — as the lieutenant governor candidate; he most recently ran in the 4th Congressional District. And Jacob Heard, who’s served as the Libertarian Party’s lawyer and has run for the state house, is going to run in the 3rd Congressional District. Part of why we follow this so closely is that, with so many competitive races, any third-party candidate — including the Libertarians — can actually make a mark.

Laura Belin: Charles Aldrich — both candidates on their governor ticket, Nicholas Gluba and now Aldrich as the lieutenant governor replacement, attempted to run for Congress in 2024 and were part of the case that went to the Iowa Supreme Court, which upheld the decision disqualifying the Libertarian candidates from the ballot on the grounds the party hadn’t done the convention process correctly. I also learned that Aldrich used to live in Minnesota and ran for U.S. Senate there as a Libertarian in the 2008 election — the one that went to a months-long recount and contest between Al Franken and Norm Coleman. He got almost 14,000 votes in an election where the final margin between Franken and Coleman was like 200-something votes.

Dave Price: I mean, seriously — what other podcast gives you that kind of nugget?

Kathie Obradovich: The Libertarians could really be a force in Iowa if they’d just learn the rules and stop making themselves vulnerable to being kicked off the ballot.

Laura Belin: I didn’t even know this process existed — that you could replace a candidate. I’m sure Republicans will file some kind of legal challenge — how can you replace a candidate who didn’t actually qualify for the ballot in the first place? So we’ll probably end up with a court case anyway. I wasn’t aware of this avenue; I thought if you didn’t do it through petition, you’d have to hold a special convention, and that’s very difficult now for third parties, since the requirements for how many people need to attend a convention to nominate someone were raised.

Dave Price: Hey Kathie, let’s put a cherry on top of what we talked about earlier — Mark Kelly and the presidential race. Laura already mentioned the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee — we’re recording Friday morning, and Saturday they could finalize the decision on what the calendar will look like.

Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, the full DNC is meeting Saturday and is expected to ratify the calendar the Rules and Bylaws Committee already proposed. Iowa was left out of that — there are five early states, starting with South Carolina, also including Nevada, New Hampshire (third in the lineup, if I remember right), Michigan, and Virginia.

When the Rules and Bylaws Committee made that decision, Iowa Democratic Party leadership was a little coy about whether the party will actually follow the DNC’s rules and go after Super Tuesday, or jump the line and hold a rogue early caucus. There are two schools of thought — even people who like the caucuses may not want the state to defy the DNC, while others are sick of the caucuses and say we should let them go. It really rubbed Iowa Democrats the wrong way that New Hampshire was left out of the early cycle in 2024, went early anyway, and suffered no consequences, while Iowa followed the rules and got stripped of its Rules and Bylaws Committee member — left out in the cold again. Some feel they were punished for following the rules while New Hampshire was rewarded for flouting them. It’ll be interesting to see — party leadership said they probably won’t make any decision until after the midterms. But if Iowa elects more Democrats in the midterms, the party may feel it has more leverage to test the DNC on all of that — stripping delegates and so on, which often gets waived away by the time a presidential candidate is actually nominated.

Dave Price: Hey, Laura and I are going to sprint out of here as soon as we finish recording to head over to the Des Moines Register Soapbox — day two of the fair, but day one of candidates actually appearing at the soapbox. There are about five today, a bunch on Saturday, none on Sunday, then back to a bunch on Monday, carrying through the week. Laura, without getting too specific about individual candidates — what are you going to be watching for? We’ll have Democrats and some Republicans up there, folks gathered around, maybe some hecklers.

Laura Belin: I’m always curious whether they hang around to take questions afterward, but mainly I want to know whether they come with a focused message on some issue, or just give the same introductory biographical speech I’ve probably already heard them give.

Dave Price: All right, Kathie — as you assemble your team to cover all this, and you know how the sausage gets made from your years at the Register — how do you guide your team, and what will they be watching for?

Kathie Obradovich: We’re obviously looking for candidates to make news — similar to what Laura said, if it’s just a biographical speech we’ve heard before, it’s not going to make much news. We like to see them come with a specific issue, something provocative to talk about. We also look at crowd reaction — do they have supporters there, or are they relying on whoever happens to be walking by, which is sort of the ethic of the soapbox? Organized campaigns will seed the crowd with supporters who show up early and take the front chairs, so we look for that kind of evidence of campaign organization. Soapbox is always fun — it’s unpredictable. And I always love watching candidates at the fair — you can really tell who’s comfortable talking to people they don’t know. I’ve got a lot of stories about presidential candidates at the fair; we can talk about that some other time.

Dave Price: I know — we should seriously do an entire episode on that.

Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, I want to know what they eat — do they flip a pork chop, drop one on the ground, and put it back?

Dave Price: On the ground. Exactly, exactly.

Kathie Obradovich: Okay, bye.

Dave Price: All right — Kathie and Laura, thank you both. Have a good weekend, let’s hope the rain stays away. Friday morning brought another round of rain, as did Thursday, so we’ll see how that shakes out and whether the heat gives us a break next week as we’re out there listening to these folks. Thanks to everyone who’s dropped in for the podcast this week, thanks to the new subscribers, thanks to those sharing it to help us grow, and a special thanks to our paid subscribers — especially those who’ve re-upped and enhanced their support level, we really appreciate that. And to those thinking about supporting the podcast — we’re going to do something special in the weeks ahead for paid subscribers. We’ll talk more about that in the next couple of weeks. Thanks for joining us, have a great week, and we’ll talk to you next week.

We welcome first-time guest Shane Vander Hart this week. He writes at shanevanderhart.com. Please give him a follow while you’re there.

We dug into school choice first. Rob Sand wants to bring back the ESA income cap and add audits, while Zach Lahn talks expansion without much detail. Shane and Laura sparred over what audits would even target, since tuition dollars aren’t currently subject to oversight once schools receive them.

Then we turned to the new Emerson/Nexstar poll. Sand is up 5.5 points on Lahn, boosted by a 26-point lead with independents. The Senate race is tighter, Hinson over Turek 47.5 to 45, but Turek leads independents by nearly 12 points, a warning sign for Republicans this cycle.

We also covered Brenna Bird’s new Medicaid fraud task force, which drew criticism from two former state officials who say the existing Medicaid Fraud Control Unit just needs more funding. Laura flagged that the task force ignores MCOs illegally denying care.

Looking ahead, Laura’s tracking healthcare messaging in the 1st District, Kathie’s watching Sunday’s Libertarian convention to replace their bounced 3rd District candidate, and Shane has a piece coming Monday on Sand’s ESA means test.

Want to sharpen your writing and get the inside scoop on Iowa politics at the same time? Join us September 27-30 at the Okoboji Writers' & Songwriters' Retreat on beautiful West Lake Okoboji, featuring Iowa Down Ballot analysts Laura Belin and Kathie Obradovich. They'll walk you through finding public information, getting your opinion pieces published, and plenty more. Spots are limited, so scan the QR code at the beginning and end of the video or head to okobojiwritersretreat.com to sign up. If you’d like to make a donation to help the Iowa Writer’s Collaborative which supports this show please click the button below. Thanks!

Auto-generated transcript below:

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Dave Price: Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Iowa Down Ballot Podcast. I am Dave Price, joined by not two.

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Dave Price: But 3 media friends this week. Laura Belin, Kathie Obradovich are regulars. They’re here, of course. But we have a newbie, a rookie, Shane Vander Hart. Who the heck is this person? Hi, Shane.

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Shane: Hey!

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Shane: Hey Dave, how are you?

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Dave Price: Who are you?

Shane: Who am I? Well, I’m just a guy, no. I write a substack, shanevanderhart.com, very original.

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Shane: So, it’s…

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Dave Price: Branding, baby, branding.

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Shane: Yeah, yeah, so it’s… it’s a piece of my mind, basically, the subtitle’s Piece of My Mind About Faith, Culture, Politics, Media, and Public Policy, because

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Shane: drilling down on one particular thing is boring, and so I can… it just leaves it broad and wide open, so whatever I want to write about, I can just do that.

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Dave Price: Outstanding. We have had some private conversations, really, for a number of weeks, and we took last week off.

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Dave Price: For a little vacation, rest up as we get ready for the final sprint.

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Dave Price: I… one of the biggest… I’m just gonna talk out loud about what has been challenging for me. There is no conservative version of Laura Belin.

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Dave Price: That is… that has… because that has always been my dream, right? Laura is this unique…

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Dave Price: entity. Nobody does what Laura does. Kathie runs this sprawling enterprise, so she’s her own thing, too.

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Dave Price: But… but that… she has a different… a different mission.

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Dave Price: There is no conservative version of Laura, and so we have had private conversations about, like, how do we get some conservative voices in here? You know, way back in the day, we had Kevin Hall, Craig Robinson, they were doing some things, and they did it differently than Laura does.

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Dave Price: But nobody does the kind of deep dive stuff from the conservative side that Laura does, and that is something that I’ve always thought could probably give our conversations here each week a little more depth.

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Dave Price: So…

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Dave Price: Shane, who has 43 different jobs, so it makes it very challenging to schedule with this man, but you have been around conservative politics for a while, and I appreciate right now you’re… you’re probably a lost man.

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Dave Price: You are not… you are not the Republican guy who I met 20 years ago or whatever, when we met up for coffee at Smokey Row in Des Moines, when you were doing some other… you had caffeinated thoughts and some other things you were doing. You later launched Iowa Torch, you’ve been a youth pastor in your career, all kinds of stuff.

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Dave Price: So…

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Dave Price: welcome, because it’s nice to add yet another… yet another voice to this. And I wonder, since you’re our guest this week, maybe you lead off, but one thing that we have talked a little bit about on this podcast, but not a lot, would be looking at the idea of school choice.

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Dave Price: And how that might play out in the gubernatorial race. Laura has done a lot of reporting, Kathie’s staff has done reporting on this as well. Shane, you are working for a couple of members who clearly have.

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Shane: Mistaken it, yeah.

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Dave Price: a stake in this and a lot of interest in this expansion. So, talk about what you have seen so far from Rob Sand and Zach Lahn in this area.

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Shane: Okay, well, as far as, school choice, it’s hard to say exactly how prominent it’s gonna be in the election. Right now, it seems, obviously, focused more on the economy, and…

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Shane: I think Rob Sands,

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Shane: his hits on Lahn about where he, you know, where he resides has been landing, especially with independents, but…

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Shane: I see two candidates that are pretty far apart on the issue. Of course.

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Shane: Rob seems like he has, moderated himself to a point where he’s not… he’s not advocating getting rid of ESAs altogether, but just putting… bringing back the income cap, which I hope I’m…

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Shane: I hope I’m,

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Shane: talking about his position accurately, but… So I don’t know if that’s what he truly believes, or if that’s what he…

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Shane: thinks that’s what… the only thing he’s gonna be able to get accomplished, with… with the current political environment and the likelihood that if he’s elected governor, he’s going to have a Republican legislature to work with, so…

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Shane: It’s been interesting. Lahn hasn’t said a lot on the campaign trail that I’ve seen, other than he’s supportive of VSAs.

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Shane: I think we’re going to be trying to drill down where he really lands more on specific issues that impact private schools, not just ESAs, but independent accreditation and other things as well.

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Dave Price: Laura, what’s your take on where is the base on this?

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Laura Belin: Well, the Democratic base is extremely opposed to the school voucher program. I think I agree with Shane’s summary. I would just add a couple of things to what Rob Sands says when he talks about this issue, which he does a lot. He brings it up a lot at his town halls. And…

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Laura Belin: he definitely wants to bring back the income caps on it, but also wants to have audits, like, if public money is going to these schools, we should be able to see where the public money is going. There should be more restrictions on what they can do with the money. And finally, he says that these private schools, if they want to take the taxpayer money, they should accept all of the students who want to attend that school. So that is…

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Laura Belin: what I’ve heard from him. And I’ve heard impressed by Democratic audiences or voters saying, hey, why aren’t you calling for repealing this program? And he’ll say exactly what Shane just said. If I’m elected, I’m going to be working with a Republican legislature. I was really surprised this week with the Emerson College poll, and I know we’re going to talk about the poll more later, but they asked a question about this issue, not exactly using the phrase school vouchers, but

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Laura Belin: State-funded private school tuition assistance.

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Laura Belin: And the electorate was really evenly split on it, with just a little more than 40% each way, which I would have expected the electorate to be more against the voucher program, just based on how much I’ve heard Rob Sand talking about it.

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Kathie Obradovich: We went up and covered, Zach Lahn up in Britt at the Hancock County Fair, I want to say it was last weekend, so not too long ago. And, he’s…

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Kathie Obradovich: careful about how he talks about ESA. So, he said he would like to see expansion of the program, but then he sort of couches that as saying he wants, more innovative schools to be able to, you know, participate. So I’m not sure what he means by innovative schools.

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Kathie Obradovich: Secondly, he says,

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Kathie Obradovich: that, you know, along with strengthening the ESA program, however he wants to do that, he wants to make public schools more competitive, and he likes to talk about competition. And so it’ll be interesting to see what he means… again, a lot of these are not fully fleshed out, what he means by making public schools more competitive. Does that mean you level the playing field with the rules that public schools and private schools have to

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Kathie Obradovich: Follow, or is it… is there something else that he has in mind?

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Dave Price: What do you have, Shane?

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Dave Price: Your wheels are turning, I can tell.

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Shane: Yeah, well, ESAs, not school vouchers. Those are two different types of programs. Vouchers are direct payments to schools. As far as limiting what ESAs go to.

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Shane: It is extremely limited what’s eligible under ESAs, so I’m not entirely sure what Sand is thinking as far as how he would like to limit ESAs, but

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Shane: Tuition, it goes to tuition first. These schools have to be accredited, either independent accreditation or,

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Shane: accreditation through the state of Iowa, which most Catholic schools are usually accredited through the state of Iowa. Most Protestant and other types of private schools are accredited through independent accreditation. So tuition is first, and then there’s a very,

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Shane: tight list of eligible expenses that have to be… that are allowed after tuition, that are purchased through the Odyssey Marketplace.

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Shane: so it’s not like somebody’s buying amusement park tickets, or, you know, things that we would deem extravagant through this program. So, you know, I guess I would like to hear…

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Shane: Rob say exactly

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Shane: what kind of expenses he’s talking about, what he thinks is being done that would be extravagant that falls under this program. I don’t see it.

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Laura Belin: I think what he’s talking about is not what the families can use the money for. The families have to use the money for tuition first.

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Shane: Right.

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Laura Belin: It’s what the schools can do with the money that they’re getting from all those ESA accounts, and a phrase that he likes to use is.

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Shane: But…

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Laura Belin: There’s only one thing on God’s green earth that the schools can’t do, and that’s give families a rebate. Other than that, they could pay for luxury vacations, steak and lobster dinners.

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Shane: Yeah.

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Laura Belin: anything with the money because it’s not subject to audit, so that… that’s the point.

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Shane: because Christian schools are known to do that.

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Shane: They… We’re not just talking about.

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Kathie Obradovich: at Christian schools here, though.

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Shane: Yeah, well, I, you know, basically, ESAs are allowing, finally, a lot of private schools to be able to pay their teachers competitively.

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Shane: And that’s… if you want to know where the money’s going, it’s going to that, mainly. So…

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Shane: I guess if we’re going to be talking about auditing and private entities, let’s… are we going to do that for any private entity that receives public funds?

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Shane: Because there are a lot out there. Do we audit every single college? Does the state auditors, do they audit grocery stores that receive SNAP funding? Do we audit, I mean, doctors’ offices that receive Medicaid? I mean.

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Shane: we’re gonna be talking about Medicaid fraud here in a little bit, but…

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Shane: You know, we don’t generally do that to a point, even though a lot of these organizations and even private schools actually

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Shane: there are… Fiscal and financial,

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Shane: responsibilities they have, not only to their donors and to their board, but also to the accrediting agencies that accredit them. A lot of these schools actually are audited on a regular basis, so just not by the state auditor’s office.

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Dave Price: Hey, Kathie, will you wrap this topic up? How do we know, as we sit here and talk about this in August, how do we get a feel for…

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Dave Price: What kind of driver this issue will be for voters?

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, so, I mean, we’re going to talk about polling.

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Kathie Obradovich: And that is one way, right? You do get a sense, at least of where voters feel about issues. Sometimes those are combined with how big of a priority that is. So, I mean, we know that the campaigns do these polling. We don’t always see it, and when we do see it, we don’t always

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Kathie Obradovich: You know, we don’t always believe it.

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Dave Price: You know?

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Kathie Obradovich: And so, so, you know, we don’t necessarily publish all the internal polls that we may have seen, but, you know, some of these reputable polls, at least give you an idea sometimes on these issues of where voters are. The other thing, too, is, you know, if you can get out with the campaigns enough.

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Kathie Obradovich: And hear what the questions are that people ask, and how often you’ve seen questions come up. That, that, you know.

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Kathie Obradovich: different gatherings may be more or less grassroots, you know, depending on who’s there. But, you know, I think it’ll be interesting, so…

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Kathie Obradovich: Just a plug, you know, a…

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Kathie Obradovich: separate media entities event, and I’m looking forward to the State Fair soapbox that the Register does, coming up, just to see what, you know, people there are asking candidates about. Those are… that is not necessarily a partisan crowd.

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Kathie Obradovich: And some of these people are seeing some of these candidates for the very first time, so I’ll be looking forward to seeing what’s on their minds.

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Dave Price: To use an example that Shane did, you know, when you were talking about how SAND is landing some effective messaging against Lahn with, this guy lives in Kansas kind of thing, or doesn’t live here enough, all that kind of stuff.

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Dave Price: while we may not see a lot… we’re not gonna have as much polling, perhaps, with the register not doing the Iowa poll, but I feel like we can also tell…

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Dave Price: what the campaigns have found out from their own polling based on what messaging they are using, and if these ESAs, if SAN thinks these are going to be a strength for him and a weakness for Lahn, I’m gonna guess organically he’s gonna bring this up a bunch, right? And if his polling shows that, as Laura already teased ahead with this Emerson polling, if it’s more of a mixed bag, perhaps there’s not a

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Dave Price: A lot of benefit for him to really hammer on this.

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Kathie Obradovich: But you’re also talking about interest groups, right? So, you know, you’re speaking, you know, Rob Sand almost certainly is speaking to, you know, the ISEA, the State Education Association, which is the teachers’ union, and would be a big, you know, an opportunity for support from that group.

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Kathie Obradovich: So, I mean, you know, the messaging’s not just speaking to, run-of-the-mill voters, they’re speaking to their interest groups as well.

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Dave Price: Laura, you already… sorry that I forgot to silence my phone, excuse me for being rude. You already teased ahead to this Emerson College Nextstar media poll, so this would be my former employer as part of the Nexstar family. And you talked about…

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Dave Price: at least it addressed the issue of ESAs, but let’s look at some of the top-line numbers. However, this weekend, you have a post looking beyond the top-line numbers, but in particular, they’re looking at the gubernatorial race and the U.S. Senate race that we have in the state of Iowa in November. I wonder if you can start with the gubernatorial race.

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Dave Price: It shows that Rob Sand is up.

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Dave Price: in this race, but you’re also looking behind… beyond some of the top-line numbers. What are you finding?

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Laura Belin: Overall, it’s a pretty good poll for San. He’s up by about 5.5 points, which is outside the poll’s margin of error.

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Laura Belin: And he has a big lead among independents. He’s got a 26-point lead among independents in the sample. And I know that his campaign has really put a lot of muscle into trying to identify and mobilize those voters who aren’t affiliated with either party, and he’s put forward a bunch of proposals to empower no-party voters, including completely overhauling our state primary system.

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Laura Belin: So.

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Laura Belin: he’s looking strong. Also, they asked… now, this was after they asked about favorability, and the… and the head-to-head matchup against Zach Lahn. They asked, how important is it to you for a candidate for statewide office to have lived in Iowa for most of their adult life? And about three-quarters of the sample said that was either very important or somewhat important. So, I think that that’s probably, as you mentioned, Dave.

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Laura Belin: when we hear campaigns emphasizing a message, it may be because their own internal polling is telling them that’s effective. But the other thing this poll showed is that he’s much better known than Zach Lahn. That’s not too surprising because

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Laura Belin: Zach Lahn, I mean, before last November, when he announced his gubernatorial bid, I had literally never heard of him in my life, whereas Rob Sand’s been a statewide elected official for the last 8 years, so that, you could say that the optimistic view for Zach Lahn is he has an opportunity, if he can become better known, to try to raise his numbers a little bit, but Sand already has a much… a more… a better split on his favorable

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Laura Belin: favorable rating.

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Dave Price: Shane, you are in Indy these days, as you stepped aside from the.

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Shane: I’ve had Democrats come up to my door.

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Dave Price: Is that right? Yeah. They think you’re a free agent. So, to Laura’s point there, when you look at Sands’ strength with independents, and clearly he has really worked, and he knows the math, Laura, as we’ve mentioned on this show a bunch of times, I believe was the first person to really deep-dive the voter registration numbers

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Dave Price: a bunch of months ago, and back then, I believe the gap was about 200,000, the registered Republican advantage. It’s narrowed some now. But that was Laura’s reality check to some of these Democrats a while back to say, hey, yeah, you know, things may be feeling good, but let’s look at the big picture numbers. So for Sand to do well, realistically, he has.

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Shane: He has to, he has to.

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Shane: Yeah, and by a pretty large margin. So… and so he’s smart to take that tactic, and I think, you know, his campaign messaging, for the most part, not redder, not bluer, but better and truer, okay.

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Shane: catchy, nice, works perfectly well, especially among indies that are kind of tired of the two-party system. So, you know, I definitely… he’s got some smart messaging, and obviously he’s got a huge campaign war chest to get out messaging on the airwaves, so that’s gonna be of huge benefit to him.

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Shane: And I’m sure he remembers his last election, where, you know, he just won by the, you know, skin of his teeth, so he definitely has to make some huge, huge inroads, and…

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Shane: On the flip side, Lahn has to recognize that he can’t just reach out to MAGA base and Republican voters, but he needs to also make some inroads into, independents, those that maybe have actually voted for Trump, but are now kind of getting turned off.

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Shane: So, I would be worried, if I were him, looking at this polling, especially with the independent numbers. It doesn’t look good. I mean, this is… looks like it’s setting up a scenario for a sandwyn.

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Shane: obviously, just a snapshot in time in August, so there’s… there’s a lot of time to go, but he does need to get his name out there more. Because I… like Laura, it’s like, Zach who? I have never heard of this guy before.

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Dave Price: So, Kathie, the… one of the fun things for me to talk to you week after week on this, and I appreciate that, you know, you’re the…

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Dave Price: you’re the driving force of the Iowa Capital Dispatch, but for a bunch of years, you knew the inner workings of the Iowa poll at the Des Moines Register, so you have more than a passing knowledge of how polling works. We always say on this show, we don’t want to make too big a deal out of polling, and it’s a snapshot in time, blah blah blah.

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Dave Price: Having said all of that, what did you think when you looked, just speaking on the gubernatorial race here, what did you think when you looked at this Emerson-Nexstar poll?

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, so first of all, Emerson is a, you know, it is a name in polling. They’ve done, lots of polling over the years, they’re very experienced. Every pollster is different, you know, and the thing that I liked

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Kathie Obradovich: most about, about, Ann Selzer’s polling, was that she didn’t bake assumptions in.

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Kathie Obradovich: the electorate. In other words, she, didn’t try to project

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Kathie Obradovich: you know, what the… what the electorate was gonna look like, you know, how many, you know, so she didn’t, like, cut off people who hadn’t voted in the last two elections, because that… that, you know, gets… gets rid of new voters, for example, and caucus polling was even more complicated as a result. So…

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Kathie Obradovich: So, you know, every poll is different. I think Emerson

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Kathie Obradovich: you know, Laura, you looked at, you know, whether their samples seem to lean right or left, and I have… I have not dug into that, but I do think that they are, you know, a relatively respected name with any, with any poll.

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Kathie Obradovich: you know, I like to look at the number of undecideds, and, you know, so I think…

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Kathie Obradovich: You know, both in the Senate race and gubernatorial race, there’s room, you know, there’s wiggle room there. You know, but if I’m… if I’m Zach Lahn looking at this

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Kathie Obradovich: Paul, and I kind of agree with Shane, he needs to get out and get his name out more. We’ve been looking… we had a week, I think it was 2 weeks ago, where Rob Sand had 3 events in Central Iowa, or at least, he, you know, he shared a media release with us early, so we had that and 2 events.

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Kathie Obradovich: Anyway…

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Kathie Obradovich: they were, and we were looking for Zach Lahn events that we could cover, you know, to try to provide some balance, and we couldn’t find one. He finally had a couple up in north central Iowa, and we were able to send a reporter up, but he, you know, not having a lot of public events.

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Kathie Obradovich: not doing as many, you know, yeah, he’s putting out news releases saying Rob Sand is a fraud, or whatever, bad guy. But, you know, those are… those are not necessarily the kinds of things that we jump on, so we’re, you know, we’re looking for, we’re looking for opportunities to cover Zach Lahn, and he’s not giving us enough yet.

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Shane: Yeah, he’s not going to be able to win the airwave battle right now based on funding, so this is… this is the only way for him to really get his name out there. To answer your question regarding the Emerson polling, it looks like they’re pretty fair. I was looking at the crosstab breakdown, and…

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Shane: Let’s see. It looks like, they had about 283 Republicans, 222 Democrats, and about 206

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Shane: independence, so I think a pretty accurate weighting as far as registration numbers.

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Laura Belin: It was about a 40%… yeah, 40% Republican, 31% Democrat, 29% Independent, but as Kathie pointed out, I mean, there’s a lot of guesswork that goes into that, and if you had gone into the…

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Laura Belin: 2014 midterm, polling the electorate, expecting that the turnout was going to match the 2012 presidential election.

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Shane: wrong. Yeah.

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Laura Belin: So, you know, he… it looks like a reasonable snapshot, but we really don’t know what the electorate’s gonna look like in November.

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Dave Price: Okay, let’s look at that U.S. Senate race. So, in this case, now this one’s within the margin of error, and as Laura already pointed out in the gubernatorial race, Rob Sands’ lead was beyond the margin of error, so that… we’ll see if that ends up being significant. But Ashley Hinson in this one, 47.5.

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Dave Price: And Josh Turek, 45, with 6.1.

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Dave Price: undecided. Laura, as you started digging into the Senate race, what were you noticing?

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Laura Belin: Well, Ashley Hinson is much better known than Josh Turek. She’s not as well known as Rob Sand, but they both have similar favorable ratings. She has slightly higher unfavorable than Josh Turek, but Josh Turek just isn’t known to a lot of people. So you could look at that two ways. You could say he has more of an opportunity to grow as he becomes better known, or you could say Republicans have more of an opportunity to define him.

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Laura Belin: before he can get his support up. I’m waiting for some pollster to name Thomas Lahn the Libertarian who will be on the ballot in the Senate race. They had an option for other… for the Senate, but I think that they should name the Libertarian Thomas Lahn and see what happens with that, because I feel that he has potential to get more than the 1.5% that this poll

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Laura Belin: Found go to other.

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Dave Price: Lahn and Lahn.

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Laura Belin: No.

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Dave Price: Different race, but…

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Dave Price: Shane, also in this Senate race, there is a gap with the Indies, and so you have, in this case, Turek with almost

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Dave Price: almost 12-point advantage with independents. So, despite down in the polls with you, although it’s very, very close, so essentially a statistical tie, perhaps, but again, this gap with independents. So, we’re in… we’re in August. Is that a concern for the Republican side?

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Shane: Oh, it should be. It should always be a concern with midterm elections when your… the… your party’s president is in office. There’s always the… especially when he’s got the unfavorability rating that he has. In Iowa, a state that has voted for him twice… you know, well, three different times.

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Shane: And… and he’s underwater with his favorability rating, so that is definitely where you’re gonna… you’re gonna see that with the independent vote. And, you know, I… more independents are aware of Ashley Hinson, so…

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Shane: it’s not quite as bad as you see with the gubernatorial race, but yeah, Republicans cannot

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Shane: Depend on just their huge voter registration advantage.

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Dave Price: Kathie, what do you make of the fact that Rob Sand has a more comfortable lead in the gubernatorial race, but it’s essentially a tie in this Senate race, with Hansen perhaps slightly ahead?

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, I mean, it’s exactly like Laura said. Hinson is better known. She’s not… she’s not universally known, because, you know, she represents

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Kathie Obradovich: you know, a specific area of the state in Congress, but the area of the state that she represents right now is a lot bigger than, you know, as a state representative that Josh Turek was representing in Council Bluffs. So… so yeah, he has to,

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Kathie Obradovich: you know, remain competitive enough with fundraising, and, you know, of course, with all the downsides of that, which means, you know, there’s gonna be outside money, there’s gonna be, you know, and that’s a… that is controversial with people, but I think both sides are gonna be dealing with that.

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Kathie Obradovich: But yeah, he’s gotta, you know, introduce himself to voters all across the state, and make the most of the dissatisfaction that people have with Donald Trump, because Ashley Hinson has been, I think, a pretty reliable vote, for House Republicans and for Trump’s agenda. So, I mean, they have to be able to make the most of that dissatisfaction.

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Kathie Obradovich: But… avoid running against Donald Trump, because…

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, that is not… he’s not on the ballot, but…

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Kathie Obradovich: That has not been successful in the past. I mean, Democrats focused on Donald Trump to the exclusion of

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Kathie Obradovich: offering a better and, you know, more, a more compelling message, and you can’t stop by saying Donald Trump is bad. If that’s, you know, if that’s what you’re gonna try to do for a message, you’ve got to offer something better. And that’s where, you know, I think Josh Turk has got to be…

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Kathie Obradovich: you know, very thoughtful, not just, you know, to get his name out there, but to be thoughtful about what it is that he’s offering, especially rural voters who are maybe disenchanted with tariffs and the cost of fertilizer and the Iran war.

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Dave Price: you know, just cost of living in general. Kathie, I wonder if you can start us off for our final big topic of the week. Since we took last week off, we did not get to dig into this, but Iowa Capital Dispatch has had reporting on this. Brenna Bird, the Attorney General, is headed up

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Dave Price: this task force that will look at cases of suspected Medicaid fraud. So that was… that was the initial launch, but then there was this news conference with two former state directors who both worked under Democrats.

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Dave Price: who say that this is kind of a misguided approach, and this is not the way you need to be going after this. What did you make from this so far?

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, so, this was a task force that was created by the governor, it’s being headed by Brenne Burr, the Attorney General, and it is,

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Kathie Obradovich: and I was kind of happy to see this, that it is more focused on law enforcement than it is about prevention. I worry that prevention basically creates a lot of red tape, both recipients and providers, and essentially leads to people

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Kathie Obradovich: Dropping out or losing access, because people don’t want to deal with the red tape. So, I was happy to see it focus more on law enforcement.

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Kathie Obradovich: But what, Kevin Tekow, who is a former director of the Department of Inspections and Appeals, which is now

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Kathie Obradovich: Dial, which is inspections, Appeals, and Licensing, and Dean Lerner, who is also a former director of that agency. And then they’ve also gone on to do, like, Kevin Tekow was a former U.S. attorney, for example, so they’ve also done some law enforcement work.

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Kathie Obradovich: Basically, they’re saying, you know, instead of doing this task force, that they should focus on putting more funding into the existing structures of state government that already investigate Medicaid fraud and do a good job of it. So, in the Department of Inspections, Appeals, and Licensing, there is currently a Medicaid fraud control unit

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Kathie Obradovich: Which basically exists, obviously, to investigate Medicaid fraud. Both TechOut and Lerner are arguing that the state is underfunding this agency, and that, you know, for every… they’re saying for every dollar spent.

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Kathie Obradovich: that it recovers $4 to $5, for taxpayers. So, so that is part of it. They also say you need to, you need to upgrade your data.

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Kathie Obradovich: you know, improve your technology, etc. And they had a couple of other recommendations as well. You know, I think these recommendations are worth considering. I don’t see anything wrong with having a task force to talk about this, frankly. There’s, you know, and because Medicaid,

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Kathie Obradovich: is facing, cuts and increases in some of the regulation, that looking at fraud is, you know, a good idea, but I do think that some of these recommendations are worth being discussed as well.

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Dave Price: Shane, this has been part of a national conversation that’s focused on Medicaid and Medicare, too, but let’s just focus on Medicaid. But with the Trump administration, other Republican governors have talked about Medicaid oversight, and we know that the feds are

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Dave Price: zeroing in on the error rate, with Medicaid, and states would have to potentially take over more of the cost if they go above that threshold. Iowa’s below the threshold, the current numbers. But what do you make about both Brenna Bird’s

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Dave Price: sort of mission, if you will, under the… under the direction of Governor Kim Reynolds, but then also this, the two former state officials saying this is not the way to go.

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Shane: Right, well, I think obviously going after fraud is low-hanging fruit, and everybody’s against it. There’s bipartisan consensus. We don’t want to see the program

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Shane: cheated, and if we could recover some taxpayer funding through that, all the better. I agree with Kathie. I don’t see why you can’t, you know, fund… I think, yeah, definitely fund…

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Shane: the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit more, because I was looking at… I was looking at the Iowa Capital Dispatch’s article on this, and seeing where Iowa was as far as staffers compared to other states, and it’s like, whoa, yeah, we could definitely do a better job there.

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Shane: But as far as the task force itself, it might generate some great ideas. You might have some technology improvements that are advocated for through this. You’ve got the director of Iowa’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit as part of the task force, so…

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Shane: you know, I’m ambivalent about task force… task forces as far as how effective they are, but if it gets the conversation rolling, and maybe this be part of that, let’s better fund this unit, I think that’s a win-win. I don’t see a problem with it.

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Dave Price: What’s your take, Laura?

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Laura Belin: Well, one thing that Rob Sand mentioned when this task force was created, this was not connected to the recent press conference by the former state officials, but that the task force is very skewed toward

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Laura Belin: government and these… the private companies that manage the Medicaid program, and they’re… it’s not really patient advocate, and why isn’t this task force looking at the illegal denials of care? I mean, if you’re only looking at fraud, of course, none of us want to see any fraud in the Medicaid program, but there have been a lot of reports, compelling reports, that these MCOs are denying care and services to people

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Laura Belin: who are legally entitled to them. And it seems like that is just not of any interest at all to the current administration, so that strikes me as an area where a task force that’s looking more holistically at Medicaid might also want to look at that side.

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Dave Price: Alright, let’s make that the final word on that. I wonder if we can close out this week by teasing what you’re working on. Laura, I already sort of heavily teased what you did, because you did a Saturday morning post, but do you want to tee that up?

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Laura Belin: Yeah, I… well, I did a post kind of digging into the Emerson poll numbers, and then a couple of days ago, I did a separate post about the role that access to healthcare is playing in the first congressional district campaign after Christina Bahannon launched her first TV ad, and then earlier in the year, Marionette Miller Makes TV ad also was much about healthcare, and that included a little bit of information about some polling in the first district, too.

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Dave Price: Kathie, it’s probably difficult for you to zero in on one, but Kenya?

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Kathie Obradovich: Well, I’ll give a very little… a very short-term thing. We haven’t talked about the Libertarians today, and they are… they’re going to have their convention, interestingly, on Sunday night, from 8 to 10 p.m. Who has a convention?

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Shane: That is weird.

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Kathie Obradovich: But…

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Dave Price: Yeah, non-traditional folks sometimes.

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Kathie Obradovich: They are planning to pick a substitute candidate for Marco Battalia.

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Dave Price: Good.

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Kathie Obradovich: was kicked off the ballot, and… or if we want to call him Mark Anderson, because he was kicked off for not using his legal name. And, so we’ll see, we’ll certainly have.

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Dave Price: And that’s the congressional race, we should say. It’s already interrupted, in the 3rd District.

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Kathie Obradovich: 3rd district congressional race, exactly. So, it does, you know, that is a really close race as well. We didn’t have polling on it this time, but I think most people, you know, are looking at that as a potential close race. So having a, third party slash, you know, independent candidate, in that race could very well

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Kathie Obradovich: affect the dynamic, so it’s worth watching anyway.

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Dave Price: And you, ShaneVanderhart.com?

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Shane: Yeah, well.

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Dave Price: Is that your legal name?

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Shane: Yes, that is my legal name, even though you will not find me on the ballot ever, anywhere.

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Shane: So… I… Yeah, I’m putting out an article on Monday about Rob Sands’ means test.

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Shane: With ESAs, so addressing that.

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Dave Price: Outstanding. Shane, thanks for jumping in with us this week. Thanks for adding to the conversation.

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Shane: Very welcome.

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Dave Price: Kathie and Laura, thank you, as always. I know I said this privately, but…

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Dave Price: These two women are so… Super, super flexible.

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Dave Price: so that we can all get on here at the same time. I… my family didn’t get back until Friday. My… my 16-year-old son put this epic road trip together that I’ve never been part of in my life, but we went on this, literally a two-week road trip.

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Dave Price: where we went through, and I’m gonna write about this in different pieces the next couple of months, because they’ve reminded me of some things, but we took this trip through Teddy Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota, and then we went to Glacier in Montana, we went to Banff.

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Dave Price: West of Calgary, and then we continued on and went through Calgary and a bunch of all these random stops, which was so super fun, and then hit Winnipeg and came back home.

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Dave Price: My car is a mess, and it will take countless weeks to clean this thing, but I am so super thankful to… you too, of course, Shane, for joining us, but to Kathie and Laura, there’s no way to say this enough on this podcast. Your flexibility is so super helpful as we try to get together week after week, and we are recording this

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Dave Price: at lunchtime on a Saturday, which we usually try to do this show on a Friday, so…

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Kathie Obradovich: And thanks to Spencer, too, by the way.

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Dave Price: Very, very much so. Spencer Dirks, who produces this sucker, all the post-production and stuff that has to get done, so this means that Spencer has to crank this thing out on Saturday night so that we can drop this on Sunday morning. So, I know this is sort of how the sausage is made, but it’s very, very, very, very, very much appreciate all of you being willing to jump around. And in this case, it was totally due

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Dave Price: Accommodate my family’s schedule, so… Very, very thankful.

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Dave Price: Thankful to all of you who’ve become new subscribers. Realized we took a week off last week as we get ready for the final push, the final countdown.

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Dave Price: Which was also on our family playlist on our road trip, by the way. My son put that on his Apple playlist. But thank you to all of you who’ve become new subscribers, especially thank you to those who’ve become new paid subscribers, who help to pay the production costs of this week after week. We very much appreciate that, and if you are willing to become a new paid subscriber, you can help us keep pushing through this November election.

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Dave Price: Thanks for joining us this week, and have a great weekend, have a great week, we will talk to you next weekend.

Kathie’s team at Iowa Capital Dispatch broke a story on a 119-page study the Reynolds administration commissioned on letting community colleges offer four-year degrees, then sat on for months. The findings: Iowa doesn’t really have “education deserts,” and the brain drain problem is more about low wages than higher ed. Community colleges are already pushing back on the report’s methodology, and expect this fight back at the legislature next year. Read Brooklyn Draisey’s reporting here.

We also got an update on the libertarian ballot cases. Marco Battalia (running under a name that isn’t legally his) and Rick Stewart both had name-based challenges heard in court this week, with rulings expected soon. The tougher case, over Jules Cutler’s affidavit for lieutenant governor, is headed to the Iowa Supreme Court either way.

Last up, a Dave Muhlbauer campaign stop for the Rob Sand campaign at Ember Recovery turned into a real, unscripted moment when YSS president Andrew Allen raised concerns about legalizing marijuana and its effect on kids. Good discussion, and a reminder that this issue deserves more nuance than it usually gets.

We’re off next week, back in two weeks as the fall campaign heats up.

Want to sharpen your writing and get the inside scoop on Iowa politics at the same time? Join us September 27-30 at the Okoboji Writers' & Songwriters' Retreat on beautiful West Lake Okoboji, featuring Iowa Down Ballot analysts Laura Belin and Kathie Obradovich. They'll walk you through finding public information, getting your opinion pieces published, and plenty more. Spots are limited, so scan the QR code at the beginning and end of the video or head to okobojiwritersretreat.com to sign up. If you’d like to make a donation to help the Iowa Writer’s Collaborative which supports this show please click the button below. Thanks!

Auto-generated transcript below:

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Dave Price: Hi everybody, welcome back to the Iowa Down Ballot podcast. I’m Dave Price, joined by Laura Belin and Kathie Obradovich, as we get toward the end of July, and my son’s 16th birthday, so kind of a fun… a fun day in my household. How are you, ladies?

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Kathie Obradovich: Doing great, how are you?

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Dave Price: Kathie, I’m gonna call you out, but just to show how I do think women are genetically superior at this, which is probably sexist toward men, but it is what it is. Right before we open this podcast.

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Dave Price: Kathie, as she’s getting ready to do this show, is texting as part of her editor duties at the Iowa Capital Dispatch. So, you know, it just shows how she can break that brain up into multi… little multi-chunks.

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Kathie Obradovich: I would never get anything done otherwise.

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Laura Belin: Women… women are good at multitasking, Dan.

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Dave Price: Honestly, I…

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Dave Price: I am… I learn that every year, year after year. Anyway. Alright, we have a bunch to talk about. Kathie, can you lead off today? Because on… late on Thursday night, Iowa Capital Dispatch had a story that posted about something that you all have been chasing down, really, for a number of months. And to catch us up on this, this was something that came up

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Dave Price: during the past legislative session, where there was talk about community colleges offering four-year degrees, to lay this out generically. And it faced some pushback from the regents, obviously, it faced some pushback, especially from some of the private colleges and universities.

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Dave Price: But your staff found out that there had been this study commissioned to look at this concept. Can you walk us through the journey to actually get ahold of this study?

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, so it’s interesting. It’s probably been more accurate to say it’s been weeks, as… Okay.

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Dave Price: It’s better to say months.

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Kathie Obradovich: But, it’s been 8 months, anyway. So, yeah, we covered during the legislative session, the push from community colleges to establish baccalaureate degrees at community colleges, which is, you know, really.

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Kathie Obradovich: something that has never been done in Iowa. Community colleges, have four-year or two-year associate certificates, and they also have programs where their students can transfer to a private college or one of the region’s universities to get a four-year degree. And that was a hotly contested issue at the legislature, the private colleges especially

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Kathie Obradovich: were up in arms over that, saying it would really help them. And really, one of the, the arguments behind it, on the community college side was that there are, higher education deserts in Iowa, that the community colleges could help fill, because

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Kathie Obradovich: You know, there are places where

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Kathie Obradovich: Especially adult students who may be, trying to go back to school to upgrade their skills and get a better job, that they, you know, might not be able to access those, courses, you know, either they’re too far away, or they are too expensive. So, okay, that was the… that was the big driving argument. The bill didn’t pass. And at some point during the process.

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Kathie Obradovich: the Reynolds administration commissioned a study from a consultant. Never told anyone this study was going on, but some of the stakeholders participated in the study, so they knew about it.

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Kathie Obradovich: And then the study, was received by Department of Education, in June.

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Kathie Obradovich: At some point, the study actually was dated in March, which is while the legislative session was going on. The Department of Education says they received it in June, but it was never released. And so…

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Kathie Obradovich: We put in a Freedom of Information Act request, and after being handed around, you know, various departments, we finally got a copy of it yesterday morning. And it was really interesting, because the study basically said, you know, that there really isn’t education deserts in Iowa. That, they, you know, people can

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Kathie Obradovich: access higher education, either through, you know, within an hour’s drive or online, and that there’s plenty of access, etc. And, also, and this is maybe even the more interesting part, they said that

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Kathie Obradovich: Iowa’s workforce woes, you know, the concerns about the brain drain are really due to the business climate, and not how higher education is performing in the state, which I thought was pretty interesting. So, you know, we can use our imaginations about why the governor’s office wasn’t in a big hurry to release this study.

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Kathie Obradovich: But, you know, the community colleges are still pushing back. They’re saying that the

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Kathie Obradovich: Their definition of an education desert was flawed, or at least different from what the community colleges are using.

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Kathie Obradovich: community colleges say a 30-minute drive is, is really more practical for people. And, you know, I think they have a point there. But also arguing that, you know, online, doesn’t serve the bill. So they’re pushing back, essentially, especially at the education desert part of that. And, you know, I think that there were some recommendations that the private colleges don’t like as well, including

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Kathie Obradovich: putting, more, you know, kind of putting more conditions on the Iowa Tuition grant, which is taxpayer money that private colleges get.

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Kathie Obradovich: For student scholarships. So, anyway, this is a… just an interesting point, with actual research that’s gone into this issue. I would expect it to come back again next year, and we’ll see how this study plays into the discussion.

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Dave Price: Was there any context on when they talked… Yeah, for sure. Sorry, Laura.

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Laura Belin: Yo, I didn’t even know about this report, so very nice work in finding out.

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Kathie Obradovich: I’m Brooklyn, Drazy’s part.

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Dave Price: Multitasking, here we go. Exhibit A. Hey, did they have… was there any context when you mentioned that the challenge is the business climate? Was there any contact with that?

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, and we did post the report, so, you know, you might want to dig into the details there, but, you know, they’re essentially talking about, you know, the fact that, Iowa has lower wages, than surrounding states, people leaving for, for lower wages, or for higher wages elsewhere, etc.

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Kathie Obradovich: And, you know, that they’re saying that there’s enough graduates to fill the jobs, it’s just that they’re getting… they’re getting out of Dodge when they… when they.

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Dave Price: Better opportunities elsewhere.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, yeah.

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Laura Belin: I’m sure the bill will come back next year, but the…

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Laura Belin: chair of the Iowa Senate Education Committee, Lynn Evans, he did survive his primary challenge, which had nothing to do with this bill, but I remember when he said that he wasn’t… he just didn’t think this was ready to move forward. And so unless there’s new leadership with the Iowa Senate Education Committee, I’m not sure that this is gonna have any more success next year than this year, because

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Laura Belin: Lynn Evans’ district includes Buena Vista University, pretty important private college for the whole

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Laura Belin: Storm Lake area, and I think the legislators who have private colleges anchoring towns in their district are not going to want to kneecap those colleges by allowing community colleges to offer four-year degrees.

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Dave Price: A nice, a nice scoop, for sure. 119 pages, that report is, so, you know, get yourself a good, strong cup of coffee, and sit down with that sucker this weekend, but I’m sure that thing is packed full of little nuggets that’ll…

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Dave Price: Probably be helpful, actually, as we think about this race for governor and these legislative races as well.

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Kathie Obradovich: There’s way more in there than we had time to report yesterday.

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Dave Price: For sure. All right, Laura, this will be part 6 in your soon-to-be-released Netflix documentary on Iowa libertarians. Their court struggle.

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Dave Price: Man, it… it’s just one more chapter to this, but you… you were in court once again this week, for the latest development in this series, and, you know, I’m trying to be funny, but how many… how many parts to this has there been?

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Laura Belin: So, there are two… well, technically, there are three cases

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Laura Belin: Two of them are sort of consolidated. There’s the case involving the libertarian ticket for governor and lieutenant governor, Nicholas Gluba and Jules Cutler, that was basically an all-day evidentiary hearing and oral arguments on Tuesday. And then on Wednesday morning.

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Laura Belin: a different judge heard the two cases related to Marco Battalia trying to get back on the ballot in the 3rd District, and Republicans trying to get Rick Stewart off the ballot in the 2nd District. And those were…

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Laura Belin: they weren’t exactly consolidated into one case, but they were consolidated in the sense that the same judge is hearing both of them, and it was back-to-back, because both of those appeals have to do with the candidates’ names. So, I guess I’ll start with that one, because it’s simpler to understand.

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Laura Belin: Marco Battalia, turns out, is not his legal name. Mark Anderson is his legal name, and even though he’s run for office a number of times before as Marco Battalia, he was challenged this year because he signed his candidate affidavit as Mark Anderson, his legal name, but all of his petitions said Marco Battalia. And the state panel that considers these kinds of challenges split, voted 2 to 1 with the Republican

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Laura Belin: Secretary of State Paul Pate and Attorney General Brenna Bird saying that Marco Battalia should not be on the ballot because the law does not allow candidates to run under a fictitious name. Whereas Rob Sand, the Democrat, dissented from that decision. He said that the law does not specify that you have to use your legal name or your real name, it just says the candidate’s name in the form the candidate wants it to appear on the ballot.

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Laura Belin: And he also, pointed out, there’s this legal concept called estoppel, which means that if you’ve done something before, that it would be unfair to try to stop you now. So, since Marco Battalia had already been on the ballot a number of times, that it would be unfair. So, I felt in the court, to me, it seemed that the judge was fairly skeptical of Marco Battalia’s

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Laura Belin: arguments there that the judge seemed to think that candidate’s name, it has to have some relationship to the candidate’s real name, even though the statute doesn’t say real name or legal name. So, we’ll see how that goes, but I kind of felt that the judge… the way the judge’s questioning went, it seemed fairly sympathetic to the idea that the law might allow you to run as a shortened version of your name, but not just a complete

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Laura Belin: different name, like Battalia versus Anderson. And then the second case that was consolidated with that was about Rick Stewart, the libertarian running in the second congressional district. The argument that the Republican objector made was that his petitions all said Richard Stewart, but he signed his affidavit and wanted to appear on the ballot as Rick Stewart. And Alan Ostergren, the attorney for the Republican objector, said.

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Laura Belin: You know, he could… certainly, he could run as Rick Stewart, but in that case, he needed to put Rick Stewart on his petitions, not Richard.

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Laura Belin: So the state panel unanimously rejected that argument, kept him on the ballot, and I think it’s very likely that the judge is going to rule to keep Rick Stewart on the ballot, because Rick and Richard are just two versions of the same name.

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Laura Belin: The case for governor… boy, I don’t… there are so many different legal and factual disputes, and I don’t know which way the judge is going to go with that one. The main issue is that the libertarian candidate for Lieutenant Governor Jules Cutler did not submit the required affidavit of candidacy. So there’s a factual dispute over whether she tried to present the document, and the Secretary of State’s worker rejected it, or said it wasn’t needed.

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Laura Belin: There are also all kinds of legal arguments over whether the state objection panel’s consideration of this was fair, and I feel that the judge could just make it very simple and say she was required to submit this document by June 2nd, she didn’t, end of story.

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Laura Belin: But they could… I mean, the judge did seem sympathetic to a few of the libertarian points about the state panels.

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Laura Belin: hearing being unfair, so it’s possible that the state panel’s decision could be overturned, but again, that one is also going up to the Iowa Supreme Court either way.

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Dave Price: So it’s… this is gonna be a while.

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Laura Belin: Well, the judge

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Laura Belin: the case about the Battalia Stewart, Judge Patrick Smith, he said he’s gonna try to get a ruling out next week. The libertarian cases for governor, that’s more complicated, and the parties are actually supposed… the deadline for them to submit their briefs is today, so Judge Joseph Seidlin didn’t say exactly when he’s going to rule, but there are a lot of balls in the air on that one, and I don’t know if he’ll rule next week or the week after that, but it all has

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Laura Belin: to happen quickly, because it’s going to be appealed to the Iowa Supreme Court, and then the Iowa Supreme Court needs to have some kind of briefing and arguments. I’m sure that’ll be on a very accelerated timetable, but the ballots need to be finalized by, depending on who you talk to, either the end of August or early September, so this is all gonna come together quickly, and I’m sure that the judges are gonna be… In the past, we’ve had these cases where

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Laura Belin: you could tell the judges were working weekends and really trying hard to turn these opinions around as fast as possible. And I think the Battalia Stewart cases are just simpler, so I expect that ruling to drop before the one related to Nicholas Gluba and Jules Cutler.

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Kathie Obradovich: just to remind people what the stakes are here, I mean, we’re talking about close races, potentially for governor, for these congressional seats, and Republicans, I think, are right to be concerned that a libertarian candidate can draw, votes away from Republican candidates. I mean, that’s why we’re all paying so much attention to this.

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Kathie Obradovich: And why, you know, the…

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Kathie Obradovich: Especially the Republicans are really pushing this case, not just accepting the State Objection Panel’s decision, even on Rick Stewart.

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Laura Belin: And I agree that, on balance, probably the Libertarian candidate on the ballot draws more from Republicans, but the libertarians, for what it’s worth, they dispute that. They say some… I mean, Marco Battalia, for instance, he has an anti-war message, a pro-legalization of drugs message, so they argue that there are voters on the left who also find their message appealing.

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Dave Price: Alright, there is one other thing, one other event, I went to this week. Kathie had a reporter from the Iowa Capital Dispatch there as well, and it was a Rob Sand… I found this interesting, and frankly, even in the news release that went out about it before… beforehand from the SAN campaign.

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Dave Price: Because the names on the list, so you had Dave Mulbauer, the Lieuten governor candidate, and you had Brian Loci, who’s a state rep from Bondurant, a Republican who had just lost his

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Dave Price: Republican primary, so he’ll be losing the… leaving the legislature. And you had Andrew Allen, who is the president and CEO of YSS, this… the Youth Recovery

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Dave Price: Center Enterprise, and so they went to Ember Recovery in Cambridge. And so this was set up to showcase what they do at this center, which is pretty remarkable, honestly, when you go there. It’s almost kind of overwhelming to…

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Dave Price: look at what they have, and we are all familiar with a friend who… multiple friends, really, who have… who have unfortunately found out how difficult it is to get service. And in this case, this is pri… Amber is primarily focused on young people 18 to 24 for substance…

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Dave Price: abuse, recovery, along with mental health crises. And…

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Dave Price: The setup for this is that Dave Mulbauer decided to go public with the fact that his son, one of his children, had a mental health crisis last year, and because of

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Dave Price: contacts that Dave had, he knew about Ember, and that connected him with this facility, and he credits this with helping his son.

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Dave Price: And going through this program. Brian Loci’s case was different, and one of their boys from a very young age had a substance abuse issue and dealt with it.

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Dave Price: for a number of years. At the time, this Cambridge facility was not there, and so Brian and his wife found treatment for their son in several other places, including Minnesota, and then there was a place in, southern Texas where they went to, too. So the setup was pretty remarkable. I was, you know, sometimes… sometimes I’m sitting there and, you know, you kind of…

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Dave Price: You can kind of forget about the politics of stuff.

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Dave Price: And when I was looking at this table, you have, Brian Loci, whose son successfully went through

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Dave Price: recovery for substance abuse, and Brian and Mary, for those who don’t know, won the Powerball a number of years ago, so they’ve also, in honor of their son’s success, they donated a lot of money, frankly, to Ember as well, and so there’s a gym there.

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Kathie Obradovich: this.

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Dave Price: Where the young people, can play ball and stuff. So they’re very much connected to this. But, one thing that sometimes is just… I just feel like sometimes these… politics is so polarized, right? So we’re looking at this table where we have

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Dave Price: Here’s the guy running for Lieuten governor as a Democrat. Here’s a Republican state rep.

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Dave Price: Who’s…

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Dave Price: maybe leaving politics now, but nonetheless. And then you have Andrew Allen, who’s the head of this, who is now 31 years sober. As a kid, he went through a bunch of stuff.

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Dave Price: Overcame that, and now he leads this thing that’s helped, like, 5,000 young people, something like that.

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Dave Price: Then they also had this young man who was an addict as a younger guy. He’s still young, but when he was, I think, a teenager, he was homeless and an addict and all that, and now he’s one of the counselors there, so he has a really cool story. And then there was this really sad case where there’s a mom who was part of this whose son struggled with a bunch of stuff and ended up

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Dave Price: Dying in a car wreck. She became an addict.

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Dave Price: she received treatment, and now she’s a dedicated advocate. So just, you know, sometimes you’re like, gosh dang, this is just, like, a powerful event, like, forget RD, all that kind of stuff.

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Dave Price: So it was just a remarkable kind of event. But, Kathie, you also, you had a staffer there, Caden, who wrote about this, but sort of the news of the day, if you will, despite the power of all this, and Mulbauer talked about… I had asked him about, you know, his decision to go public with…

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Dave Price: Because that’s hard to talk about this stuff, right? I mean, their son really had a hard time. And, you know, he kind of got choked up talking about it, and he’s like, you know, hopefully people can… this brings awareness, that kind of stuff.

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Dave Price: One of the things that came up organically during this discussion was that Andrew Allen brought up Rob Sands’ position on legalizing marijuana, recreational marijuana.

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Dave Price: And his concern, and he can cite a bunch of stats, is that if kids try stuff, like, before the age of 14, they’ll… they might be…

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Dave Price: more likely to become addicts later. And so his concern is, if we legalize pot.

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Dave Price: does that sort of change the atmosphere and kids think, basically, it’s okay? Which, you know, it’s kind of one of those unscripted moments, right? And I’m… I’m wondering what the campaign thought about it, but, you know, frankly, it’s a legit question, right? We wrote about it for TV as well, and Caden did for you.

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Dave Price: And we talked about… Mobauer answered it in their roundtable discussion, and he answered it within the gaggle with reporters afterwards.

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Dave Price: And it’s saying that, you know, they want this regulated like alcohol is, they’re not talking about this for kids, they want programs out there and awareness out there, to make sure that, kids know not to try this stuff, drugs and alcohol and all that stuff. But, it really became… I mean, it was a good, rich discussion.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, and you know, I think that this is an issue that needs more discussion in Iowa. I mean, it’s… it gets treated as a, you know, just sort of a black and white.

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Kathie Obradovich: You know, whether you’re for it or against it, etc. And there’s so many facets to it, and, you know, there’s the argument that, you know, it’s potentially possible that marijuana is less harmful, you know, for your body over time than alcohol, but there’s really not enough study, etc. So, I mean, I do think that there’s a lot of robust discussion

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Kathie Obradovich: And so, you know, I think the campaign probably didn’t know that it was going to come up at this event. But, you know, I think that they don’t need to shy away from it. They need to embrace, you know, this discussion. But as a reporter, as a journalist, when you see something unscripted come up at one of these events.

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Kathie Obradovich: It’s like, oh, wow, there’s actual news here, you know?

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Dave Price: I thought, I thought so, for sure. Like, when they brought it up.

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Dave Price: But people have those questions.

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Dave Price: And so it… I mean, it was… it was worthwhile to talk about. Go ahead, Laura, sorry.

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Laura Belin: No, it’s a legitimate question, and I just… it made me think… I was not at this event yesterday, but it made me think about last year, late last year, when the Attorney General, Brenna Bird, signed on to a letter with a few other attorneys general around the country, expressing concern about the Trump administration’s policy to reschedule marijuana. And one of the arguments for rescheduling it is that then it would make it easier to do some of these

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Laura Belin: studies on the long-term impact, and how harmful is it, or is it less harmful than alcohol or some other drugs? So, and then I’ve also read things that the marijuana that people are smoking today is more potent than what people may have been smoking in the 70s and 80s. So, in any case.

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Laura Belin: It’s… it is a worthwhile discussion. I can… I have seen Rob San answer questions about it, and he has definitely talked about it in the context of, like, alcohol and things that adults should do. He’s never downplayed the problems of youth.

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Kathie Obradovich: news.

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Laura Belin: Use of any kind of drug.

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Dave Price: This was a good example this past week, Kathie, you talked about how nuanced and complex this all is, and I had a conversation with a TV colleague this week, and I feel like the longer I do this, the more it becomes apparent to me, but especially in television, you are so often driven by the clock.

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Dave Price: And there are some stations out there that are starting to do things a little differently as, you know, the research is showing how people… what people want, and I’m talking about just on the TV side, may be changing. For years, consultants really pushed this thing about boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, like in a television newscast. You need to have, like, 10 stories in the first section. We call it the A block.

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Dave Price: of the newscast.

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Dave Price: And it’s… But, you know, if you’re, like, sitting in your cubicle selling insurance all day, or what have you, like, you have your phone, right? So you have all of these headlines already. So you’re starting to see some places put a little thought into, is that really the modern-day way to deliver news? Like, do you really need… should TV be headline news? Should it be more substantive, whatever?

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Dave Price: And it’s still primarily, you’re driven by the clock, so most of the TV stories are somewhere, like, a minute and a half long, a minute 45, something like that. But this story, to me, brought up yet another example about…

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Dave Price: how we’re trying to treat things, both… I do the same thing with my column, with my…

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Dave Price: different, journalism projects that I’m part of, like, sometimes you just can’t… like, you can’t go after everything in one chunk, right? You talked about the, you know, the story you broke on Thursday night, like, it’s a 119-page report, for crying out loud, on community colleges. I guarantee you that you could sit there and come up with about a half-dozen follow-up stories if your staff has the time to do all of this stuff, you know what I mean? Like, and I feel like with the legalized marijuana.

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Dave Price: It ended up giving us a great entry point to do yet another angle of this conversation, which I think is valuable.

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Kathie Obradovich: Well, and I would also argue that the children’s behavioral health issue is also worthy of a deeper dive.

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Dave Price: Hmm.

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Kathie Obradovich: You know, we’ve been talking for years in Iowa now about the lack of services that there has… there was just an effort here in the last legislative session

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Kathie Obradovich: For, you know, some of these acute, diagnoses, and, you know, building up some of those programs and changing some of the insurance barriers, et cetera.

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Kathie Obradovich: this kind of treatment. So I, you know, they’re both, you know, worthy subjects of more discussion, and if it’s happening in the context of a gubernatorial race, all the better, because

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Kathie Obradovich: It raises the, you know, the level of attention.

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Dave Price: Alright, alright, just as a note to folks as we wrap up this week, we’re gonna take one week off, so we’re gonna take a break for the coming week.

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Dave Price: as we then get ready for the final push, I don’t know how many weeks that is, but… I mean, seriously, I can’t…

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Dave Price: I’ve had so many discussions with close friends about this, like, this campaign is like something else, right? Like, there are so many competitive races, and it’s like, this is no knock on anybody we’ve had in office, so I don’t want anybody to take it that way. I’m not ripping on…

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Dave Price: any Republicans, Democrats, whatever, but, like, having these open seats, I mean, we have, like, an open Senate race, an open gubernatorial race, we have…

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Dave Price: two, no offense to anybody, but we have two competitive congressional races, maybe it’ll end up being three, like…

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Dave Price: some legislative races to watch. There are some other statewide offices we need to pay attention to, like, this is, like, this is something else, right?

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Kathie Obradovich: It’s like Christmas. Well, it sort of is.

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Dave Price: And it’s like, there’s always this, you know, the fun, like, horse race side of it, but, like, as we just had this discussion today about, okay, we have one guy who’s talking about he wants to legalize weed.

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Dave Price: And so, here’s… here’s sort of an unscripted moment that came up at a campaign event. Like, this isn’t just some random thing that came up elsewhere. Like, this was actually at their campaign event.

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Dave Price: which…

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Dave Price: Amen that it did. Like, we have covered stuff in the past that’s so overly scripted, and stuff… these remarks have to be approved ahead of time.

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Dave Price: So, unless I’m really reading the room incorrectly, I don’t think this was that way, and Andrew Allen, the head of YSS, had also talked about they’ve invited Zach Lane, too, because I don’t want to make this sound like a Democratic thing.

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Dave Price: But I think Andrew… I mean, Andrew has 30-plus years’ experience at all of this. I think he brought up, and it was a legit thing to brought up, it was a great discussion. I hope we see more of that kind of stuff, where this… these events are not so…

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Dave Price: ridiculously scripted that real stuff can’t come up during these events, you know what I mean?

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Dave Price: And also the fact that Mulbauer didn’t avail with reporters afterwards. And we have already seen some campaigns that aren’t very accessible. And I hope the closeness of some of these races in particular will

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Dave Price: Give that kind of push, and

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Dave Price: And hopefully the public will demand this as well, that these people…

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Dave Price: are answering questions, and many of these questions before November. That’s my soapbox.

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Kathie Obradovich: I’m hoping these candidates decide to show up at the State Fair, because, that… that is the most, you know, to me, an opportunity for some of these organic, moments.

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Dave Price: moments.

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Kathie Obradovich: And, you know, hopefully for the candidates, they don’t involve stepping into anything organic.

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Laura Belin: She’s.

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Dave Price: Always the headline writer. That is one in the works right there. You’ve got that in your back pocket. Yeah, but can we not… let’s not go over the top, though, with the heckling, though. Like, a little passion’s okay, but let’s not be crazy, please. Like, these made-for-viral moments that the opposing campaign does, can we not have that kind of stuff?

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Kathie Obradovich: It’s true, although the heckling did give us Mitt Romney.

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Dave Price: Man, right?

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Kathie Obradovich: generations are people, too.

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Laura Belin: Yes.

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Kathie Obradovich: Or it’s just.

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Laura Belin: Thinking about that.

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Kathie Obradovich: One of the biggest stories of that campaign.

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Dave Price: That is true, that is true. Thank you, ladies, good to talk to you. Enjoy the week to focus on your other professional duties, and we will reassemble in two weeks.

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Laura Belin: Thanks, see you then.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah.

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Dave Price: Thank you to all of you who have become new subscribers. We very much appreciate you watching, listening, reading, however you consume this podcast week after week. Thanks to those of you who’ve become new paid subscribers to help us pay the bills. I know we talk about this week after week, but that’s really… we don’t have advertisers on this sucker, so it, we are really dependent on those of you who appreciate our conversation here week after week.

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Dave Price: We very much appreciate whatever you can do to help us defray the production costs so we can keep doing this week after week. So those of you who’ve been doing this, we very much appreciate you, and I hope you’ll think about this as we take a week off.

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Dave Price: next week to think about if you have a way to try to help us continue this in the future. Have a good week ahead, and we will talk to you in two weeks.

Firstly, Kathie is on the road and fighting off some wildfire smoke in Chicago, which set the tone for a conversation about just how bad conditions got in the Midwest last week.

Then it was on to the big events: Democrats’ Liberty and Justice dinner drew Pete Buttigieg and, by Laura’s read, a noticeably more energized crowd than in 2025. Rita Hart’s talk of two dozen-plus field offices and 65 hired field organizers (many former Rob Sand campaign staffers) suggests Democrats are finally taking a real statewide ground game seriously, something we debated the roots of going all the way back to Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy.

On the other side, the Family Leadership Summit brought Kim Reynolds, Zach Lahn, Ashley Hinson, and Speaker Mike Johnson to Des Moines. Johnson’s speech leaned hard into warnings about socialism and communism taking over Washington, a rhetorical strategy Laura, who’s actually lived in post-communist Czech Republic and studied in the Soviet Union, called out as more base-rallying than accurate.

We also got into Attorney General Brenna Bird’s new Medicaid Fraud Elimination Task Force, with Kathie raising concerns that “fraud prevention” efforts often turn into red tape that hurts people who legitimately qualify for services, and Laura noting the task force isn’t looking at the flip side: people being wrongly denied home-based care.

We closed with a fun bit of trivia from Laura on Steve King’s surprising 2010 role, plus one of Dave’s stranger childhood stories (you’ll have to listen for that one).

Want to sharpen your writing and get the inside scoop on Iowa politics at the same time? Join us September 27-30 at the Okoboji Writers' & Songwriters' Retreat on beautiful West Lake Okoboji, featuring Iowa Down Ballot analysts Laura Belin and Kathie Obradovich. They'll walk you through finding public information, getting your opinion pieces published, and plenty more. Spots are limited, so scan the QR code at the beginning and end of the video or head to okobojiwritersretreat.com to sign up. If you’d like to make a donation to help the Iowa Writer’s Collaborative which supports this show please click the button below. Thanks!

Auto-generated transcript below:

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Dave Price: Hi, everybody. Welcome back to the Iowa Down Ballot Podcast. I’m Dave Price, joined by Laura Belin and Kathie Obradovich.

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Dave Price: on a Saturday, back-to-back weeks, we are testing the flexibility of these to find journalists, because we’re trying to… we’ve had too much stuff happening on Friday, so…

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Dave Price: So we’ll be dropping this on Sunday, and for those of you who consume at different times, you’re like, what the heck are you talking about, dude? But, we really wanted to work some stuff in for Friday. So, let me start as we begin on this Saturday morning with, good morning, how are you both?

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Kathie Obradovich: Good. I’m going to apologize in advance. I’m a little froggy this morning, so I’m going to try not to cough in your ears, but a little bit, a little. I had a cold and then went and spent a couple days in the Chicago smoke or Canada smoke in Chicago, maybe so.

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Dave Price: Yeah, how bad, I mean, clearly we’ve seen national stories on that. How bad is that?

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Kathie Obradovich: It’s bad. It’s really bad. I mean, so we were in the Chicago suburbs, southwest suburbs and you know, clearly, literally a haze just over everything. And you know, it’s not too bad going in from an air conditioned car to an air conditioned building, et cetera. But, and I do too much of that and my eyes were starting to burn and yeah, it’s, it is not good. Some other

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Kathie Obradovich: friends of ours were going to go up to northern Minnesota and came back a day early, because it’s just, you know, literally in the red zone. One day that we were there, both Chicago and Detroit were claiming to have the worst air quality in the entire world.

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Dave Price: I heard a story on the radio.

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Dave Price: Yeah, Friday morning, I think it was. And, the report was that it’s so thick and bad that even if you don’t generally have any kind of respiratory issues, it’s still not a good idea to be outside.

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Dave Price: Yeah. Like, it’s seriously at that level.

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Kathie Obradovich: I wouldn’t want to spend a lot of time outside. My nephew was supposed to play a softball game on Thursday night, that got canceled, so there was a lot of outdoor activities being canceled, all around the Chicago metro, so…

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Dave Price: Speaking of activities, we’ve had a bunch of kind of high profile ones. The Democrats on Sunday had their Liberty and Justice dinner. The Republicans the Friday before, so a little bit more than a week ago, had the annual Lincoln dinner, and then the family leader had the annual Family Leadership Summit. We had all of those kind of jammed one after another, but we had a couple of

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Dave Price: IPs, Headlining it for the Democrats, you had Pete Buttigieg

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Dave Price: which his thing was Sunday, so we didn’t really get to talk about this, but

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Dave Price: I thought it was interesting that early on in his remarks before the group he made a little comment about the 2020 Democratic caucuses, and how they’re still waiting on some of the results from a few of the precincts, you know, and I think for the most part, I think people laughed. If Troy Price, the former chair of the party, was watching online, he’s probably like

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Dave Price: But, and then Buttigieg was asked about it in the gaggle afterwards with reporters and, you know, has he let bygones be bygones or whatever? And I forget, he kind of playfully handled the question. But Laura, I saw you in the, obviously we were both there at Prairie Meadows when they had this thing.

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Dave Price: what’d you think about…

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Dave Price: I’m always curious about, like, who’s in the audience, you know what I mean? So this is, like, a late afternoon event on a Sunday. It was an older crowd, I felt like. A decent amount of empty seats, and I don’t know if that matters or not matters. People probably bought tickets and then didn’t show.

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Laura Belin: They set it up for more people.

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Laura Belin: There were definitely more people attending than the last few years, but because they’d set up the room in rows instead of having tables with chairs around it.

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Dave Price: Mhmm.

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Laura Belin: It ended up looking like there were some empty seats, but…

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Laura Belin: I would describe the crowd as kind of the usual suspects. I mean, I saw a lot of people who are activists in certain counties, and they’ve been involved for a long time, or they’re involved in county Democratic leadership. But I was really struck by the upbeat mood in the crowd. I mean, in twenty twenty five, when I was around at Democratic events, I mean, Democrats were just struggling to pick themselves up off the floor, basically.

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Laura Belin: And I think that people feel very…

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Laura Belin: They feel like they have a strong chance to win some of these races. Rita Hart talked about the ground game that the party is building, that they already have more than two dozen field offices open. And I talked to some people from different counties who said, oh, yeah, they have there’s an office and people are out every weekend. They have volunteers out knocking on doors. I mean, we haven’t seen anything like that level of ground game since Barack Obama’s reelection campaign in twenty twelve.

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Laura Belin: On the Democratic side.

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Dave Price: And I think, are you the one who asked Rita about that in the gaggle?

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Laura Belin: after the.

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Dave Price: Yes. About the organizational side, and you know, you’re the, you’re one of the few nerdy types that really looks into that kind of deep level stuff, but it, and that doesn’t get a lot of reportage statewide, I don’t think, because it’s sort of inside baseball so much, but as you know.

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Dave Price: That could reflect a number of things, right? Enthusiasm.

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Dave Price: greater fundraising, and then maybe even just a broader view of instead of isolating to a couple of pockets that some Democrats have believed they should go to kind of maximize turnout where they know they have a bunch of people. This might reflect a little more emphasis to do, maybe not truly statewide, but more of a statewide focus than they’ve done recently. Is that fair?

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Laura Belin: Definitely, and the fundraising is crucial, and I think that the largest chunk of it is coming from Rob Sand’s campaign to support this field effort, because a number of the field organizers, Rita Hart said there are about 65 field organizers who have already been hired, and a number of them were working on Rob Sand’s campaign initially, and now they’re technically working for, I guess they call it Iowa Forward, so they’re employees of the Iowa Democratic Party right now, but

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Laura Belin: They have people out everywhere. I talked with Caitlin Dre, the Democratic state senator from Sioux City, and asked her about the field office that’s open there. And she’s focused on her own race and knocking her own doors. But it’s gotta be helpful for candidates in all of these down ballot races all over the state to have volunteers out there. They’re targeting, they’re IDing supporters. And at this point, they’re also doing a lot of volunteering.

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Laura Belin: recruitment for the people who can help later in September and October, when the broader public is tuning in.

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Dave Price: I talked to a Republican activist who heard that figure of 65 and was part of a meeting.

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Dave Price: and said they addressed that, and were concerned about the resources that SAND is bringing to the party, and this is only by one person’s account of this, so take that for what it is. It’s more, maybe, anecdotal than empirical, but…

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Dave Price: that he said it became part of the conversation about, hey, we may not be able to play dollar for dollar with what they’re putting together here, so we’re gonna have to get our people fired up and do the work. And Kathie, I didn’t mean to cut you off.

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Kathie Obradovich: Oh, no, that’s okay. I was just going to say, you know, candidates sometimes complain about coordinated campaigns because there’s some control issues and, you know, there can be, you know, struggles about that. But there’s no arguing about the resources that Rob Sand is bringing in and how that really extends what individual campaigns are able to do. And the Democrats have not had those resources over the past

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Kathie Obradovich: cycles. And, you know, I think that we’ll see, especially in terms of

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Kathie Obradovich: you know, getting volunteers out, doing those, knocking those doors, which is so crucial, for Democrats, that all of those things are probably, you know, if they can maintain that, without having big blowouts over egos, that that’s gonna make a big difference.

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Laura Belin: Well, and you know, I’m always, I have my low-key obsession with what I call the mid-sized cities, those micropolitan areas. And like, let’s take the first congressional district, which has the largest number of those cities between 10,000 and 30,000 people. There’s going to be, if they’re actually in most of these towns, I think there already is a coordinated campaign office. If Christina Bohannon had had

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Laura Belin: field offices in Indianola and Clinton and Burlington and Newton. I mean, you gotta believe that they would have found her an extra 800 votes that she needed in 2024. They just didn’t have anything, any organization to speak of.

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Dave Price: This, maybe this is for a deeper conversation for another show, but what.

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Dave Price: I guess I’ve been confused with the differing philosophies on this, and maybe this and I don’t. I don’t know the inner working. So maybe this just comes down to a thing about resources. But going like way way back to Howard Dean, when he was

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Dave Price: chair for Democrats, you know, he wanted this 50-state approach, and some people sort of mocked him from that, for that, you know, why waste resources in Republican red states, blah, blah, blah. And we still had that…

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Dave Price: there was that philosophy in this state as well, which I never quite understood.

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Dave Price: why you would concede so much of the state as you just keep seeing your numbers go down. And Sand, who… and I realize Republicans make fun of him for saying that he’s been campaigning for governor ever since he’d be… you know, he got elected, but…

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Dave Price: he has been all over the place, so he does the 99 county tour, I mean, he does the 100 tour, but, I mean, he’s in all these counties, he goes there, I think, every year, so he’s the Democrat going everywhere, and some of the Democrats just didn’t seem to fundamentally believe in that, so maybe he is… is it really…

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Dave Price: Is it too much to say that he gets the credit for really.

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Dave Price: kind of making this party more statewide than it was because of his both efforts and resources? Is that too simplified?

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Laura Belin: I think there were always Democrats in Iowa who wanted the party to be doing more in some of these smaller cities and rural areas, but they just didn’t have the resources. The party had few staff, and so they didn’t… in 2022,

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Laura Belin: I mean, there was barely… I don’t even know what they did. They maybe did one absentee ballot mailing. I mean, there was hardly anything of a turnout effort for Democrats in 2022, and it really made a difference in some races. This is something I like to

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Laura Belin: tell audiences. So, of course, the governor’s race was a blowout. But the attorney general, the Democratic turnout statewide, the level was at about 60% in 2022. And if you just had 63% Democratic turnout with no persuasion at all, just, you know, just more Democrats voting, Tom Miller gets reelected. And if you have 65% Democratic turnout.

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Laura Belin: Miller and Mike Fitzgerald both get reelected. Again, with no persuasion of any swing voters at all. And those are achievable levels. In 2018, the Democratic turnout was

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Laura Belin: just under sixty eight percent. So it’s not like that’s impossible to get for a midterm, but the party just wasn’t doing anything. And I think that Rob Sand’s campaign having the resources means that that people get what they want. Now I don’t know as to Kathie’s point, it could be that we see in September and October some differences in opinion of how much is the party doing the right thing. Mhmm. Are they focusing too much on mailed ballots versus

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Laura Belin: canvassing. I mean, both Rita Hart and Rob Sand made a big deal at that event about getting out there and having face-to-face conversations with voters and listening to what their concerns are, rather than just showing up at their door with a prepared script that you’re going to read to them.

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Kathie Obradovich: I’ll just jump in and say, you know.

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Kathie Obradovich: It’s really simplistic. But, you know, we know that, you know, Democrats are not likely to win the fourth district, but to win statewide. And Rob Sand being the only Democrat who is currently elected statewide, I think he understands this. You’ve got to you’ve got to have some Democratic votes in the fourth district in order to win statewide. And the more that you have.

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Kathie Obradovich: there, you know, and ultimately, you’re not necessarily persuading a lot of Republicans to vote for you, maybe a few, but, you know, getting the people who are likely to vote for you out of their houses and actually casting those ballots is critical.

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Kathie Obradovich: And I think, you know, when it, when it comes down to priorities that those, you know, bright red counties become, you know, the lower priorities and you’re focusing on getting people turned out in the cities and there’s just not enough to win statewide if that’s all you’re doing.

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Laura Belin: Mmh.

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Dave Price: If I may selfishly make a plug, I have, for my, TV role, I have a longer form piece with some of what Pete Buttigieg said at Liberty and Justice. We also talked to him in the…

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Dave Price: in the gaggle. So he did a couple of different events, and then there was also a he did a campaign event with Sarah Trone Garriott, the 3rd District Democratic candidate. I will link to all of that on my column this weekend, and I’m doing what Laura does sometimes. If you say it out loud, that assures that you must

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Dave Price: be complete with your work by your self-imposed deadline. So just saying it out publicly will force me to

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Dave Price: to get on it and make sure I have this done this weekend. To Kathie’s point about enthusiasm and all of that, I went Friday to the Family Leaders Family Leadership Summit. I wish I were better at estimating crowds, because I’d love to know how many showed up at Liberty and Justice, and I’d love to know how many Family Leader had in there. Sometimes it’s like hard.

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Dave Price: To tell, because of the way people are spaced out, and to your point, you know, Liberty and Justice wasn’t really, like, a meal, so you’re not sitting around tables, so you can jam a lot more people in there on a folding chair, whatever kind of chairs those were. So Family Leader had a bunch of people there.

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Dave Price: I know the ballroom very well, because my wife’s nonprofit organization has their big spring luncheon there, like, year after year after year, so I know ballroom A, or whatever the heck that is at the…

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Dave Price: Yeah.

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Dave Price: at what used to be called Betts Auditorium, whatever it is now, community choice.

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Dave Price: Anyway, so, I mean, a lot of people. They, for sure, had a lot of people, and most of… Chuck Grassley wasn’t there. Joni Ernst was on the schedule, but wasn’t there. I don’t know if she ended up having a scheduling conflict, or what happened there. Kim Reynolds had kind of an emotional moment.

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Dave Price: They… there was a moment where I just sort of, like, had a flashback when they were sort of talking about what Kim Reynolds has done in office, because Bob Vander Plaats, the head of the family leader, is the one saying it, and as we know, Bob Vander Plaats wanted to be Terry Branstad’s running mate back in the day, whatever the heck year that was, 10?

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Laura Belin: 2010.

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Dave Price: And I was saying, well, boy, that’s… that’s kind of interesting now. I wonder… I doubt she… that went through her mind, but I was thinking, boy, how times change. He wanted the job, and now he’s praising…

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Dave Price: after she ascended to be Governor all these years. But and there was so there was. She got a little emotional talking about stuff, and she’s interweaving faith with her time in office, and what she tried to do, and Vander Plaats was very complimentary of things she accomplished, and afterwards they did sort of a group prayer kind of blessing her for

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Dave Price: What’s ahead in that? Zach Lahn also gave…

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Dave Price: also spoke up there and kind of wove in Christianity and the importance in his life. And, you know, he’s very much… he does a lot of historical anecdotes. He did that when we saw him at the Lincoln dinner.

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Dave Price: I’m always curious when he… when he goes deep into that stuff, if it works in that kind of setting.

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Dave Price: You know, if that’s, like, connecting with people, or if I’m overthinking this, because it’s like, you know, you can get out there

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Dave Price: Or, I mean, he goes sort of deep and philosophical. In this case, he’s.

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Dave Price: weaving in both history and, the spiritual importance to him and mistakes he’s made and, you know, kind of growing and all kinds of stuff. But, I mean, it seemed… it seemed well received. But my…

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Kathie Obradovich: It helps. I think it helps audiences. You know, that kind of helps audiences to get to know him as a candidate. But I don’t have to tell you guys. Reporters hate that.

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Dave Price: I know.

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Kathie Obradovich: Why? Because a long story with, you know, weaving in a variety of themes do not translate into news stories. I’m sorry, but you know, and, and even to do a video clip of something like that, you know, you start telling a story about in the case of the the, the Lincoln dinner about James Garfield.

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Kathie Obradovich: You know, the the accidental candidate for president, you know, etc. And and to explain an anecdote like that in, you know, even in 30 seconds is impossible. So, you know, as reporter, you know, the audience may be getting into all of this and the reporters are going, geez, how much time are you going to spend on this story?

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Dave Price: Oh my gosh, I am so glad you brought this up because at Lincoln Dinner in particular, I had to flip around the story that night for our 10 o’clock news for our gray media station group across the state.

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Dave Price: And, you know, you go through a meandering story like that and just, I mean, it’s just a long event, right? Like you have a lot of speakers. And the Kim Reynolds thing, she was up there with her two of her daughters, then she was up there with her granddaughter. And like, if you’re in the audience, you know, it’s an evening of entertainment, of course, but when you’re on a tight deadline, selfishly as a reporter, you’re like, gosh, dang.

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Dave Price: there’s so much stuff, and you’re already struggling with, like, what’s the story, right? Like, what should I focus on here? Because there are so many ways to take this. Jeff Kaufman, the party chair, he both spoke to the group at that event, he did a gaggle with us.

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Dave Price: and Zach Lahn, same, speech, and did a gaggle with us. Like, you could go a hundred different ways.

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Dave Price: But like in the back of your mind, you’re like, “Okay, what can I do that’s a good story that I can crank out quickly enough that is a fair assessment, a fair report about what just happened?” And it was sort of the same way, family leaders event was the same way.

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Dave Price: You’re standing there and this thing goes all day. So do you focus on some of the outside, the national folks who came in and they primarily spoke at the family leader thing primarily in the morning.

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Dave Price: You had Governor Reynolds there. You know, this is like the last time she will address this group like this. As governor, you have Zach Lahn, to your point, trying to introduce himself.

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Dave Price: Ashley Hinson was there, talking about how she keeps a Bible in her office in Congress as, like, her guide, to remind her about, service and sacrifice and all of that.

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Dave Price: Then the United States Speaker of the House is there. So it’s like, how do you not cover him? So you’re. And then you’re like, oh, but we got a deadline here. We got to have a story on television at five o’clock. So what can we do that’s going to be, like, super fast? So you have, like, this internal fight about. So the only way I found to do this lately is we just do multiple bites of the apple here. We did some quick turn stuff for TV, and then the

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Dave Price: longer piece that I’m putting together. I already put it together with Buttigieg.

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Dave Price: And as we record this, I’m finishing up a longer piece with Johnson. Johnson’s speech reminded me…

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Dave Price: of some of what Donald Trump campaigned on in 2024, where it’s very…

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Dave Price: It’s like this foreboding warning about what would happen.

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Dave Price: to the future of the country, and this is about saving the country, and making sure the country survives, and you gotta keep Republicans in power. He was really leaning into communism, Marxism, democratic socialism… I mean, those are 3 far different things.

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Dave Price: but saying that this is what’s happening. He counted 20-something Democratic Socialist congressional candidates across the country. I don’t really know how to fact-check that.

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Dave Price: And saying that they’re essentially gonna take over DC, and they’re gonna destroy a commitment to faith, like, it was very… I mean, it was heavy. It was heavy, but it reminded me of some of Trump’s warnings in 2024.

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Kathie Obradovich: It’s a different boogeyman, but the same strategy, right? So, you know, the last couple of cycles have been all about the enemy without the, you know, immigrants and that we have to be, you know, scared out of our boots by these, you know, criminals, alleged criminals who are coming across the border and being terribly afraid of all the crime, etc.

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Kathie Obradovich: And now it’s, you know, the enemy within that we have to be scared of.

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Kathie Obradovich: of democratic socialism, and, you know, somehow that this is going to be going off the rails. And it’s not a new tactic.

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Kathie Obradovich: You know, we’ve got, both parties, like to conflate the fringes of either party, you know, with the mainstream. So we hear, you know, you know, somehow that democratic socialists are, that a mainstream Democrat is exactly the same and has all the same goals.

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Kathie Obradovich: And, you know, the, Democrats do this with the fringes of the Republican Party, and how, you know, extreme they are, and they want to take away the votes from women, and, you know, all that kind of stuff. So…

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Kathie Obradovich: So it’s not a new tactic. It is really interesting to me, though, that we’re now focused on communism as opposed to immigration in this cycle. We have to have a new enemy here to worry about.

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Dave Price: Laura, one of the three of us in this podcast has lived in a communist country. It would not be Kathie, as far as I know. I think I know Kathie.

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Kathie Obradovich: I have not.

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Dave Price: I don’t believe she’s had any secret former life, and I know I have not as well. So that would leave you. You have lived in a communist country. What do you think about when they start, when you start hearing the communist label?

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Laura Belin: Yeah. It and I was not at the event. I didn’t watch the speech. I did see the media coverage of the speech. I just it’s it’s a big eye roll for me. I studied Russian and Soviet history, and I visited the Soviet Union. I spent a summer in the Soviet Union doing a Russian language study program. And then I lived in the Czech Republic. That was in the post communist period, but I lived in the Czech Republic for several years and visited Russia several times.

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Laura Belin: while working there. So I feel like, not to pull rank on Mike Johnson, but I feel like I have a somewhat better understanding of what communism is and socialism is, and

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Laura Belin: You know, I don’t know why the democratic socialists call themselves that they’re not really.

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Laura Belin: Socialists in the sense of the government seizing the means of production, right, the government owning the means of production. In a communist country, there’s no private property, right? You don’t own your home, you don’t own much property. The agriculture is fully collectivized and so on, so nothing that anybody is talking about.

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Laura Belin: in any of these campaigns is really communism and socialism. Really, what the democratic socialists are mainly talking about is having a stronger social safety net. So if I were a communications consultant for them, I guess I would probably not recommend that they call themselves socialists, but it might be fair that there might be 20 democratic socialist candidates for Congress, but they’re not in a position to take over

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Laura Belin: The Congress and even if they did, I mean, they’d be talking about more support for caregivers, more child care, you know, the health care, well, I guess some of them may be talking about Medicare for all, depending on who’s

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Laura Belin: plan it is. That could mean, for some people, no private health insurance. But nobody’s talking about expropriating private property, okay? Nobody’s talking about banning religion like the way religion was suppressed in the Soviet Union. And even there, they didn’t completely ban religion. But nobody’s talking about suppressing Christianity the way it was suppressed in the communist world. So I think it’s just not realistic. I don’t know how much it will

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Laura Belin: work. To me, it sounds like a message very much aimed at getting the base Republican vote out. Okay, this is not a message targeted at swing voters.

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Dave Price: The boogeyman story, just to put a final point on this, Kathie, reminds me of a conversation I had at the Iowa State Fair I do not know how many years ago.

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Dave Price: but it was with David Young, and I feel like he was still in Congress at the time, and he told a fascinating story about the boogeyman mentality and how that works in politics, and I could be conflating a few things.

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Dave Price: I feel like whoever the house speaker was at that time had come to the fair. I could be old and confused right now.

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Dave Price: mixing up a bunch of stuff together, so I’d really have to sit down hard and remember, what the heck year was this? But I’m pretty sure he was in Congress, and I feel like there was a VIP who had come to the fair as well.

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Dave Price: forgive me if I’m mixing up a bunch of stuff. I know the boogeyman conversation happened, though, and it was fascinating the way Young had laid it out, and it’s… it, like, when you listen to it, while…

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Dave Price: Yes, it’s an exaggeration of all kinds of stuff, and…

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Dave Price: numerous politicians do this, and their strategists encourage them to do it. But it kind of makes sense, right? Like, rather than have all kinds of different nuances on party, on policy and everything. And even Speaker Johnson said something at the family leader thing Friday about. We’re not talking about marginal tax rates and arguing about that, you know. Now he’s

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Dave Price: taking it to the next level about, you know, this is the future of the country and stuff.

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Dave Price: But when you have that bad person, the boogeyman, it makes it so much more simplistic, and it pisses you off, and you’re all fired up, and it is this us versus them kind of thing, good versus evil, love versus hate. I mean, it plays on that emotions, and you’re not thinking.

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Dave Price: You know, in a cerebral way about, you know.

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Dave Price: policy and issues and all of that. You’re you’re ready to go. You’re you have your pitchfork, and you’re ready to burn the place down to protect your family and your country like you can see why it works.

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Kathie Obradovich: I mean, when you think about, you know.

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Kathie Obradovich: If these campaign, you know, rhetoric.

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Kathie Obradovich: actually translated into policy, okay? Because, I mean, you know, people sort of discounted Donald Trump when he was talking about, you know, well, we’re gonna, you know, get all the illegal immigrants out of this country. Nobody really believed that he was gonna actually try to get, you know.

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Kathie Obradovich: 5 or 6 million people who are undocumented out of the country. It looks like he’s trying pretty hard, actually, to do that now. I mean, so, you know, you look at, you know, the 19, you know, the Red Scare of the past and, you know, blackballing people in society and, you know, how do we root out communists among us in a society? And, you know, all you have to do is look

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Kathie Obradovich: at history and how that was done. And a lot of people’s lives were ruined, you know, because people would, you know, claim that they’re communists and whether they were or not. So it is a it is interesting to think about, you know, how you take this campaign rhetoric and actually how do you actually translate that into policy?

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Dave Price: Speaking of rooting out, I wonder if we can take our last few minutes here and talk about Attorney General Brenna Byrd kicked off the inaugural meeting of this Medicaid Fraud Elimination Task Force. Governor appointed her as the chair of this task force, and this has been a Republican.

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Dave Price: priority on the federal level under the Trump administration, for sure, about rooting out alleged fraud. Some have said this is rampant all over the place. We’ve not seen, as the case with a lot of this stuff, it’s sort of like migrant crime as well. You know, you find some

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Dave Price: incidents of it somewhere, and then blow it up and say that it’s everywhere. Our state has a low

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Dave Price: fraud rate, according to what was reported on the Federal level. As Attorney General Byrd said, though, that any fraud is too much fraud. So where is this going to go, do you think?

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Kathie Obradovich: The way I, where it usually goes, is instead of,

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Kathie Obradovich: finding and rooting out fraud that’s actually happening, the conversation turns to preventing fraud. And that then turns into a lot more stringent application requirements and paperwork and red tape for people who might qualify for these services and for providers.

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Kathie Obradovich: And so, yeah.

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Kathie Obradovich: that actually, ends up cutting down access to healthcare, because you have people who, you know, might qualify but can’t keep up with the paperwork, and you’ve got providers who, you know, the paperwork becomes so onerous that they just stop seeing Medicaid patients.

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Kathie Obradovich: So I hope that the focus really does stay on enforcement. And, you know, I would just throw out one suggestion for this group. Look at the Board of Medicine. We write stories all the time. And, you know, there are there are incidents of Medicaid and Medicare fraud that happen. And, you know, a lot of times it’s.

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Kathie Obradovich: You know, people who are

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Kathie Obradovich: Selling assistive devices that aren’t needed or all those kinds of things, and the Board of Medicine works so slowly, it takes months and months and months to investigate and eventually take licensure board action against some of these providers who, you know, are actually, you know, they might even have been criminally charged with fraud, and it takes a long time.

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Kathie Obradovich: to, impose any sort of discipline on them. So, you know, I hope they do take a look at

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Kathie Obradovich: Things that will actually make a difference with bad actors, as opposed to saying, okay, everybody, you know, to prevent fraud, we’re gonna have to impose a lot more paperwork and red tape on you.

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Laura Belin: I did not attend the first meeting of the task force, but I find it interesting that the whole orientation of the task force is

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Laura Belin: Let’s make sure that no one’s getting any money or services that they aren’t entitled to. Whereas there’s a huge issue, and there was a lot of good reporting on this earlier in the year. Tony Lays, who now reports for KFF, had a feature on this, and I I think the the Des Moines Register may have as well of these Medicaid, the managed care organizations, the insurance companies that are managing Medicaid, they’re massively cutting back on

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Laura Belin: the home-based services.

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Laura Belin: that people are entitled to. And that’s causing issues with some families feeling like they may need to institutionalize people who would rather be living at home. But that is not the focus of this task force at all, right? People not getting the services that they are entitled to is not something that they seem to be looking at at all. They’re only looking at are there any people who are improperly

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Laura Belin: getting paid. So, I mean, that’s a choice, that’s a policy choice that they made not to look at the other side of the equation.

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Dave Price: Let’s wrap it up there for the week.

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Laura Belin: Can I give one bit of trivia, Dave? I you you walked down memory Lahn, and it reminded me. This is one of my favorite bits of trivia that I have a feeling our listeners would enjoy. You mentioned that in twenty ten, Terry Branstad won the primary. Bob Vander Plaats was a, you know, close second in the primary. And there was a real.

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Dave Price: None.

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Laura Belin: there was a real effort at the Republican State Convention to nominate Vanderpod’s

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Laura Belin: as Lieutenant Governor. He got more than 500 delegate votes, if I recall, and instead of just having it be a rubber stamp for Kim Reynolds. Do you happen to know who gave the nominating speech for Kim Reynolds to be Terry Branstad’s running mate at the GOP state convention in 2010?

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Dave Price: I don’t remember that.

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Laura Belin: Kathie?

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Kathie Obradovich: I don’t remember either.

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Laura Belin: Congressman Steve King.

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Kathie Obradovich: Oh, interesting.

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Dave Price: Oh, yeah.

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Laura Belin: Yeah. So he he was out there vouching for Kim Reynolds to be the running mate anyway.

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Kathie Obradovich: Hmm, okay.

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Laura Belin: They had a falling out much later.

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Dave Price: Fascinating, I did not.

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Kathie Obradovich: That is interesting.

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Dave Price: No.

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Laura Belin: Yep. I thought our listeners would enjoy.

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Dave Price: I don’t have as good a one for that, but just a random fact. When I’m hearing Kathie talk about fraud, a kid I grew up with who was a twin, and his mom was our 4H local leader. We used to go to the house for

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Dave Price: for meetings. Now, also a fun fact with that family, they were busted, showing produce at our county fair.

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Dave Price: and clearly bought the produce at the store. How were they busted? They literally left the price tags

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Dave Price: on the produce that they submitted, which is almost impossible to believe that it happened. Clearly, she ended up no longer being our 4-H later, but one of her boys, who later became a doctor.

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Dave Price: was busted for insurance fraud and went to prison. I followed a little bit of that on… I saw some nugget on Facebook, and I deep… kind of did a deep dive into that one day, and I thought.

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Dave Price: all right, I guess the old apple did not fall far from the tree on this one. And it’s, like, so weird. I went… I went… grew up with these kids. Like, I didn’t play with them a ton, because we didn’t live near each other. They lived near our elementary school, but… you know, like…

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Laura Belin: Wow. It’s still hard to process that. Like on your county fair entry though.

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Dave Price: Like who does that? Like you bought it at the store? Like who seriously does that?

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Dave Price: And it’s not like the prizes we got were so crazy, and they weren’t like a destitute family trying to… I mean, they weren’t rich by any means, but the whole… I never could process… I remember when we found out, and I was a little kid, and you’re like, what the heck? But I remember that it had the…

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Dave Price: They forgot to take the little price sticker off there, so…

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Kathie Obradovich: Hilarious. I love it.

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Laura Belin: Try it out.

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Dave Price: Who knows?

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Laura Belin: I don’.

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Dave Price: what to make of that. That should be a Netflix documentary one time.

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Dave Price: Anyway, okay, hey, thanks for… thanks for adjusting on, the recording schedule. Kathie, I hope you feel better. Tell your husband to quit spreading his germs. What the heck? That’s not a way to show love.

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Dave Price: And I hope you both have a good weekend and a great week, and we will talk to you next week. Thank you to all of you for your support here of the Iowa Down Ballot podcast. I won’t get into these details, but I really appreciate the private conversations at the Family Leader, from a couple folks in the crowd there who are regulars of the podcast.

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Dave Price: And we very much appreciate your support. Thanks to those of you who have helped support this financially. We very much appreciate you helping to defray some of the production costs to produce this week after week. Those who have been with us from the beginning, those who have come on as new paid subscribers recently, if you’re thinking about doing that, we hope that you will consider joining them as well to keep us going week after week.

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Dave Price: week. Thanks for being with us this week. Have a great week ahead. We’ll talk to you next week.

This week’s episode got recorded Saturday morning instead of our usual Friday because there was just too much news going on Friday to keep up with, and a lot of it needed to be in the show. Laura broke down two big court stories: the Trump/Selzer poll lawsuit hearing (ruling expected in a few weeks, but headed to the Iowa Supreme Court either way) and the tangled Libertarian ballot fights over Marco Battaglia and Rick Stewart’s names.

We also recapped the Republican Party’s Lincoln Dinner, where Kim Reynolds let loose dancing and reminiscing about a Journey concert, Zach Lahn announced Trump’s endorsement, and Ashley Hinson took aim at Josh Turek over missed legislative votes.

Kathie closed things out with a plug for Iowa Capital Dispatch’s benefit concert Sunday (today) in Ankeny, supporting local news. More information on that can be found at the top of the page at iowacapitaldispatch.com.

Speaking of, big shoutout to those of you who subscribe, share, and discuss this show with friends and family. We continue to grow in terms of downloads, subscribers (both paid and free), and donations. None of that is possible without you. Thank you!

Auto-generated transcript below:

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Dave Price: Hi everybody, and welcome back to the Iowa Down Ballot Podcast. I’m Dave Price, joined by Laura Belin and Kathie Obradovich.

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Dave Price: If we can peel back the curtains a little bit. If you’re a regular here, you know we usually, the three of us, assemble on a Friday, yak it up about what’s going on, kind of dig into some stuff.

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Dave Price: And then the new podcast episode drops on a Saturday morning, if you really care how the sausage is made. There were 500 million things that happened on Friday, and so our typical flurry of emails back and forth.

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Dave Price: Probably should have had, like, the emoji with hands up in the air, like, how in the heck are we gonna do this?

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Dave Price: And there was… there was no way to do it, so we are recording on a Saturday morning. It’s gonna have a whole different vibe here, right?

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Kathie Obradovich: For sure.

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Dave Price: I don’t know how that was gonna matter. But we sort of need… there were so many things yesterday, my partner at the Bureau for TV, when I laid out our coverage plans and stuff, I told her, I’m like, look, there are, like, 5 things on Friday, we literally can’t do all these things, so we’re gonna have to prioritize a few of them, and…

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Dave Price: to play catch-up on the other ones. Laura, coincidentally, you happened to go to…

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Dave Price: two of the things that we were not able to do. And of course, this gets into your sweet spot because it involves the courts. But how about do your morning first, Friday morning, the Ann Selzer.

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Dave Price: Lawsuit that’s been… this is… When did this even get filed? When was it? Last year or.

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Laura Belin: This was, well, the original lawsuit was filed in December of 2024, but this was related to the lawsuit that was filed, the kind of replacement lawsuit filed on June 30th, 2025, which is important because it was one day before.

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Dave Price: the devil.

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Laura Belin: Iowa’s anti-SLAPP law went into effect, which would have made it easier to get a suit like this dismissed. But we’re more than a year into proceedings on this, and this was a big hearing over whether the case should be allowed to move forward or whether it should be dismissed. So Donald Trump, joined by Marionette Miller Meeks and the former state senator Brad Zahn, are suing the Des Moines Register Gannett Corporation

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Laura Belin: and the former longtime pollster for the Register, Ann Selzer. And the defendants have two different lawyers, Ann Selzer is being represented pro bono.

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Laura Belin: by Robert Corn Revere of the nonprofit group Fire, which is a free speech oriented nonprofit. And then the Gannett Corporation and Des Moines Register have their own local council. And both had filed motions to dismiss the lawsuit on very, on similar grounds, but they were arguing differently. So it was a really long hearing. It went for more than two hours.

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Laura Belin: where the judge first heard from both sets of defendants on all their arguments to dismiss the lawsuit, then there was a short break, then Alan Ostergren, the attorney for Trump and the other plaintiffs.

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Laura Belin: made his best case for why the court should allow this suit to go forward, and then both of the defendants got time for rebuttal. So the judge said there are so many legal issues here. It’s gonna take him a few weeks to rule, but he’s gonna be deciding whether to dismiss the case right now for lack of any valid legal claims or whether to allow the it to go forward, which would mean that the plaintiffs can pursue discovery. They

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Laura Belin: They could try to seek to obtain internal emails from the register, from Gannett, from Ann Selzer. But either way this decision goes, it’s going to be appealed to the Iowa Supreme Court. So we have a long way to go. But just all that is to say that this hearing was not about the substance of the claims, like was the poll fraudulent or not? This was just about how is there even enough of a legal argument here?

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Laura Belin: that the case should be allowed to go forward under Iowa’s consumer fraud statute.

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Kathie Obradovich: And just to circle back, because I don’t think you actually said it, that this is over a pre-election poll that was run right before the general election in 2024. The poll showed that Kamala Harris was actually leading by like 3 percentage points, something like that. And then Trump ended up winning Iowa by 13 points. And so his argument is that the

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Kathie Obradovich: and it’s… it’s… they even said in court that this was a novel effort under this law. They… they’re actually suing under the Consumer Fraud Act and claiming that the poll was fraudulent, and that,

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Kathie Obradovich: you know, they even sort of implied that there was actually no poll, that the, that the, that the, the results were just made up. And,

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Kathie Obradovich: And so it’s super interesting. One, he’s not trying this under a defamation. This is the typical type of lawsuit a politician might file. The Consumer Fraud Act has different rules, et cetera. And one of the things that was really interesting to me was that they admitted in court, Ostergren admitted in court, they have no evidence that this was fraud.

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Kathie Obradovich: And part of their argument was, this case should not be thrown out because we have no evidence. We need to… you need to continue it so we can go through discovery and find the evidence that this was fraudulent. And so…

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Kathie Obradovich: So I thought that was really, really interesting. And then, of course, the lawyer for Ann Selzer, made, made, I think, you know, a pretty stark case that.

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Kathie Obradovich: Even if everything that the Trump side says is true, like all of their facts, such as they are, are actually true, that this case still can’t go forward under the law. That a newspaper poll, one, is not a consumer product that, you know, if the product is defective, there’s no, you know, you haven’t relied on it or

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Kathie Obradovich: acted on it in any way. Trump said he didn’t believe it from the very first, so he didn’t rely on it or act on it in any way. And hello, violation of the First Amendment all over the place. And the judge really did seem to be thinking about that. He made several comments about, you know, isn’t this a chilling effect on the First Amendment? Those types of comments. So

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Kathie Obradovich: I think that at the very least, the First Amendment argument was penetrating with this judge.

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Laura Belin: I think the judge seemed receptive to a lot of the arguments, including the First Amendment argument. But as you say, the attorneys were saying, even if you believe all of the conspiracy theories that this was just a fake poll concocted, it still fails because this wasn’t a consumer transaction. There’s no evidence that Donald Trump or the other plaintiffs ever relied on the poll. There’s no evidence that they bought the newspaper because of the poll.

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Laura Belin: They’re, they’re talking about money that the campaign spent in those last few days before the election responding to the poll, but Iowa’s consumer fraud.

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Laura Belin: Act.

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Laura Belin: allows consumers to get back the money that they spent on some there was some kind of fraudulent act or practice or transaction. It’s not something that some unrelated, some other entity spent. There’s no evidence that that the plaintiffs in this case were economically harmed at all. So it fails on that level too. And then just generally, they’re trying to say a poll is commercial speech, but the definition of commercial

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Laura Belin: commercial speech is more like an advertisement, that it has no purpose other than to facilitate some kind of commercial transaction. And a poll is not that. It’s more like a news or an opinion. And Alan Ostergren was trying to say, this poll, this purported to be a scientific fact.

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Laura Belin: And it was just fraudulent. But the poll, the judge even said, well, didn’t the article talk about a margin for error? So how can you say that it’s scientific fact? And in your own pleading, you acknowledge that the plaintiffs didn’t rely on this poll and that they didn’t believe this poll. So I felt that the judge across the board was pretty skeptical of the plaintiffs’ arguments here. And but the Iowa Supreme Court, they have

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Laura Belin: generally, you know, they’ve said that that you should assume that the what the plaintiffs assert is true, and that motions to dismiss should rarely be granted, but that doesn’t mean they should never be granted. So like, I said, either way, this is going to go up to the Iowa Supreme Court.

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Dave Price: What’s the timeline to have in mind on this kind of thing? It’s so unique.

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Laura Belin: Yeah, the judge said it would take him several weeks. He said he has a couple of other rulings that he has to get out before this one and that the briefs were just voluminous, I think was the word that he used. There were a lot of legal issues raised. So he said it would take him several weeks to rule. So I would guess he would rule maybe by the end of August or something. And then I think that the, the Iowa Supreme Court, I mean, I’m not sure whether they would consider it on an expedited.

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Laura Belin: schedule. It’s not like the election cases where obviously they have to consider on an expedited schedule. But I would think that the Iowa Supreme Court would just hear arguments. I mean, there would have to be a whole briefing schedule set. So I don’t know if they would hear arguments maybe sometime in the winter. I mean, there would have to be several months for the parties to file their appeal briefs and then their replies to that.

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Dave Price: But is, is Trump paying his legal bills on this or is somebody else doing it?

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Laura Belin: I don’t know that anybody’s really answered that question. I was wondering, of course, we’d all like to know how much money.

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Dave Price: Thank you.

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Laura Belin: They’re in so many different lawsuits, but this has been going and there are several different tracks because as I said, there was an original lawsuit filed in December of 2024 that was removed by the defendants to federal court. And then there was a bunch of fighting over whether Trump could withdraw that suit or get it moved back into state court. And so there was a lot of legal wrangling with the federal district court and the eighth circuit even.

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Laura Belin: And then this second lawsuit was filed. So, I mean, a lot of legal work has been done on this suit. There was arguing over whether Marionette Miller-Meeks and Brad Zahn could be added as co-plaintiffs to that original suit as well.

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Dave Price: Okay, so there’s… that’s one piece of the court activity on Friday, and then we have this other long-going, ongoing saga with the Libertarian candidates.

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Dave Price: Which… That in itself is going to be a Netflix special, but… So more…

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Dave Price: I’ve already used the word unique about the Trump lawsuit, but this one is too, right? Because there’s so many just twists and turns with this.

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Laura Belin: So there are three separate libertarian cases.

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Dave Price: Yeah.

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Laura Belin: pending now. We’ll start with the one on Friday. So Marco Battaglia, the candidate, libertarian candidate for the third congressional district, the state appeal, the state objection panel ruled that he cannot be on the ballot because Marco Battaglia is a fictitious name. And so he, Mark Anderson, using his real name of Mark Anderson, he filed an appeal in district court and the first hearing in that was on Friday.

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Laura Belin: But one of the issues that has to be resolved before they can even go forward with that is Alan Ostergren, again, representing a Republican voter in Linn County, filed an appeal of the state panel’s decision to keep the Libertarian Rick Stewart on the ballot in the second congressional district, and the state and the Republicans want to consolidate those two cases because they both are

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Laura Belin: somewhat connected to the candidate’s name. The libertarians would prefer for those cases to proceed on separate tracks. So the first thing the judge needs to figure out is.

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Laura Belin: Are these Rick Stewart and Marco Battaglia cases similar enough that they can be all heard at the same time by the same judge?

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Laura Belin: Or are they different? And then there’s this whole separate libertarian case involving their ticket for governor and lieutenant governor. There was a lengthy court hearing on that on Tuesday morning, and that one won’t be consolidated because the legal issues are so different. But an evidentiary hearing is going to be held later in July where they’re going to hash out a lot of the factual disputes in that case over whether did the libertarian candidate for lieutenant governor.

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Laura Belin: attempt to submit paperwork, was it rejected, was there a mistake by the Secretary of State’s election staff, and so on.

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Dave Price: And,

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Kathie Obradovich: Me ne.

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Dave Price: And Rick is… his name’s Richard, right?

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Laura Belin: So the, the issue, the reason…

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Dave Price: Get out, Rick.

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Laura Belin: He… his petitions, which he told me that volunteers filled out petitions on his behalf, that he didn’t even go out and collect signatures, but the issue was

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Laura Belin: All of his petitions said Richard Stewart. And then when he signed his affidavit of candidacy, he said he wanted to appear on the ballot as Rick Stewart. And so Alan Ostergren, representing this Linn County voter, went to the state objections panel and said, look, you know, this he he could have put Rick Stewart on his petitions, but he didn’t. And these are different names. And the panel unanimously said, no.

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Laura Belin: Rick Stewart is acknowledged. It’s a shortened version of his legal name, Richard. And they unanimously said, we’re not going to kick him off the ballot for that reason. And so that decision is being appealed. So they both are related to candidate names.

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Dave Price: Yeah. Okay.

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Laura Belin: The majority on the panel, with Rob Sand dissenting, said that Marco Batalia should be kicked off the ballot because Marco Batalia has no… it’s so different from his legal name of Mark Anderson.

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Kathie Obradovich: Right, except that, and as we’ve talked about before, he has run under the name Marco Battaglia several times. He uses that name professionally, and it would be, I think, a lot more confusing to voters at this point if he appeared on the ballot under some other name. And, you know, he has been kicked off the ballot before. It has gone to the Supreme Court.

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Kathie Obradovich: And the court case that was heard was, you know, the state objection panel versus Marco Battaglia. So, I mean, that name has been, you know, it’s really more his real name than Mark Anderson in terms of his running for office. It’s really, this is a, it’s a really interesting case. It’s interesting that they’re listening to

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Kathie Obradovich: They want to listen to Marco Battaglia and Rick Stewart at the same time. It makes me wonder, you know, if this case had been, you know, going on in a year when Chuck Grassley was running for office.

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Dave Price: Yeah.

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Kathie Obradovich: you know, what, what would happen, because, of course, Chuck, his actual legal name is Charles, and he never uses Charles. He runs by, he runs under Chuck all the time.

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Laura Belin: I mean, as long as his petitions say Chuck Grassley, as long as his petitions say the same thing as his candidate affidavit, I think that was the issue they raised with Rick Stewart. But there’s a precedent. Again, it’s a different case. I think it goes back to the 1970s. There’s some kind of precedent that it was the Divine Wonderlic where there was a write-in candidate, but they ruled that, like, if somebody wrote Frank Divine or Francis Divine, that those were the same, that those

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Laura Belin: votes could be counted because that’s basically the same name. It’s versions of the same name. So I think that this Rick, I highly doubt that courts would find that Rick Stewart shouldn’t be on the ballot because his petition said Richard.

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Kathie Obradovich: No, but this puts a cloud under his candidacy. And, you know, we only have, you know, a few months for somebody to campaign. You know, I think that all of this, you know, the Republicans do not want these Libertarians on the ballot siphoning votes potentially away from their candidates. And the more time you can keep them tied up in court or put their candidacy under a cloud, the better it is for.

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Kathie Obradovich: you know, Joe Mitchell and Zach Nunn.

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Dave Price: This is a reminder for me that, to not have my mom fill out my petitions, because she’s, like, about the only person who calls me David.

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Dave Price: other than people who don’t really know me very well. So the Dave and David thing could be an issue for me. But as you all are talking, I was thinking, and I don’t know the answer to this, but like, I remember when former Speaker of the House ran for Governor. He had largely gone by Christopher, but in the race for Governor he went by Chris.

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Dave Price: and Busolo originally was Michael, and then started to go by Mike, and I know some of his friends had called him Mike. I don’t know how they all filled out their paperwork, but I was just thinking in your grassland analogy is even better, because he’s he’s far more known, far more more known.

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Dave Price: So it feels like the steward thing and the battalion thing are kind of two separate things. You can see why they would want these things split up.

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Laura Belin: Yeah, and that’s what the libertarians were saying, that even though they’re both about names, they’re raising very different legal issues. And the libertarians in the Marco Batalia case are also raising this other legal argument. There’s this legal theory of estoppel, which means that if somebody’s been allowed to do something several times before, you can’t stop them from doing it now, or it would be unfair to do so. So as Kathie mentioned, Marco Batalia has been on the ballot several times.

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Laura Belin: And so, you could argue, it’s possible that a court might even find that, yeah, Iowa, you should use your legal name, but the fact that he has already run for office several times, like in this case.

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Laura Belin: They they can’t block him from running again as Marco Batalia. But the court could also say the statute doesn’t specify legal name. It says the candidate’s name is the candidate wants it to appear on the ballot. And the court might say if the legislature wants to go back and amend the statute and say it and specify candidates can only use their legal names or a shortened version of their legal name, then they can amend that statute as they’ve done many times before.

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Dave Price: Okay, we have two other dinners. One we can look ahead to, and not really. Since we’re talking Saturday morning.

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Dave Price: and you folks are probably listening to us at some point on Sunday, then the Iowa Democratic Party’s Liberty and Justice Celebration Dinner may or may not have yet happened. It begins late afternoon.

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Dave Price: Pete Buttigieg, who we think might have won the 2020 Democratic caucuses, there still may be some uncertainty there, and maybe he’s gonna run in 28, but anyway, he’s kind of the headliner for that when that takes place.

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Dave Price: On Sunday, there’s also another big event that happens on Sunday that Kathie’s gonna mention before we come to a close this week, so that’s my verbal reminder to the gang here so we don’t forget. The other political one, though, is Friday night, the Lincoln Dinner, the Republican Party of Iowa.

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Dave Price: And I’m gonna use Unique for the third time during one podcast, which is probably not allowed.

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Dave Price: But the event was unique.

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Dave Price: We had some political speeches. We had Kim Reynolds dancing. We had some tears on stage from both the governor and her granddaughter. And I think this would be the oldest granddaughter who’s about to go off to college. I mean, it had Zach Lahn out there doing his speech. We saw Derek Wolf. I haven’t really seen him out. He had his cowboy hat on. I mean, there was a lot of stuff.

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Dave Price: So many parts of this. Kathie, you want to lead off? I know you watch from the comforts of your home, I believe, thanks to C-SPAN that broadcast some of this. What was your takeaway from this? What did you think of this?

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, so we had a reporter in the room and basically because it was an evening event and already going long that we decided to focus on the political speeches. And so Zach Lahn, you know, his good timing, he was able to announce from the stage that Donald Trump had in fact endorsed

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Kathie Obradovich: him that day. Nobody mentioned from the stage that Donald Trump had already endorsed his primary opponent, Randy Feenstra, who lost.

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Kathie Obradovich: So he actually had something he could, could announce and then he, you know, he spent most of his speech, you know, kind of lauding Kim Reynolds legacy and kind of pledging to continue it. And then, and Ashley Hinson was the other kind of big political headliner. She spent some of her time rapping Josh Turek and, and kind of continuing the primary

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Kathie Obradovich: argument that Zach Walls made against him, that he’s a creature of Chuck Schumer and, you know, dark money, et cetera, et cetera. Interesting, though, I thought what was interesting about her remarks, though, was she talked about Democrats see Iowa as a huge opportunity. And in fact, I think that that is the one thing she said that Democrats

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Kathie Obradovich: agree with.

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Kathie Obradovich: So, so interesting, you know, political speeches. I’ll, I’ll let somebody else talk about Zach Lahn’s long, long anecdote about former President James Garfield, which we don’t, we don’t even have time to talk about. But the other thing, they did a tribute to Kim Reynolds. The party has been doing events like this around the state. It was kind of like, this is your live camp.

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Kathie Obradovich: Reynolds, they brought in her little brother and her daughter, two of her.

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Dave Price: Daught.

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Kathie Obradovich: or three daughters and one of her granddaughters and did, you know, kind of some. And it was cute. And C-SPAN still has a video up, so I’d encourage people to go back and watch it. But Kim, I think, has sort of started to let her hair down a little bit.

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Dave Price: I agree.

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Kathie Obradovich: She was very animated. She was, she sort of was acting out a, you know, going to a basketball game with her daughters and, and apparently they all are screamers and they, they, they yell at the players and, and, and the thing I thought was really funny and was that Kim said, and none of our husbands will sit with us. So I thought that was kind of, that was cute.

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Dave Price: There were a series of…

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Dave Price: there were a series… we can talk about the political speeches. Zach Lahn’s… I always kind of watch the crowd. I wasn’t sure all the crowd was sticking with Zach Lahn on his long story, but…

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Dave Price: it was different. We’ve seen some of the tribute videos at other things before, from some of the tribute videos they played. Now, Governor Reynolds couldn’t see them where she was positioned, but…

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Dave Price: So she was really trying to strain and look around, but they had Nebraska’s current and former governor, they had South Dakota’s governor, they had Sarah Huckabee in Arkansas, they had Brian Kemp in Georgia, they had Linda McMahon, the education secretary, they had the former education secretary, Betsy DeVos.

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Dave Price: They had Terry Branst.

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Kathie Obradovich: Rollins.

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Dave Price: Yeah, Brooke Rollins, thank you. Yeah, the so you had speeches and stuff.

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Dave Price: that you would expect to this, and Zach… Zach Nunn led it off, and to Nunn’s credit, he was sick Friday, and I was with him on several events. He really powered through the day. Sometimes I wonder how these people do it, but…

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Dave Price: He did an event with the American Cancer Society. He had something earlier. They had the return of remains of a former Iowan.

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Dave Price: and then there was a procession for… for him later. He had a couple other events, and then he had this event, too, so I know he was really fighting it, but…

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Dave Price: he made the same point that Hinson did about this, Iowa’s gonna be a top target, so that was sort of the political side.

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Dave Price: Hinson was talking about the dark money and did not mention all the dark money that’s going to benefit her. That will be tens of millions of dollars. And the both parties do this. They always they bash the dark money and the outside money. But all of these raises are going to have a gazillion dollars that don’t come from Iowans.

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Dave Price: And it’s like, you either like, you either believe in that stuff or you don’t. But anyway, that’s a whole other thing. I feel like we could talk a whole podcast though.

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Dave Price: on…

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Dave Price: the difference in Kim Reynolds right now. Like, part of this, I think originally I wasn’t thinking this through, right, about sort of this… the Legacy Tour and the Goodbye events and all this stuff for her, because there’s a part of it that, like, seems weird.

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Dave Price: Like, we’re still in July, she doesn’t leave office until January, but it does feel like they’re doing a bunch of this stuff now before they really go knee-deep in all the campaign stuff.

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Dave Price: So I’m like, okay, I guess I… I guess I understand that, but it feels like a long goodbye, but she is so animated right now.

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Dave Price: And like playful, like some of this reminds me of.

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Dave Price: Maybe pre-COVID stuff?

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Dave Price: I don’t know that she ever really let her hair down this much, but, she already talked about this, so I think it’s fine that she’s mentioned this twice. She went to the Journey concert.

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Dave Price: And we all have a mutual friend who’s a reporter who went to the Journey concert as well. So, as we’re waiting to gaggle after this event on Tuesday, Wednesday, whatever the heck day it was, when the governor announced the America’s Harvest Festival that’ll take place in October.

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Dave Price: As part of the America 250 stuff. It was out in the blazing sun, and I had suggested to them, hey, why don’t we go move over there? It’s in the shade a little bit, so we’re not all flop-sweating and everything.

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Dave Price: And so we’re waiting for her, and our friend is talking about the Journey concert. So the governor walks up, and I was thinking, I bet she went. And I said, hey, did you go to Journey?

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Dave Price: And she’s like, oh yeah, and they’re going on about how great the concert was, and the governor’s, like, moving around. Very, very animated. And she’s like, you can’t use all that stuff, you know, whatever. And we’re like, you know, whatever.

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Dave Price: Well, she basically replicated it at the dinner on Friday night. And she’s up on stage, like, you can tell she was just truly loving it. She’s got her family there, her little brother from Colorado came.

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Dave Price: There was a moment where they were on stage where she… she started this, but she’s like, was I bossy as a kid? And he was like, well, you know, like, there were a lot of, like, very genuine moments. You already mentioned two of the three daughters were there. I think these would be the younger two.

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Dave Price: And they all must share this.

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Dave Price: super passionate fandom where, you know, if they’ve got a kid out there on the court, they go crazy and their spouses don’t want anything to do with them. And I’ve never seen that side of the governor. She had, years ago, one of her grandsons played in the same baseball league my son did, so we would see them, but I never saw her going.

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Dave Price: crazy like that or whatever, but then she’s recreating the Journey concert, and she’s dancing all over the stage and moving her arms around, and I thought the most powerful moment was with her granddaughter when Avery was out there.

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Dave Price: And Jeff Kaufman, the party chair, said to her, you know, what is it like to have Kim Reynolds, you know, your grandma be the governor? And she said, well, she’s my best friend. And you can tell it choked up the governor, it choked up Avery, it choked up her mom. I mean, that was a pretty cool moment.

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Kathie Obradovich: It was a cool moment.

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Dave Price: All right. So, Laura, you’ve watched some of these speeches, right?

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Laura Belin: Yes. I wanted to say something about Ashley Hinson because she brought up something that this is a relatively new talking point that I saw the Senate Leadership Fund, which is one of those big outside groups. This one is pro-Republican that’s going to spend a lot of money on the Senate race. And I saw other people raising this issue and she highlighted that Josh Turek missed a lot of votes in the legislative session that they.

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Laura Belin: They claim that he missed 60% of the votes in the legislature, which I have not independently confirmed. I assume they’re only talking about this year’s session because before this year, I don’t think that he was absent that much. But he did miss a lot of votes as many legislators do when they’re running for higher office. So there was a story that the Senate Leadership Fund was pushing this week that he still collected his per diem payments even though he missed a lot of votes.

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Laura Belin: votes. So she brought that up, Jeff Kaufman brought that up, that when he bothers to show up for work, blah blah blah, that he’s a liberal, that he’s just like Chuck Schumer, and so on. So I think we’ll be hearing a lot about that. I don’t know.

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Laura Belin: how much voters care. I feel like that was an issue that was raised against Abby Finkenauer in 2018, that she missed a bunch of votes, but I can’t remember whether it was only raised during the Democratic primary or also during the general. But anyway, that was something new that I heard from Ashley Hinson at that dinner.

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Dave Price: Correct me if I’.

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Laura Belin: Launched on C-SPA.

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Dave Price: Go ahead, Kathie.

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Kathie Obradovich: I should say, you know, if you to be.

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Kathie Obradovich: The context there is that there were people running for higher office of both parties that missed a lot of votes, you know, during the legislative session. And you have to account for that. Also, during the primary, Zach Wells had brought up some specific votes that Josh Turek had missed. And Turek pointed out that he was ill during some of those related

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Kathie Obradovich: to his condition, which was spina bifida, which is why he uses a wheelchair. And, you know, he kind of, he pushed back pretty hard on, you know, kind of, it’s kind of despicable to, you know, hit me for, you know, being sick, you know, but, but yeah, I mean, I, there were a lot of absences and frankly, actually a lot of lawmakers who were, who were, who were sick for the entire

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Kathie Obradovich: legislative session or almost the entire legislative session. But also, if you look at those who were running for higher office, there were definitely a lot of absences there as well.

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Dave Price: Yeah, okay.

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Laura Belin: I mean, he’s one of 33 Democrats in the Iowa House. So in no way was his missed vote ever decisive on anything during the legislative session. But I understand the argument that if you’re representing people that you should show up. I certainly saw Josh Turek a lot during committees and subcommittees. So it’s not that he was absent for the whole session.

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Dave Price: Okay, there’s one other thing I’m going to save for next week, but… because it’s going to get… it’s going to go on a long tangent here, but it’s about Zach Lahn. But we’ll do… we can do that next week. Because I want to leave time at the end here for this promotional announcement by Kathie Obredovich.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yes. So we don’t do commercials here, but this is close. Iowa Capital Dispatch is a not-for-profit. So a lot of what we raise for reporters to cover, travel to cover stories, our internship, we actually, one of our staff positions, which is on a fellowship.

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Kathie Obradovich: We raise the money that the fellowship doesn’t cover. The freelancers who help us cover the elections, et cetera, all of that stuff we raise, locally from our readers and, and donors and subscribers. And we have a benefit concert going on, Sunday. So if you’re watching this on Sunday, the 12th at the,

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Kathie Obradovich: Uptown Garage Brewing Company, Uptown Garage Brewing Company in Ankeny. We had it, we had the same setup last year and it was really fun. There’s a band called Home Brewed out of Iowa City and what they do is benefit concerts and they’re fantastic. It’s blues rock and it’s super fun.

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Kathie Obradovich: So,

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Kathie Obradovich: People can look at our Facebook page. We have an event on Facebook, Iowa Capital Dispatch, or you can look at, you know, if you if you can’t make it but still want to donate, we have a donate page on Iowa Capital Dispatch dot com. So we hope to see you out. It is really fun. I know there are some conflicts.

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Kathie Obradovich: with the, big Democrats dinner, this year, but, but I, I guarantee if you, if you make it out, you’ll have a good time.

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Dave Price: And support.

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Kathie Obradovich: Or local news.

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Dave Price: Exactly. Hey, can I, I want to close this out. I think we collectively as journalists.

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Dave Price: are terrible at self-promotion, which I hope is actually a positive attribute. A former professor of mine, who I’ve been friends with for 30-whatever years, has talked about that, inherently, this is sort of what works against journalists these days. You know, to try to

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Dave Price: To try to bust through and all that stuff, and honestly, just…

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Dave Price: just doing the podcast which is always super fun to do with all of you each week but at some point in here I try to make this pitch about and if you can subscribe and help us you know that’s not like it feels like you’re doing a telethon or something so that I wanted to point out so I know you know doing fundraising pitches for you Kathie is not is not something that comes second nature to you the one thing though that I wanted to compliment you on and this is because I’ve been

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Dave Price: reading a lot about, we in journalism need to do a better job of showing how the sausage is made.

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Dave Price: And, to kind of lifting the veil about how do we make decisions and coverage plans and all of that. And I appreciate that you gave a little insight to the Lincoln dinner on Friday night because in totality there were, at least in my opinion, there were tons of interesting ways you could go for coverage. I mean, I just went rambling on about the, the Kim Reynolds moments on this stage with that in

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Dave Price: itself was fascinating to me, and Hinson with the dark money, and Nunn’s acknowledgement about, hey, this is going to be close, and all those kind of things, and Lahn’s speech, and Lahn’s avail that he did afterwards. But I appreciate how you gave us

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Dave Price: little glimpse about how you do the decision making of Friday night with your staff. And what’s the how you decide what your coverage focus is going to be, Laura, you’re in. I feel like one thing you do uniquely is that you’re able to take something and then kind of expand it by digging in. Do you know what I mean? Like your whole thing is not a

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Dave Price: Here are five nuggets of the day that have happened in a digestible form that you can read in a minute. You can’t read any of your pieces in a minute.

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Laura Belin: That’s.

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Dave Price: Like, you can eat your entire dinner while you’re doomscrolling it through on your phone, not doomscrolling, while you’re scrolling through on your phone, you know? Like, that’s the way you approach it, too. But, so I think maybe from time to time, I wonder if it’d be valuable if we kind of opened up a little bit on the podcast about how we make our decisions, but… Oh, absolutely. Anyway, I’m all caffeinated up.

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Laura Belin: Yeah, I.

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Dave Price: A bunch of different ways.

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Kathie Obradovich: Okay.

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Laura Belin: No. But it’s true. But and I really appreciate Iowa Capital Dispatch because I can only do so much. But a lot of times, if I see that Iowa Capital Dispatch covered a story, then I say, okay. Well, I’m gonna cover a different story, or I’m gonna cover it from a different angle from what Iowa Capital Dispatch did. But it it’s very helpful, and it’s it’s coverage that I rely on for sure.

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Kathie Obradovich: Part of what we do is we share our stories. So we, you know, part of our mission is to not only, you know, cover the news and give it to readers without a paywall and without advertising, but also to share it for free with other media who might not be able to come to Des Moines and cover five events in one day. We were lucky that there were only five big events on Friday because we have

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Kathie Obradovich: We have with an intern this summer, we had five reporters who could do that. I’m impressed that Laura got to, you know, more than one of those things.

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Dave Price: Just showing off.

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Kathie Obradovich: It was hard to… it was really hard to get somebody to every one of those things, and and so…

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Kathie Obradovich: So, yeah, fundraising is part of it. It’s not what any of us were really trained to do as journalists.

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Dave Price: Yes.

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Kathie Obradovich: But that is the reality of the world today.

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Dave Price: One thing we did not get to was, I couldn’t get to the court, and Laura handled both of those. Hinson had an event in Marshalltown with the Agriculture Secretary, Mike Nagin. There were farmers in there, and it’s all about to save our bacon, and we can talk about this in a future show, right? But it was a newsworthy.

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Kathie Obradovich: I had to go to that one.

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Dave Price: Yeah, you pulled that off. And it was a newsworthy thing, and I had been to Josh Turek’s sort of farm-related thing earlier in the week, so I really wanted to go, but it was 9 o’clock in Marshalltown, and there was a soldier send-off at the airport at 10 o’clock. The math, like, just did not…

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Dave Price: There are just too many things in one day. It’s like Friday, which is normally a slow news day, but there were so many things happening. But anyway, okay, so I must now offer this fundraising pitch if you’d like to support the Iowa Down Ballot podcast. And we did have a fundraiser this past week at Julie Gammack and Richard Gilbert’s house. We very much appreciate those of you who showed up at that.

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Dave Price: And some of you who are not able to come to that will.

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Dave Price: We’re also kind enough to make financial contributions online to support.

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Dave Price: this podcast production, so we very much appreciate that. You can do that anytime when this is… when this drops, you’ll see the link on there that enables you to subscribe at whatever level you want.

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Dave Price: So we very much appreciate that. And we also appreciate when you just share this. Obviously, we appreciate when you join us every week, but if you can share this with the folks you know in your circle.

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Dave Price: that helps us grow, so we very much appreciate it. Alright, we went a little long this week, probably because I’m… I’ve got too cap… too much caffeine in me today, and rambling too much, but…

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Dave Price: Thank you both for being so flexible with the taping schedule, recording schedule. Have a great weekend, and we will talk to everybody next week.

Happy Independence Day! We start with a federal court ruling striking down Iowa’s SNAP food restrictions this week, so candy and soda are back on the table. Kathie and Laura break down just how confusing those old rules were, and note the SunBucks summer program will keep going with the pre-waiver food list.

We also cover Cami Koons’ reporting for Iowa Capital Dispatch on USDA staffing cuts hitting Iowa’s county offices, including Polk County losing in-person help most days of the week. Farmers are feeling it on top of already tough market conditions.

We close with the numbers: a new Fox News poll shows Josh Turek up 4 on Ashley Hinson and Rob Sand up 9 on Zach Lahn, while the Times/Siena poll has both races much tighter.

To support our work financially you can click on the link above to become a paid subscriber, or the link below for a one time donation to the Iowa Writer’s Collaborative that helps fund our costs. Thanks so much to those of you who already have. Have a safe and happy 4th!

Auto-generated transcript below:

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Dave Price: Okay, here we go.

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Dave Price: Welcome, everybody, to the Iowa Down Ballot podcast on this first episode of July 2026. I’m Dave Price, joined by my Iowa Writers Collaborative

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Dave Price: That’s not even any good. I’m, like, stumbling all over Spencer, how about we don’t count that one? Plus, I felt like I had a thing in my throat the whole time. Take two, take two, take two.

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Laura Belin: Alright, okay, hang on.

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Dave Price: Sorry, Spencer.

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Dave Price: Hi everybody, welcome back to the Iowa Down Ballot Podcast. I’m Dave Price, joined by my fellow collaborators from the Iowa Writers Collaborative, Laura Belin and Kathie O’Brijovich, for our first show in July of 2026. How are you?

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Kathie Obradovich: Doing great. Happy 4th of July.

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Dave Price: Nepsi, 4th of July.

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Dave Price: And indeed. Kathie and I were talking about right before we started this, we both have pets who are not all that thrilled with fireworks.

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Dave Price: Unfortunately, our pet left a present in the corner of,

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Dave Price: my basement office here, while we were gone last night, I think, which I didn’t even notice, or it happened overnight. I’m not really sure when that happened, and she, like, never does that, so…

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah.

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Dave Price: Oh, I can’t wait.

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Kathie Obradovich: Mine just hides, luckily. Yeah, that’s what… My cat just hides.

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Dave Price: That’s what our dog usually does. There’s a corner she goes to all the time, but she doesn’t usually have…

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Dave Price: Accidents, those are really rare, so something must have really spooked her overnight, I guess.

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Dave Price: Okay, well, that was not how I meant to begin this week’s show.

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Dave Price: But it is… it is what it is. All right, there is, there’s a bunch we want to talk about. We’ll see how much we can squeeze in this week, but, Kathie, props to the Iowa Capital Dispatch staff.

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Dave Price: First of all,

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Dave Price: You have a couple of significant pieces here over the last couple of days, but let’s talk about, one, this follow-up, really, to this federal court ruling, and it impacts the Iowa law.

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Dave Price: when it comes to people who receive the SNAP benefits, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the federal benefits that come through there. And Iowa Republicans, like Republican counterparts in other states across the country, put restrictions on this to limit

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Dave Price: what types of food you can buy. Now, from the get-go, I remember working on these stories. Some of it’s confusing, right? Even for the people who are up at the State House 24-7, it seems like, like, granola bars, like, is…

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Dave Price: Is that a yes, is that a no? And certain things… certain foods that are kind of already… I don’t know what the right word is, but sort of already made, that you can go pick up. I know nationally there was this thing about rotisserie chicken or something, like, if you go buy it from the gas station. What’s your take on…

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Dave Price: the federal ruling, and now what Iowa has to do because of it.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, so because of the federal ruling, basically the Fed said, sorry, you states that have these waivers, your… this… this rule does not comply with the federal definition of food in the law. So, essentially, it’s saying to all these states, you can’t do this waiver because it doesn’t… it does not…

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Kathie Obradovich: conform with the law. So, what happened yesterday was basically the notification from Iowa Department of Health and Human Services that basically that waiver is now void. So, you know, things like soda and candy and, stuff like that that was banned under the waiver.

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Kathie Obradovich: you can now buy again with SNAP. And, you know, it didn’t surprise me. I figured they would have to do this eventually anyway. But also, they said that the SunBucks program, which is the summer, we call it… well, sometimes we call it summer EBT, electronic benefits transfer. You basically get a… families with kids that, are already on SNAP get an extra 40 bucks a month.

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Kathie Obradovich: To cover meals over the summer. And Iowa had stopped doing it for a couple years, because Kim Reynolds said it wasn’t healthy. You can get healthy food. So…

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Kathie Obradovich: But they started doing it this year because of the waiver. And, I… you know, they even talked about, in the legislature, dropping the program if that waiver did not continue. You know, if kids could buy candy with SNAP dollars, they didn’t want to do it. And, in fact, HHS announced yesterday that SunBucks will continue.

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Kathie Obradovich: With the food list from before the waiver. So, you can buy candy now with the… with the Sunbucks as well as Snap. I think, you know, this… this sort of abrupt seesawing may cause problems for some, you know, retailers, grocery stores. It was confusing anyway, because it was based on… it was kind of based on sales tax.

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Kathie Obradovich: And so, you mentioned the thing with granola, it’s like, you know, if you pay sales tax for it, then, you can’t get it with SNAP, and so that includes, like, prepared food, but now people are making the point, you know, a cup of fruit.

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Kathie Obradovich: cut up fruit. You know, you… you can’t get that, but you can get a granola bar that’s full of fat and sugar. So, it was definitely an imperfect program. I… the governor vowed to continue to try to

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Kathie Obradovich: you know, make Iowa’s program, conform with her idea of what’s healthy. So, I think we haven’t heard the last of this.

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Laura Belin: Well, the whole thing is so weird, because I thought, and I’m gonna have to go back and read this bill again, but I thought that under one of the laws Governor Reynolds signed this year, Iowa cannot continue in that summer meals program if they don’t have a waiver from the USDA, so I was very confused.

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Laura Belin: by the press release, and the summer meals, or sun bucks, whatever you want to call it, it covers a lot of people who aren’t on SNAP. It’s any family who has a child on… eligible for free or reduced-price school lunch. So it’s about 240,000 kids where they’re getting an extra 40 bucks a month for the three months of the summer. So it’s significant for people’s budgets. But these rules, the Iowa Hunger Coalition had really good coverage

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Laura Belin: earlier this year about how confusing the rules are, because things with flour and dairy are not taxable, but other kinds of candy are, so you get these things like, you can’t buy a Snickers bar, but you could buy a frozen Snickers bar, because it has ice cream, which is dairy, which means it’s not taxable. So the idea that this waiver was

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Laura Belin: Stopping people from buying unhealthy foods is a little bit of a canard.

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Dave Price: The whole… this makes me think of this entire… the entire Maha movement, and what is the best way, at the end of the day, to help people eat healthier and to get healthier. And we are seeing different approaches about it, and it now, following this court ruling for the questions that we were facing for months, wondering how this was all going to shake out.

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Dave Price: it shows that it was not gonna all shake out. There were gonna be problems with this, which is some of the questions we were asking for months, because some of the stuff

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Dave Price: as you mentioned, Laura, with the Iowa Hunger Coalition, it is hard to logically explain, you know, like, for us, as reporters, you…

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Dave Price: get all this information, and then you have to spit it out in some form so the public can consume it, right? So you’re… in television, you’re doing a minute and a half, maybe minute 45 long live shot, and your example about Snickers, like, try to make sense of that. Like, that’s hard. You’re like.

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Dave Price: Well, if it’s not frozen, then this. If it is, then, like, it’s illogical.

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Laura Belin: Yeah, and what Kathie said about the fruit cup, and I already forgot the difference, but whether the fruit cup, whether you can buy it, it depends on it comes… whether it comes with a fork or a spoon, or without a fork or a spoon, because there are some containers of cut-up fruit that were okay to buy, but I can’t remember whether it was okay with or without the spoon. I mean, this is the…

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, I think…

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Laura Belin: It’s ridiculous.

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Kathie Obradovich: It has a spoon, it’s like an individual serving that you would consume, and so that… that counts as a prepared food, you know, as opposed to if you buy a whole watermelon that’s cut up, I think that that would not be taxed, probably.

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Laura Belin: I think one of the best ways to incentivize healthy eating is something that they did include in the standings bill, that last appropriations bill that passed on the last day of the legislative session, where there was a million-dollar appropriation to a program that’s called Double Up Food Bucks, which means that if you have food assistance, and you use it to buy fruits or vegetables, and that could be at a regular grocery store, or it could even be at a farmer’s market, you can get double your money

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Laura Belin: and there’s some state appropriation for that, so it goes twice as far if you go and buy fruits and vegetables. And everybody agrees that fruits and vegetables are healthy, so that would be one avenue to do it, rather than restricting things with this waiver that doesn’t apparently conform to the federal law.

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Dave Price: I’m gonna segue to the next topic, which has something to do with food and agriculture, but bear with me here for a second as we get there. I do some side work for a project called the American Farmland Owner.

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Dave Price: And, focused heavily on food production and agriculture and farmland and all that kind of stuff. And so, with that, over the last two and a half years as I’ve worked with that, we’ve had a lot of coverage on the federal cuts since Trump came back into office.

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Dave Price: with different programs that could pay local producers for meat and produce to provide their products in their local vicinity. And some of it was an expansion during the Biden administration, and the Trump administration cut a lot of that stuff.

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Dave Price: And it’s always interesting to me when I hear, like, you’re talking about the Double Up Food Program, Double Up Bucks, whatever the heck it’s called.

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Dave Price: we talk about how are we going to support our farmers, because it’s going to be hard for a small family farmer to compete anyway when you’re going up against these giant conglomerates to begin with. But we have, on the federal level, eliminated some of the programs that helped to do that.

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Dave Price: I believe these aren’t… it’s not quite apples to apples, but Mike Neg at the State Department of Agriculture, they’ve expanded some programs here.

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Dave Price: recently that could do some of this, but Laura, when you’re talking about connecting people to healthy food and fruit and vegetables and all that, I’m gonna be curious, especially in the governor’s race with Zach Lahn and Rob Sand.

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Dave Price: how are… whether they’re going to lean into… because they both talked about, like, local, buying local, those kind of things. There… it seems like some smart person could find a way to create a better system

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Dave Price: to connect our local producers with the people who need that healthy food, regardless of whether they are receiving food assistance or not. That’s my soapbox for this week. Just seems like there’s got to be a way to make that happen.

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Dave Price: Okay, maybe I’m gonna use that in my gubernatorial campaign that I’m gonna announce next week, so stay tuned for that. Okay, so this is, like, celebrating the Capitol Dispatch Week, but.

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Kathie Obradovich: Oops!

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Dave Price: Yeah, Kathie, talk about Cami’s story.

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Dave Price: Where she looked at some of this data.

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Dave Price: And let me set this up this way, that the Trump administration did a bunch of changes, obviously, in this second term. Part of it was Doge-related, and we had wondered how these pretty major staffing reductions were going to impact people.

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Dave Price: In that, a lot of these things didn’t seem to be done selectively, it was like a…

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Dave Price: you know, big, big old chunks all at once, so there was clearly going to be some fallout. Regardless of whether you think, big picture, this is the right decision, wrong decision, whatever, it was going to get… it was going to be rough when you eliminate so many people so quickly.

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Dave Price: So, on the agriculture side with USDA, there are a couple of different agencies under USDA in particular that CAMI looked into.

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Dave Price: And fairly substantial staffing cuts.

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Dave Price: And we knew that some of these things were going to happen. CAMI is the first one I’ve seen in our state to lay out what they mean in our state. But we’re also now hearing from the local farmers who have then lost access

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Dave Price: To some of these resources they used to be able to have more readily available to them in their county.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, so, first of all, Cami started…

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Kathie Obradovich: Oh, gosh, last year, or early in the year, maybe over the winter, trying to figure out, you know, where these staffing cuts were going to be, and how they would land in these, in these, USDA offices. And, she kept being told.

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Kathie Obradovich: oh, we’re not gonna have… we’re not gonna lose any staff. I mean, it was… it was… it was sort of a blatantly nothing-to-see-here kind of message.

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Kathie Obradovich: And then this, this organization called the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition came out with a report that basically said that across the country, roughly 20% of staff in state and county-level offices were being cut through USDA. The report focused on the Natural Resources Conservation Service.

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Kathie Obradovich: or NRCS.

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Kathie Obradovich: They’re the ones that administer a lot of the, well, I mean, it’s in the name, conservation programs for farms. And then also the Farm Service Agency, they had fewer cuts, but still, significant.

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Kathie Obradovich: And, and so, you know, looking in Iowa, for example.

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Kathie Obradovich: the people who were cut most often in Iowa were county program analysts, and these are the staff that producers rely on to help them with pro… with their programs and paperwork. Farmers that we talked to said, you know, that the thing that they feel like they lose the most is, you know, you’d be able to come into your county,

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Kathie Obradovich: SDA office, and, you know, somebody would be there that you’ve dealt with before, who knows your farm, or at least knows the topography of the region, and can help you with these programs. And now, you know, Polk County has no one left. They’re bringing in somebody from Boone County for one day a week. The office is open.

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Kathie Obradovich: So…

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Kathie Obradovich: So it does have an impact. It is something that, you know, when you talk about farmers already being under stress, that, you know, having trouble dealing with the paperwork, you know, having to deal with new people who don’t know the background, that just adds to the stress that farmers are also feeling because of the cost of inputs and the

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Kathie Obradovich: the market uncertainty and, you know, all of that kind of stuff that has been going on. So it’s, you know, it is something that, you know, I think that we’re not hearing a lot about it yet, but it is something I think that just sort of adds to the worries that farmers have.

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Dave Price: We had…

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Laura Belin: Such great reporting, Kathie, really excellent reporting by Cami.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, she’s great.

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Dave Price: It really is, because when you hear… at the beginning, it was very difficult to get any kind of concrete information about what these staff changes were mean, and when you’re assured that farmers are still going to be able to access the resources they need.

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Dave Price: At the beginning, you know, it’s hard to know at the beginning, because the changes are just happening, so you don’t really have any tangible way to show yes or no.

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Dave Price: these are happening or not happening, and so Cami’s is the first one I’ve seen that… that shows that the…

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Dave Price: The num… now shows the numbers, but also has the… the concrete…

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Dave Price: interviews with people saying that, yeah, this is what’s disappeared. I’m gonna be curious if, now that it’s out in the public domain, if anything changes, how will, especially Senators Grassley and Ernst get involved in this? Will they try to restore some of this?

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Dave Price: And USCA is also doing this major relocation effort, where they’re moving quite a bit of their staff out of DC to different hubs across the country, sort of organized by specialty, if you will.

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Dave Price: And so that’s going to create a bunch of upheaval, too. Another one of these massive changes that really we won’t know until probably down the road, whether people are better or worse off from it. Supposed to bring some of the staff closer to the people they serve, but we’ve now seen these staffing reductions on the state level that are removing some of the people.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, and part of the… part of the issue, too, is a lot of these people are not going to relocate. For sure. They’re going to find other jobs, so… so you’ve got, you know, you’re losing experience, you’re losing, institutional knowledge, and all of that, you know, yeah, you know, I think…

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Kathie Obradovich: What farmers here are worried about more is the local people that they know, who know them, as opposed to somebody in DC, but it still all trickles down.

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Dave Price: Let’s close out this week with a little horse race stuff. Laura, the Fox News has a U.S. Senate poll.

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Dave Price: In Iowa. And on this podcast, we don’t make too big a deal out of polls, because they are, as we know, just a snapshot.

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Dave Price: in time, and we’re also talking in July, and the election’s not till November. But as you look at some of these numbers from this Fox News poll, it has the Democrat Josh Turek at 50, it has the Republican Ashley Henson at 46.

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Dave Price: that’s about… that’s about the margin of error or so. So, it… yet another indication that this is a battleground race in a more…

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Dave Price: Maybe a less deep reddish-looking state right now.

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Laura Belin: Well, I said yesterday, it’s kind of like choose your own adventure with the Iowa polls, because the New York Times-Siena poll of Iowa that came out this week had a very tight race for governor, with Rob Sand only ahead of Zach Lahn by one point.

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Laura Belin: And Ashley Hinson leading Josh Turek by 2 points, and then this Fox News poll that you mentioned has Sand ahead of Lahn by 9, and has Turek ahead of Hinson by 4. So clearly.

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Laura Belin: they are modeling different electorates. I mean, it could be something as simple as just random sample, right? That you could just get a different sample, but different methodology, different assumptions about what the electorate will look like. I was trying to… I was going back and forth with

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Laura Belin: the… one of the people involved with the Fox News poll yesterday, and they did not want to give me, like, the overall aggregate number of what it… as they weighted their sample, what did it look like in terms of remembering in 2024 whether they voted for Harris or Trump? Because…

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Laura Belin: The New York Times-Siena poll has… that respondent poll has an electorate that favored Trump by about 8 points. Of course, he won Iowa by 13 points, but you can’t assume that the electorate that’s going to vote this November is going to be exactly the same composition as the people who voted in 2024. So, they seem to be making some assumptions about Democrats being more energized.

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Laura Belin: But the Fox News poll had even better numbers for Democrats, and they… I was just told that they don’t release those numbers. Typically, those aggregate numbers, like how many people in this sample voted for Harris and how many voted for Trump. But they did release the breakdown of their poll by party ID, and their sample for the Fox News poll had 48% Republican.

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Laura Belin: 41% Democrat and 12% Independent.

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Laura Belin: So, if you… it suggests that Rob Sand is getting quite a bit of Republican crossover vote, and maybe Josh Turek is getting some too, and it also suggests that both Democrats are doing very well among the independents. And if you’re asking, why only 12% independent.

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Laura Belin: because there are so many registered voters who are independents in Iowa, the turnout for independents really goes off a cliff in a midterm election. So you’re much more likely to vote in a non-presidential year if you’re affiliated with a Democratic or Republican party compared to being a no-party voter. So that’s why, even though independents may be more than a third of the Iowa electorate, we can be pretty certain they won’t be more than a third of the people who cast

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Laura Belin: ballots in November.

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Dave Price: Kathie, we don’t see a lot of horse race coverage on the Capitol Dispatch. Why not?

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Kathie Obradovich: Because I still miss Ann Selzer. I was just gonna say, thank you, Laura, for trying to look into the methodology of these polls, because it is super important. I learned, over years of, learning from Ann Selzer, the Des Moines Register’s former, former political pollster.

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Kathie Obradovich: that, you know, when… when polls start trying to predict what the electorate is gonna look like, it introduces all kinds of potential for… for error, and… which is why she never did it. I mean, she… she would wait…

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Kathie Obradovich: the sample for demographics only, and not for, you know, whether somebody voted last time, or, you know, whether their, hair is gray, or, you know, whatever. And they… but pollsters do that, and then they don’t disclose what they did, and that is the… that’s the part

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Kathie Obradovich: where I start to get really suspicious is, well, how did you cook this, you know, sample so that you, it looks like how you think the electro’s gonna look like? You know, people… people change, you know? They can…

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Kathie Obradovich: change their mind. They can… they can say that they’re a Democrat and vote Republican. They can, you know, these things happen. And, polling is such a…

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Kathie Obradovich: you know, it’s such a difficult thing, political polling. It’s why Ann Sulzer’s not doing it anymore. Political polling is so difficult now, that, you know, when you just… when you have secret methodologies, I just… I…

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Kathie Obradovich: I worry about it. Now, it helps me that we’ve got sort of similar, I mean, not really the same results, but at least they’re sort of in the ballpark.

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Kathie Obradovich: with these polls, you know, what I take out of it, though, bottom line, these are close races, and we knew that already.

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Laura Belin: Yeah, I mean, Henson is not at 50% in any poll that I’ve seen. Hinson is in the mid-40s in about all of the polling, so that tells you something. But to… I’m just trying to remember which state it was, but the New York Times, they gave their raw survey data to 4 different companies in 2024, and the polling firms came up with 4 different results for Harris and Trump.

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Laura Belin: With the exact same survey responses, based on assumptions they were making about the electorate.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, it’s crazy. You know, I think it’s definitely reader or viewer beware when it comes to these polls. You know, you don’t want to put, as Dave said, you don’t want to put too much stock in them, especially not this early.

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Dave Price: And that’s hard, because there’s such a lack of information about a lot of these, and you do just get the top-line numbers, and those are the easiest things to report in a lot of traditional media sources.

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Dave Price: And so you see candidate X up by 2 in this one, but down by 3 in this one, and tied in this one, and you’re like, well, what the heck does this stuff mean? But…

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Dave Price: those assumptions that they bake in that you talked about, Kathie, could make the world of difference.

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Kathie Obradovich: And then what’s more interesting…

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Kathie Obradovich: I think the more useful information from these polls anyway is the why, telling us why people are supporting one candidate or another, you know, what is it that makes the difference? Because, you know, ultimately we’re going to know who wins on election day. You know, that one… that one has a finite answer, but, you know, we don’t have the ability to interview every voter to find out exactly why they’re supporting somebody.

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Kathie Obradovich: studying.

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Dave Price: That used to drive me crazy when the register would have a new poll out.

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Dave Price: What I loved about the polls is that you could then have one of the reporters follow up with one of the poll respondents to get that extra layer of the why.

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Dave Price: like, who is this person, and why did you support the person you did? So then we’re stuck with… we get, as the media organization that didn’t sponsor the poll.

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Dave Price: We get, essentially, the top-line numbers and some other stuff, but we don’t have the people, and it’s the people that add all of the substance to those numbers. So I used to… that’s why I always loved…

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Dave Price: reading the… the write-ups on it, where you could find out that Mary and Creston did… used to be this, and instead she’s now going this way, and Frank up in Cedar Rapids is doing this, and whatever. That was probably my favorite part of the poll, honestly, beyond the top numbers.

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Kathie Obradovich: we call those people poll talkers, and sometimes it’s kind of terrifying. I remember one time I was calling poll talkers.

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Kathie Obradovich: And, it was in a… it was in a previous gubernatorial race, you know, years ago. And, the person I got on the phone had voted in the… or had, you know, given an opinion in the governor’s race, had agreed to speak to a reporter, and I said, so, you know, why did you choose the candidate you chose? And she said, no, who’s running for governor?

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Kathie Obradovich: again.

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Kathie Obradovich: And I was like… Okay. Well, you know what, thanks so much, nevermind.

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Dave Price: Yeah, exactly. This is not gonna go far.

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Laura Belin: I’m a groupie of the focus group podcast that Sarah Longwell does for the bulwark, because she does these focus groups. They aren’t necessarily giving you a representative slice of the electorate, but they can be so illuminating. So she will pull a focus group of a very specific segment, like people who voted for Trump… for Biden in 2020 and Trump in 2024. And she’s done a lot of groups with those

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Laura Belin: people to try to figure out what it was, or people who say they voted for Trump in 2024 and they don’t approve of his work now. Of course, the majority of people who voted for Trump in 2024 are still with him, but by really drilling down with these groups of people who say they don’t approve of Trump, it’s so fascinating to know what stories have broken through, what political news… because when you’re so immersed in the political news.

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Laura Belin: forget that most voters are not. Like, they are maybe only hearing about a small fraction of the political news that we’re immersed in every day.

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Kathie Obradovich: Exactly.

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Dave Price: And so many of these issues are so multi-layered and so complicated that unless you’re willing to really invest the time to dig into it, you maybe only know bits and pieces, or maybe know virtually nothing about it. You know, like you talked… like we just talked about the polls.

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Dave Price: If you don’t have a way to invest like you do, and you’re not normal, clearly. And we say that in a complimentary way, but right? Like, people aren’t…

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Dave Price: Most people are not gonna reach out to the…

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Dave Price: Fox News pollsters to try to figure out how they put together their poll. Like, people don’t do that. You’re gonna look at the 50 to 46 and go, oh, okay, Turret can win, maybe.

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Dave Price: But, and with all the other issues that are involved in everything, we talked about the residency thing on here with Zach Lahn, is that the thing that’s gonna stick? That ad that Republican governors have on against SAN, saying that he didn’t do his job?

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Dave Price: Essentially, and I’m paraphrasing, but, you know, like, what is the stuff that’s gonna stick? What’s not, and they all try stuff to see which one goes, which one doesn’t, but those focus groups are so fascinating to see what is it that, like…

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Dave Price: that connects with you? Is it the price of gas? Like, do we overthink all kinds of other stuff?

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Dave Price: Like, we can talk about the reflecting pool and all kinds of stuff, and this and that, and January 6th, and all that stuff, but are some of the Trump people gonna leave because they’re pissed off about gas prices, and they’re like, this guy said he’s gonna make my life cheaper, and he did, and I’m out. Like, you know what I mean?

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Dave Price: It’s so basic.

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Laura Belin: That is a big part… that’s a big takeaway from a lot of the Sarah Longwell groups. I mean, especially the Biden to Trump voters. It was like, things are too expensive, I was doing better when Trump was president.

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Dave Price: The first time.

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Laura Belin: And to a slightly lesser degree, immigration was a motivator for some people, but… and the Trump voters who now disapprove of him, it’s very strong, this idea that he said he was going to bring the prices down and everything’s still very expensive.

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Dave Price: Indeed. Alright, good to catch up with you, as always, ladies. Have a great weekend. Enjoy the 4th. Best wishes to your cat, Kathie.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, he’ll… he’ll be fine.

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Dave Price: Thank you all for supporting us here at the Iowa Down Ballot Podcast. Thanks to all of you who have contributed as paid subscribers. We greatly appreciate you. This allows us to keep doing this week after week, so thank you very much, and thanks to the rest of you

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Dave Price: who are also willing to not only just consume this in whatever form you do, but to share this and to send it to your friends and family. That helps us grow week by week. We very much appreciate that as well. Have a great weekend, and we will talk to you next week.

Audio has leaked of RFK Jr. calling Libertarian candidate Rick Stewart, pushing him to drop out of the 2nd District race without ever making a concrete offer. That’s part of a bigger pattern of Republicans working to push Libertarians off the ballot, both through direct calls like this one and through legal challenges. Marco Battalia got disqualified over a name issue, and the Libertarian governor and lieutenant governor candidates are now fighting their own disqualification in court.

We also revisited Governor Reynolds’ use of CARES Act money to pay 21 staffers back in 2020, a story Laura broke at the time and Rob Sand has criticized for nearly six years. This week the Trump Treasury sent a letter saying the spending was fine, and Sand pushed back, standing by his original finding. You can read Laura’s original stories on the topic here, here, and here.

Finally, we covered the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that’s likely to knock out hundreds of Roundup cancer lawsuits, since there’s no federal cancer warning requirement on glyphosate. Both gubernatorial candidates oppose the ruling, and we noted the awkward spot it puts Zach Lahn in given his MAHA messaging and RFK Jr.’s silence on the issue.

To become or paid (or free) subscriber go ahead and click that button above. If you’d like to make a one-time donation to help us here at Iowa Down Ballot and everyone with the Iowa Writer’s Collaborative please click the button below. Have a great weekend!

Auto-generated transcript below:

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Dave Price: Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Iowa Down Ballot podcast, our weekly conversation about all things in Iowa politics, and then maybe some other stuff that impacts Iowa politics.

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Dave Price: I’m Dave Price, joined by Laura Belin and Kathie Obradovich, two of my colleagues from the Iowa Writers Collaborative. Happy Friday, ladies!

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Kathie Obradovich: Happy Friday!

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Laura Belin: Good Friday to you.

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Dave Price: And we say that, obviously, for those of you who may be new to this conversation. We usually record on Fridays, and this podcast drops on Saturdays. It’s a little CYA maneuver in case something really, really big happens on a Friday night. So you might be thinking, why did these fools not talk about it? Well, that’s why, because you have to record this at some point.

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Dave Price: And so we do, usually, at some point on…

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Dave Price: on Fridays. Ladies, I was thinking about my life on Thursday night, and, you know, it’s sometimes

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Dave Price: maybe this is just me because I’m weird, but sometimes I just have, like, these random thoughts about things we’ve done and experienced in our professional careers and stuff.

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Dave Price: And, my family was all gone last night, and I was working on this RFK Jr. phone call to the Libertarian congressional candidate, Rick Stewart.

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Dave Price: which, first of all, just that sentence that I just said is unique enough, right? So I’m finding myself… so we have the audio of this phone call.

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Dave Price: And, you know, for our purposes, we’ve got to do some editing to it, we have to put their pictures up every time they talk, there are audio issues with the whole thing, there’s this weird… in the recording we got from the Libertarian Party, there’s a…

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Dave Price: little gap in the audio, so I was trying to figure out what the heck that means. Plus, at the end of the conversation, or end of the recording, it just sort of stops. So, you know, you gotta look at this thing and try to vet it and be like, alright, is this thing real? Like, what the heck’s going on? Plus, Rick Stewart’s voice is like this, and RFK is, like…

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Kathie Obradovich: Great.

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Dave Price: It talks anyway, but it’s, like, not very loud, so I’m trying to figure out, do I want to alter the video so that people can hear it better?

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Dave Price: But then, you know, I don’t want a 60 minutes moment here of anybody accusing me of, you know, putting this stuff together differently, but…

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Dave Price: First of all, forget the journalism side of this, and the relevance to politics and all this stuff.

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Dave Price: I mean, it was one of those days, I’m like, I am literally listening to a phone call from RFK Jr. with a guy who’s a libertarian, who’s run for office a ton of different times over the years.

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Dave Price: And RFK Jr. is trying to get him to drop out of the race. Like, what a…

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Dave Price: What a unique story.

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Kathie Obradovich: You hear about those things happening in politics.

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Kathie Obradovich: know, and but so, it is so rare, one, that there’s actual audio of the call. I don’t know why more candidates…

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Kathie Obradovich: Especially those who come back and accuse their opponents of doing such things, why more of them don’t record. Because in Iowa, it is legal. I mean, some states, you can’t…

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Kathie Obradovich: record a call, if… unless all parties know. In Iowa, you can record the call as long as one party, you know, like yourself, knows.

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Kathie Obradovich: That the recording is happening. So, in some states, there’s wiretap laws that wouldn’t even allow that, but… and I wonder why…

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Kathie Obradovich: you know, I was thinking about why RFK Jr. would, you know, call somebody on the phone and, you know, try to get them to drop out of the race, and, you know, in the age when, you know, you can easily make a recording of a phone call, and it occurred to me that maybe he didn’t realize that you could do that in Iowa legally without announcing it. Anyway, but yeah, it’s unusual to have an audio of the call, and secondly.

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Kathie Obradovich: unusual that somebody so high profile is involved, you know? I mean, usually these things are handled through intermediaries, right? If it’s… if we can say that such a thing is usual. So… so yeah, that was… it was kind of an eye-popping thing, and I, you know, I… I believed Marco Battalia when he said, you know, he raised this, you know, as part of the state objection panel.

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Kathie Obradovich: Part of it when they were kicking him off the ballot.

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Kathie Obradovich: He was in the 3rd District. They were trying to kick him off the ballot, and he talked about how RFK Jr. and, the Zach Nunn campaign had contacted him, trying to get him to drop out. And none of that is illegal unless they make promises, right? They… they try to bribe them to drop out with some sort of promise.

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Kathie Obradovich: But it is… it does seem, you know, unseemly, at the very least, so…

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Laura Belin: I had the same thought as Kathie, like, did RFK know he was being recorded? And absolute… by the way, yes, for everyone out there.

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Laura Belin: Iowa is a one-party consent state, so if you’re ever getting a newsworthy call, and I always say this even if it’s just a political opinion poll, just record that call, in case you want to refer to it later. Anyway, but Marco Battalia did not record his conversation, but apparently it did come from the same phone number, according to the Washington Post. The phone number

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Laura Belin: that Marco Battalia received a call from on his phone was a number that

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Laura Belin: others can connect to RFK Jr.

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Dave Price: And, for those wondering what the heck, why is RFK Jr. calling? For those of us who’ve been around for a little while, and really, this isn’t that many years ago, but we remember 2020,

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Dave Price: In the 3rd Congressional District, there was a guy who ran by the name of Brian Jack Holder. He ran as a Libertarian then. He got just enough sliver of the vote.

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Dave Price: that David Young, who was the incumbent Republican running against the Democrat, Cindy Axne, they look at the margin there and say, hey, if he would not have run, that could have… that could have been the difference there, and then maybe… maybe the Republican could have… could have won in that case.

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Laura Belin: It happened twice. Both of Cindy Axne’s races that she won, in 2018 and 2018.

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Dave Price: and 20 a.m.

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Laura Belin: He won in with, like, 49-point-something percent of the vote, and it happened in the Northeast Iowa congressional district. I believe they were independent candidates, not libertarians, but in 2010, Bruce Braley had a really close call against Ben Lang, and there were two other candidates on the ballot, and they combined to get, like, 3 or 3.5% of the vote, something like that. But in any case, it was more than the difference between Braley

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Laura Belin: and Ben Lang. So I can see why Republicans would be worried about Rick Stewart in the second district. Of course, there’s also another independent candidate, Dave Bashaw, who might pull votes away from the Democrat, Lindsey Jane.

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Dave Price: Kathie, you look like you’re in deep thought, like you’re about Something profound.

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Kathie Obradovich: This way, I have 7 I want to say about that topic. Go ahead.

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Dave Price: I… and I listened to the audio, and I mentioned there was a little bit of a… there was a little bit of a gap in there, which we noted in our reporting, and I didn’t get an answer back from the party about why there was. And Laura, you’ve listened to this… this recording as well. Kathie, I’m not sure, have you listened to the whole thing yet or not?

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Kathie Obradovich: Not the whole thing, no.

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Dave Price: There’s nothing… like, Kathie, to your point about…

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Dave Price: you know, whether this is right or wrong, or there’s anything wrong with it. In the recording, from everything I listen to, like, there’s no…

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Dave Price: there is no quid pro quo, as they say. Like, there’s no promise of anything. Like, RFK just said that, he could advocate for Rick Stewart in DC. Stewart made a joke about

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Dave Price: you know, are you offering me, he said, I guess I’m not getting offered a cabinet position, or something like that.

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Dave Price: And, Kennedy’s conversation to him was like, look, I ran for president as an independent, and I reached the point where I had to figure out, you know, is it good basically just to run and do your thing, or can you make a bigger difference by doing something else?

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Dave Price: is, you know, he was talking to Democrats, he was talking to Trump, I mean, he ended up supporting Trump, and now he’s a… now he’s a United States Secretary, so, you know, that path worked for him, and clearly the platform got a lot bigger. And he’s trying to lay out, hey, here’s what I did.

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Dave Price: perhaps there is something else that you can do. He never said directly

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Dave Price: drop out, we’ll get you a job. He didn’t say anything like that, but he said, I can help advocate for you, for whatever.

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Laura Belin: And there was, at one point, he… RFK said that I can’t… let me… let me read the exact quote that he said. I can’t go into specifics, because there’s legal prohibitions about that. And then, shortly after that, Rick Stewart asked something like, do you mean I would be working with you

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Laura Belin: And… and RFK said something like, well, that could be a possibility. He definitely… he did not offer anything concrete, because that would be illegal to offer some kind of concrete inducement, but it… I…

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Laura Belin: I think he kept going back to the issue of trying to stress, you know, what can you really accomplish in this race, and think about what you can really accomplish. So…

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Laura Belin: It was interesting. It was an interesting conversation, but RFK obviously was aware that he could not promise anything specific.

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Dave Price: And it just sort of adds to this overall effort by the Republicans to try to keep

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Dave Price: libertarians off the ballot, whether they try to do it through the legal challenge process through the state, or direct conversations to try to get them to drop out. Clearly, they are looking at some races that they think could be very tight, and they want to do whatever they can to…

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Dave Price: try to help their case. And it reminded me of what President Trump did, pushing…

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Dave Price: States all over the country to try to do this.

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Dave Price: unique, for sure, effort to redo their congressional boundaries mid-decade, you know, a process that’s not the way it normally works. And, we don’t have to worry about that in our state, since we have the nonpartisan system that we use here.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yes.

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Dave Price: Okay, then there’s also, we also talked about the challenge, but then the legal process, the libertarians have not given up. I mean, they’re still working to try to get on the ballot.

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Laura Belin: The candidates for governor and Lieutenant Governor Nicholas Gluba and Jules Cutler filed their appeal in the district court this week, and I haven’t seen any court filing from Marco Battalia, but I have been told that that will be coming.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, he said… he said he was going to file. He hadn’t filed as of yesterday afternoon, when we checked last. You know, they… both of these should be really interesting court cases to follow, not only because of how the law is being interpreted. I mean, it’s so interesting, and, you know, if you listened to us last week, you know all about this, but, you know, Marco Battalia has run for office.

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Kathie Obradovich: Office under that name.

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Kathie Obradovich: for years, you know, for years and years. And, you know, so they’re basically kicking him off, because his real name is Mark Anderson, and that, you know, to me, is… is so interesting, and, you know, Roxanne.

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Kathie Obradovich: did raise this as, you know, aren’t you arguing against yourself after you’ve… after you’ve let him on the ballot under that name for years and years? Anyway, but… but yeah, so that is… that’s an interesting case, and then the…

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Kathie Obradovich: The gubernatorial case, which has actually been filed, there’s a dispute with the Secretary of State’s office about whether a worker there

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Kathie Obradovich: gave… Jules Cutler, the advice that she did not need to submit an affidavit of candidacy, which

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Kathie Obradovich: that’s what Jules Cutler says, the Secretary of State’s office, worker, denies that and doesn’t even remember seeing Jules Cutler there on the day that they were submitting those on, on June 2nd.

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Kathie Obradovich: So, you know, I think that that… these are also interesting, and, you know, if they try to bring RFK Jr. into the whole thing as well, you know, I think that that will… that will also add to the interest.

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Laura Belin: Speaking of…

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Laura Belin: when people should have recorded, right? Somebody who was with Nicholas Gluba and Jules Cutler should have recorded them submitting their paperwork, and if they were told that she didn’t need the affidavit, somebody should have started recording with their phone and gotten her to say, again, are you sure that you don’t need this affidavit? Because that would have helped clear things up. I was not there when they submitted their paperwork. I was… I talked to…

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Laura Belin: Nicholas Gloob at the Capitol that day, but I did not walk over to the Lucas Building, where the Secretary of State’s

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Laura Belin: staff was where they actually submitted the signature, so I didn’t see or hear what happened, but somebody could have recorded that. I wanted to say that the libertarians are bringing up… so the legal issues are very different, because Marco Battalia was just excluded from the ballot because of the name issue, but the case involving the Libertarian candidates for governor and lieutenant governor are so different, and they are also raising a legal issue that I thought that they should have filed

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Laura Belin: a lawsuit last year, honestly, that they didn’t. The state moved up the filing deadline for third-party and independent candidates to the date of the primary election. It used to be, for decades, that libertarians or third party or independent candidates had until the same day in late August that the Democratic and Republican parties have to nominate people

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Laura Belin: for vacancy. So they raised this issue. There was a law in 2019 that tried to move that filing deadline for third parties up to March, and that was actually struck down. A federal judge ruled that that was unconstitutional. So when they passed the law last year, moving the filing deadline up to June.

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Laura Belin: I thought the libertarians had a strong case to sue again, but they didn’t file the suit. But they did bring it up in this case, so the court does have the opportunity to say, hey, this early filing deadline is unconstitutional, and so then there would be plenty of time before August for Nicholas Glub and Jules Cutler to submit their paperwork again, this time with the affidavit of candidacy.

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Kathie Obradovich: It seems so weird to me, and I didn’t know that this was the case before this particular situation, that

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Kathie Obradovich: That the governor candidate

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Kathie Obradovich: can’t qualify for the ballot unless the lieutenant governor candidate qualifies. You know, they didn’t say anything about Nicholas Gluba’s qualifications or paperwork.

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Kathie Obradovich: It’s the… it’s his running mate, Jules Cutler, who didn’t have an affidavit of candidacy, and that seems really strange to me, that, you know, both of these candidates would be excluded. You can’t have one without the other.

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Laura Belin: Well, and there is precedent from the 1970s. There was a case where the candidate

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Laura Belin: submitted… didn’t submit enough signatures, but they had relied on incorrect advice from staff, election staff, who said, you need whatever signatures, and that’s what they went with. It turned out the law had been changed, and it increased the number of signatures, but there is precedent for the Iowa Supreme Court to say that if they were in good faith relying on advice from staff.

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Laura Belin: That that should, you know, that should take precedence, and that, you know, you should err on the side of giving voters more choices

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Laura Belin: rather than the strict compliance with the law. Now, the current Iowa Supreme Court has been more in the camp of strict compliance with provisions of election law, but we’ll see what they come up with. I assume that whichever way this comes out in district court, it’s gonna go up to the Iowa Supreme Court regardless.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, and this isn’t the first time the Iowa Supreme Court has heard, you know, cases about libertarians have been kicked off the ballot, and generally speaking, they have not agreed to let the libertarians stay on the ballot.

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Kathie Obradovich: So…

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Dave Price: You mentioned Rob Sand earlier. So, earlier this week.

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Dave Price: We had a case involving Rob Sand and Governor Kim Reynolds from nearly 6 years ago, back in the COVID time, the period many of us would like to forget.

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Dave Price: And it comes down to how Governor Reynolds used some of the federal coronavirus emergency money to then pay for 21 members of her staff. This has led to, really, a long series of back and forth. Rob Sand talked about this.

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Dave Price: Either in October 1st, I know he did in November of 2020, I don’t remember if he did in October as well.

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Dave Price: Saying that the… what she was doing was not the proper use of the money, these people were already on staff.

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Dave Price: they were already doing their jobs. The governor was arguing that because of COVID, their jobs were largely focused on COVID, they were working all the time, it was mostly COVID-related, they should be paid by this emergency money.

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Dave Price: Way back in the day, Laura, you reported on this. I don’t remember when you first reported on it, September, October, can’t remember.

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Laura Belin: So, I reported it…

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Kathie Obradovich: She totally broke the story, Dave. I mean, she was the first to report on it.

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Laura Belin: So I was.

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Dave Price: I’ll let her toot her own a horn.

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Kathie Obradovich: No, I’ll toot it for her.

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Dave Price: knife.

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Kathie Obradovich: I was.

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Laura Belin: first to report in September of 2020 that the governor used CARES Act funds to pay staff salaries, and then I reported in October of 2020 that they routed this money through the Department of Homeland Security, the Iowa Department, so that it wouldn’t show up as flowing to the governor’s office.

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Laura Belin: But it wasn’t until December of 2020 that I got the documents that were kind of key documents that later appeared in the state auditor’s report. I think Rob Sand questioned the spending in October of 2020, but the documents that I considered kind of the smoking gun were documents where they had submitted… they… the… initially, there was a table that showed there was a shortfall in the governor’s budget.

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Laura Belin: And it showed what portions of these 21 people’s salaries could be covered under their budget allocation, and then what they needed to make things line up to overcome this shortfall. And somebody on the staff said, well, it’s supposed to be related to COVID, so can you change it so that it says it’s related to COVID? So they literally kept, like, all of the other numbers

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Laura Belin: in the table were exactly the same, except instead of the heading saying, you know, needed to balance appropriations, or needed for the shortfall, instead, all of a sudden it said, related to COVID-19. So… so it was like, they didn’t demonstrate that this work… all of these… almost all these people, all but one, were working for the governor’s office before the pandemic even happened, so…

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Laura Belin: it wasn’t like they took on additional people, and that’s why they incurred these additional expenses. They just ended up using the CARES Act. And I always felt

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Laura Belin: frustrated that the governor’s office was like, this is fine, it’s obviously allowed, and I felt like they wouldn’t have made it so difficult to find. If you looked on any of the public databases, it never said that there was CARES Act money going to the governor’s office, because it was all going to this other fund through the Homeland Security Department.

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Kathie Obradovich: Well, plus, you have that shell game with the governor’s office does that, you know, staff working for the governor’s office are not being paid by the governor’s office, they’re being paid by various state agencies, and that was not new. It was happening even before COVID, so it, you know, unless you know somebody’s working for the governor’s office, you know, and their salary is coming from HHS or one of the other agencies.

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Kathie Obradovich: It just makes it even harder to figure out what exactly the governor’s budget is and what they’re spending their money on.

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Dave Price: And I think this practice predates Reynolds, right? Hasn’t this gone back for a while?

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Kathie Obradovich: Sure.

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Laura Belin: Even Vilsack and Kolak, although…

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Laura Belin: although I’ve done a lot of reporting on… this is actually how I ended up even finding that they were using the CARES Act money, because I had, for a series of years, I had requested these memorandums of understanding between the governor’s office and various state agencies, because

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Laura Belin: the Reynolds administration took this to a much higher level. Branstad had a few staff who were partly paid by agencies, but the Reynolds administration was outspending their budget by much, much more, and had more… and in any case, in this 2020 budget year, I realized that all of these memorandums of understanding for the state agencies, they all ended

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Laura Belin: around mid-March of 2020, instead of going through the fiscal year through June 30th, like they usually had in previous years. So that is why I wondered, are they using some kind of COVID money to cover the last

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Laura Belin: Few months of the budget year, which it turned out they were.

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Dave Price: And I should mention the development of this week was the release from the U.S. Treasury Department, essentially saying that

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Dave Price: I’m gonna…

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Dave Price: interpret here. This is not a verbatim, but basically, it’s fine. They didn’t misspend any of this money, I think it was $449,000. So then the governor’s office sent this letter out. The head of the Department of Management, the former House Speaker, Craig Paulson, then insisted that State Auditor Rob Sand issue

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Dave Price: a new release to show that Treasury said that this was

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Dave Price: okay, since Sand has been critical of this for, now, almost 6 years. That then led to Rob Sand putting out a statement saying, no, it’s not okay. And I’m paraphrasing everything here, but…

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Dave Price: No, it’s not okay, and this was wrong back then, it’s still wrong now, and just because you get a friendly administration to put a letter out 6 years later doesn’t cover up the fact that this was not the way to do it.

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Kathie Obradovich: Because the Treasury, under Biden.

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Kathie Obradovich: agreed with Rob Sand that this was not, you know, approved spending. So this is like the Trump administration treasury essentially reversing itself, isn’t it? I mean, they’re…

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Kathie Obradovich: Sort of.

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Laura Belin: Yeah, I mean, the State Auditor’s Office released material in 2021 that said, you know, we talked to people at Treasury’s Office of Inspector General, and they agreed with our interpretation. I have to say that every time I reached out to the Office of Inspector General.

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Laura Belin: in 2021, and I think I even went back to them in 2022 to find out, did you make a final determination about whether this was allowed? And they kept referring me to the Iowa State Auditor’s Office, so I never exactly got an independent… I didn’t get a message from Treasury OIG that said, like.

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Laura Belin: we agree this is definitely not okay, but I also never got anything from them that said, no, this is fine for the governor to spend the money this way. And the state auditor’s office issued… they had this back and forth going with the Department of Management and Craig Paulson back in 2021, saying, no, this is what… we talked about it, and the Treasury says you would have to submit it

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Laura Belin: You would have needed to submit contemporaneous documentation for this to be an allowable expense, so…

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Laura Belin: But it is true that clearly they have a more friendly administration now.

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Laura Belin: that reversed the finding. I don’t really know how it benefits Republicans. I guess it feeds their narrative that they think Rob Sanders politicized their office. And if I were them, I’m not sure I would reopen this whole can of worms, though.

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Dave Price: Hey, there… I know we’re coming up on time here, but this… this was such a big… there are… Supreme Court… the U.S. Supreme Court had several big rulings this week, but one of them…

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Dave Price: I was paying close attention to, just because of what we watched in the Iowa legislature, where they had discussed the idea of providing some additional protection for pesticide manufacturers to protect them against lawsuits.

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Dave Price: And this all stems for… from… there have been hundreds, maybe it’s thousands of these individual lawsuits across the United States where people

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Dave Price: are alleging, and it’s primarily from the use of Roundup, both if you were using it maybe in your garden, or maybe on the more commercial side of it on a farm or something. But a lot of these people who got sick, I believe, were using it on the

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Dave Price: residential side. Non-hodgkin’s lymphoma was a couple of the primary diagnoses for a few of these folks who got ill. And there was the one case in Missouri where a gardener

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Dave Price: got cancer, and I think had been awarded… it was one and a quarter million, I think. It was either one and a quarter or one.5 million, and I think that was the case.

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Dave Price: that was central to this recent United States Supreme Court ruling this week. Then you also had that humongous one that was, like, a $2 billion…

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Dave Price: case for a man in Georgia who also had that same form of cancer. Kathie, you do… your team does extensive work, covering agriculture, which is kind of one of your core tenets.

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Dave Price: Capital Dispatch, which I’m… now I’m gonna toot your horn. One of the things that I think you especially do well, and I say this as I’m gonna go speak to a group today, and I know this stuff’s gonna come up, where…

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Dave Price: I think we are finding out in the traditional legacy media, you can’t be all things to all people, and one of the brilliant things of whoever organized all of you that I think is so impressive about what you do at Capital Dispatch is you have, like, your…

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Dave Price: Kind of your tent poles of…

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Dave Price: Of primary coverage, and that’s why, rather than chasing every car wreck or house fire, not that those things don’t matter to people, but you really dig into certain…

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Dave Price: certain beats, kind of old-school beats, and that’s why you dominate in these areas, so… Anyway, so now it’s time to teach your horn. I don’t know who came up with your mission, but they’re freakin’ geniuses, whoever they are.

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Kathie Obradovich: Well, thank you.

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Dave Price: And ag doesn’t… unfortunately, agriculture… and I’m biased on this because I do a side gig where I work with agriculture, but traditionally, the traditional legacy media don’t do a lot of coverage of agriculture, which is really too bad, and there are so many intersections of… it’s not just the people

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Dave Price: people who farm on the land, but it’s the production of food, the water that’s necessary. In this case, it’s how you grow it and the chemicals involved. Sorry, this is a long windup. But glyphosate, this really, really effective weed killer.

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Dave Price: That is used in Roundup, and that’s why farmers use this stuff. It’s so, so, so good at killing weeds.

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Dave Price: And nothing in the United States, no federal agency has said that this causes cancer. And, individuals have said that they were exposed and they caught… they got cancer. But so, this big Supreme Court ruling this week, Kathie, you all had extensive coverage of it and what it means.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, so, first of all, I think you alluded to this, but Bayer, which is the manufacturer of, they own one, Santo, which manufactures Roundup, they’ve come to the Capitol, and also in other Midwest states, the last few years, trying to, get state law to, essentially exempt them from liability for what they… what essentially are

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Kathie Obradovich: Warning label,

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Kathie Obradovich: issues. If the federal government, which, you know, we’re talking… we were talking about RFK, you know, if his agency doesn’t say, you know, this product causes cancer, then the product doesn’t have to have a warning on the label, and that lack of warning is what’s causing all of these people who have come down with cancer to now sue. Also, the fact that Europe bans collect

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Kathie Obradovich: glyphosate, and, because they say it causes cancer. So, you’ve got this situation where glyphosate is not sold in Europe. Farmers, you know, they want to use it here because it’s so effective, but on the other hand, and you’ve got the federal government who are not saying that it causes cancer, and you would think that RFK Jr, who is, you know.

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Kathie Obradovich: he’s supposedly against big ag, but he is not telling his agency to review that finding. So, now, you know, our state has not passed that legislation saying, you know, that you’re going to be exempting this pesticide maker from liability.

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Kathie Obradovich: If people get cancer in a state where cancer rates are rising, you know, it is… it’s a… it is a very political…

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Kathie Obradovich: issue, even though it comes down just to a sort of a dry thing about, you know, warning labels. So that Supreme Court ruling, probably kicks

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Kathie Obradovich: All of these hundreds of lawsuits.

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Kathie Obradovich: out of court. This is a big, big win for Bayer. It’ll be interesting to see if we see that legislation come back in Iowa, despite this ruling, like, you know, essentially trying to

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Kathie Obradovich: close the barn door after the horse is out. But, you know, the interesting thing to me as well was the reaction from our two gubernatorial candidates, Bullsack Lane, who has said he’s against big ag and concerned about, chemicals and the, you know, potential for cancer and water quality, pollution.

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Kathie Obradovich: And Rob Sand, both of them have said this is a bad ruling. It’s bad for Iowa, bad for Iowans’ health.

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Kathie Obradovich: And so, if nothing else, if presumably one of these guys becomes governor, we’re probably not going to get a bill signed into law that reinforces this, really. So, but yeah, you know, it puts the spotlight to me back on RFK Jr. to say, you know, where, you know, put your money where your mouth is and review this, decision that

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Kathie Obradovich: Glyphosate does not.

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Kathie Obradovich: You know, present a risk for cancer.

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Laura Belin: And I think that, in theory, since this was a statutory-based decision, not a constitutional decision, the Supreme Court was interpreting this labeling law. This is the kind of ruling that, in theory, Congress could overturn. I mean, they could pass an amendment to the law that clarifies, no, we don’t mean, when we say this about the labeling, we don’t mean that this precludes

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Laura Belin: court claims. I don’t think that that would ever get through Congress, nor do I think Donald Trump would sign that kind of a law, but it’s possible that Bayer and their allies might continue to be pushing for state-level laws like this, because in theory, because it’s not a constitutional decision, it is something that Congress could overturn.

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Dave Price: You know what I wish?

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Dave Price: I wish Rick Stewart on that recording would have asked RFK about this.

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Dave Price: The recording was, like, 2 weeks ago, right? I believe.

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Laura Belin: By the 11th, I think it was on the 8th.

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Dave Price: We’re just releasing it, but I wish that… because part of it he was talking about, Stuart was talking about COVID.

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Dave Price: And he was talking about some other stuff too, but I wish somehow they would have gone into this so that we could have had RFK

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Dave Price: at least his voice recorded talking about this, because, I mean, he can’t…

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Dave Price: Like, he can’t… he can’t be in favor of this, right? Based on stuff he’s said in the past?

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Kathie Obradovich: Well, you certainly, you know, have that connection now between RFK Jr. and Zach Lahn.

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Kathie Obradovich: And, you know, Zach Lahn presents himself as a Maha candidate, etc, and so you do, you know, if RFK is silent on this, ruling, makes no effort toward, you know, encouraging an EPA review, of this, or I should probably,

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Kathie Obradovich: FDA review. You’ve got, you know, you’ve got a disconnect there, then, you know, so it’s… it’s just an interesting dynamic.

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Dave Price: I really wish I would have asked him about this when he was in town.

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Kathie Obradovich: He’ll be back.

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Dave Price: Huge mistake, huge mistake. All right, we squeezed it all in. Thank you for doing that.

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Laura Belin: Thank you.

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Dave Price: And thanks to all of you for joining us this week here on the Iowa Down Ballot podcast. Thanks to all of you who’ve become new subscribers.

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Dave Price: For the new paid subscribers, our hearty thanks. Thank you for helping us to keep this going week after week, and thanks to all of you for not just watching, listening, reading this, but also sharing it to your family and friends. That helps us grow, and it is fun to see that week after week, so we very much appreciate you.

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Dave Price: Thank you to Laura, thank you to Kathie, we appreciate you as well. And we were able to, all in one show, praise the both of you for your journalistic dedication.

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Dave Price: To both of you, so thank you. Have a great weekend.

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Laura Belin: Have a great weekend.

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Dave Price: Thanks, everybody, we’ll talk to you next week.

Kathie got caught up on Derek Wulf as Lahn’s pick for Lieutenant Governor, this time noting his Ag Committee chairmanship could ease some rural skepticism toward Lahn. Then Laura dropped the real news: court filings show close to a million dollars in foreclosure and judgment cases tied to Wulf’s farm, something his campaign chalks up to broader struggles facing family farmers.

We also dug into Kim Reynolds’ legacy as Lieutenant Governor compared to how visible Branstad kept her, plus Laura’s own frustrating run-ins trying to get access during COVID. Read more on that here: Branstad determined to make Reynolds next governor and here: Reynolds hides Gregg

And we have some interesting Libertarian news. Two of four candidates got bounced from the ballot, one over a name dispute, one over missing paperwork, with both heading to court. Laura also reported candidates say they got pressure calls from RFK Jr. and a visit from Zach Nunn’s camp urging them to drop out before the challenges hit.

To continue to help us cover production costs for this incredibly informative podcast please consider becoming a paid subscriber by clicking the link above, or click the link below to make a one-time contribution that helps Julie Gammack and her work with the Iowa Writer’s Collaborative including Iowa Down Ballot.

Auto-generated transcript below:

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Dave Price: Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Iowa Down Ballot podcast, our weekly confab with two collaborators from the Iowa Writers Collaborative.

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Dave Price: Usually two. Last week was one. Kathie Obradovich has returned by popular demand. Laura Bellin was here with us last week and returns as well. Hello, ladies.

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Kathie Obradovich: Hello! Happy Friday, happy Juneteenth.

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Laura Belin: Yeah, happy Juneteenth.

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Dave Price: Happy Friday slash Saturday, I’m gonna say, since this… we recorded

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Dave Price: drops on Saturday. Last week, we were…

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Dave Price: not so artfully, behind the scenes trying to figure out a record time, because Kathie, despite the fact that she was supposed to be off.

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Dave Price: not working on Fridays so she could spend time with family, was still dedicated to try to do the podcast, and we were trying like crazy to make sure we knew the news about

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Dave Price: Zach Lahn choosing State Representative Derek Wulf as his running mate, so we were trying to figure all that into our record time, and the math did not work, so we left Kathie

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Dave Price: Unfortunately, out of the conversation. So, should we do it like a PS on that, Kathie, since you didn’t get to weigh in? What’d you think of the choice?

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Kathie Obradovich: You know, I think, that, I had predicted he would pick, you know, somebody with legislative experience, so that certainly, qualifies, and, you know, his choice of.

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Kathie Obradovich: of Derek Wulf as, you know, he’s the Ag Committee Chairman in the House. You know, I think, definitely plays up to rural interests that perhaps Zach Lahn may not be that close to, in the case of some of the big ag

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Kathie Obradovich: Manufacturers and producers who, you know, he’s had a kind of an anti-big-ag message.

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Kathie Obradovich: That, so I don’t know what the choice of Wulf signals there, that maybe he’s, you know, perhaps a… a little bit of a moderating force on that particular line of questioning.

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Kathie Obradovich: And, you know, I think, it seemed like, you know, despite the hiccup at the Republican state convention, where some of Adam Steen’s supporters tried to nominate him, you know, I think that that, you know, ultimately

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Kathie Obradovich: Republicans probably felt fairly confident or comfortable with Wulf as a choice.

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Dave Price: I always wonder what’s going on behind the scenes, and whether Rob Sands’ choice of Dave Mulbauer as his running mate, and of course, Dave is a farmer.

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Dave Price: Derek is a farmer. Did that have anything to do, you know, did that push Derek up the list to try to combat… combat this so we can go cattle rancher versus cattle rancher in this Lieutenant governor debate, where they both…

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Dave Price: They both wear their hats, and maybe we do this debate out on a countryside or in a barn or something, in a different.

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Kathie Obradovich: I was laughing, laughing at the hats. It’s like, you know, if somebody accidentally switched photos of these two guys, would anybody notice?

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Dave Price: They do look a little similar. Their wives would probably disagree.

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Dave Price: But they do look really similar when they’re in their heads.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, no, I mean, ultimately, I don’t think the choice of lieutenant Governor really makes that much difference, to voters. I mean, unless it turns out to be a terrible choice, and that, you know, the Lieutenant Governor candidate becomes, you know, something of a target. But…

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Kathie Obradovich: you know, where it does matter, I think, is whether the governor and lieutenant governor can be a team and work together. That is something that Terry Bransted always lived by, that he, you know, ultimately what was more important to him was picking somebody that he could actually trust and work with.

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Kathie Obradovich: And, you know, obviously somebody who could be prepared to take over if the worst should happen. So, I think those are the things that are important. I don’t think that otherwise the Lieutenant Governor Choice really brings that much to the ticket, you know, in terms of trying to get elected.

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Laura Belin: Dave, one thing we didn’t talk about last week, because it was so new and I hadn’t had time to look into it, but last weekend, I was looking on Iowa Courts Online and going through some of the filings. There are a lot of

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Laura Belin: Legal cases, and a petition for foreclosure, and a few legal judgments.

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Laura Belin: against Derek Wulf or his farm, and so I feel like… I mean, that’s only what is available right now on Iowa Courts Online. I feel like if there are more legal issues that we don’t know about that may come out during the campaign, I feel like that’s a risk

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Laura Belin: that Zach Lahn didn’t necessarily need to take. Although the Lane campaign told me that this is just an example, a lot of farmers are having hard times, and that basically this is an example of why we need to work to help

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Laura Belin: farm stay in family hands, and that they… they told me that Derek Wulf is working on some kind of refinancing, and that all of the debts are going to be paid. But it’s… if you add up all these cases together, it’s close to a million dollars in unpaid bills and other obligations.

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Dave Price: I find it fascinating that, you know, probably unintentionally, but on the Republican side.

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Dave Price: both of these guys, their private lives will be part of public discussion now, right? With Derek Wulf and his family, and the financial struggles they’ve had with their farming operations, and he’s… as he tries to refinance all of that to get on the right side of that.

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Dave Price: Clearly, that if they choose to, that could be… that could,

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Dave Price: Provide an entry point to talk about how difficult life is for so many small farmers who live on the margins.

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Dave Price: And as they’ve been squeezed with higher input costs, and this whole trade uncertainty, and obviously now the… you’ve got two wars going on with Iran, and then the Russian-Ukraine thing that’s been going on forever, that has disrupted so many different things on the energy side and on the fertilizer side.

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Dave Price: If he’s willing to talk about this, and this could…

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Dave Price: Obviously, it’s very personal stuff, and his family may or may not want to talk about this stuff. And then we have Zach Lahn, who we’ve already discussed, but here’s a guy in his second marriage, and he has children in two different states, and so people may have different views of

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Dave Price: How he and his current wife and ex-wife, because his current wife also had a previous marriage where she had children as well, so they have kids together, they both have kids with other people.

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Dave Price: from their former marriages in Kansas, so that becomes a complicated situation, and I sat down with Lane and talked about that. He used the word complicated to talk about this, and I’m fascinated about how, especially on the Republican side.

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Dave Price: These two are going to be willing, if they are, to address some of this personal stuff, because it does, if they want to, provide a kind of an opening into some pretty complicated measures.

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Kathie Obradovich: not that hypocrisy is a thing in politics anymore, but I can’t see all of these Trump voters, you know, somehow

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Kathie Obradovich: being shocked and appalled by someone with a messy personal history and, you know, multiple, spouses, etc, and messy personal finances. I mean, I just, that narrative, seems to have gone right over Trump voters’ heads in Iowa.

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Kathie Obradovich: And so I, you know, I do have, you know, I question how much that stuff still matters in politics.

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Dave Price: I do too, and I wonder how effective Sam’s side will be.

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Dave Price: to try to, you know, paint Lane as a carpetbagger, and not really an Iowan, and really more of a Kansas resident. I mean, does that kind of stuff stick, or does Lane counter that by saying, hey, I’m trying to be active in my kids’ lives, and I have the means to do it, I have a plane, and…

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Dave Price: I fly back and forth, and we make sure that this is the arrangement we have with the respective parents, and we want to be there for our kids.

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Laura Belin: Well, Rob Sand at his general election rally, he said, you know, God bless Zach Lahn and his commitment to his family, but we need a full-time governor. I think that’s something that we’ll continue to hear from his campaign, because

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Laura Belin: Zach Lahn hasn’t yet spelled out exactly how this is going to work. I mean, he said that it’s not going to interfere with his ability to be governor, but is he going to be scheduling official duties and other… and official events around his kids? I don’t know, what’s if one of… if his kids are in a school concert or an important sports game? I mean, what… how is this going…

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Laura Belin: to work, with… with… if his kids are continuing to live in another stage. And if…

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Laura Belin: if he claims that they’re coming to live in Iowa, I mean, how is it… usually that kind of thing is not something that one parent can decide unilaterally. If there’s a divorce agreement and a custody agreement, that’s not something that you can just up and change right away. So I think that will be a story. I don’t know about Derek Wulf. I mean, all this Rob Sand campaign has said about Derek Wulf so far is that he voted for school vouchers, he voted to defund the

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Laura Belin: water sensor, monitoring sensors, and that he’s, you know, part of the status quo, and so they’re… they haven’t brought up anything related to his… his finances.

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Dave Price: Did… I’m curious what you both think on…

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Dave Price: You know, we just spent the first X number of minutes here talking about lieutenant governors, essentially, and it’s hard to imagine that a lot of people really are going to choose either Zach Lahn or Rob Sand because of the choice and the number 2.

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Dave Price: But one thing that I’m thinking about, and Kim Reynolds was just on Iowa Press this week, when you think about her legacy, Kathie, you brought up Terry Bransted, and I just remember covering… I wasn’t here for the first, when Terry Bransted was governor the original time.

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Dave Price: But… he seemed to have Kim Reynolds featured prominently, and she was…

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Dave Price: usually always there in the news conferences and that. I don’t know that maybe at the beginning when she had Adam Gregg, he was there, but that seemed to change, and Adam Gregg wasn’t really… we didn’t really get public schedules with his events for a lot of weeks.

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Dave Price: And then when… when Greg quit, to leave politics, basically, and Chris Kanoyer got in there, she’s been pretty low profile as a lieutenant governor. Does it strike you at all, the difference in the way Bransted used Reynolds versus Reynolds featured her?

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Dave Price: Lieutenant.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, so, first of all, I think, you know, it’s worth pointing out that Bransted had a lot higher profile than Kim Reynolds did. I mean, he did, he did weekly news conferences every single week, and yes, she was there. And I think, you know, part of it was that he was up front, that he was grooming her to be his successor. I mean, he.

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Kathie Obradovich: he… he made that clear up front, you know, and I think that part of it

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Kathie Obradovich: You know, might have been because he was older and, you know, a lot more experienced as governor, and probably a lot more secure, you know, in his, his… both his public persona and

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Kathie Obradovich: you know, there was a little… now that I think about it, there was a little hiccup early on, where Reynolds said something off the cuff, or sort of off the reservation. There was a message… I don’t remember if it was about gay marriage, or if it was about…

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Laura Belin: I thought that was during the campaign. Was it during the campaign? It was about civil unions.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, so…

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Laura Belin: Something like she wasn’t against civil unions or something.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, so that… there was a little bit of a hiccup there, and, she was not as prominent on the campaign trail immediately after that, but… but once they were elected, yeah, she was always a fixture. She traveled with him, a lot, and I, you know, I… I looked at it as, yeah, she’s learning the job. People did, you know, say, oh, well, she’s just, you know, all she’s

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Kathie Obradovich: does is stand behind him, you know? Sure. But being… there’s a lot to say for being present and learning that job.

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Kathie Obradovich: And, you know.

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Kathie Obradovich: I wish that she would have learned the lesson from Bransted that, being present, you know, also means being present for media. I mean, she, she went through, you know, you mentioned Adam Gregg. I mean, she went through periods, not only was he invisible, but so was she. And so, I do think

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Kathie Obradovich: You know, it didn’t surprise me when he left when he did, for certainly a job that pays a lot better than being Lieutenant Governor. But yeah, it didn’t feel like she gave him a lot to do.

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Laura Belin: We’ll… maybe we’ll see if we can get our producer to put these in the show notes, but I wrote a whole series of posts in around 2013 and 2014 about how unusual it was

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Laura Belin: for the way Terry Branstad was bringing Kim Reynolds along to all of his events, because normally you would deploy… the lieutenant Governor would cover a lot of events that the governor didn’t have time to go to. That’s what Sally Peterson and Patty Judge were doing, but Branstad and Reynolds were always doing events together, and he gave her a lot of really prominent roles and jobs. And then, when Adam Gregg resigned.

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Laura Belin: unexpectedly, I think, to most people.

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Laura Belin: I wrote something about the contrast, where she really didn’t give him anything. I mean, it was shocking how few obligations and responsibilities he had, and he also wasn’t visible to the media. But beyond that, he just didn’t seem to have much of a role in her administration at all.

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Dave Price: And I wonder, this might be a deep dive conversation for another day, but especially when Kim Reynolds is out of office and she goes back and reflects on this, I had wondered if…

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Dave Price: going through COVID when she was very, very accessible, and my recollection…

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Laura Belin: me, Dave.

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Dave Price: Well, yeah.

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Dave Price: That may be true.

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Dave Price: to… for the daily news conferences that she did at Iowa PBS.

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Dave Price: which may have been called Iowa Public Television back then, I can’t remember when the rebrand happened, but out in Johnston. She was doing…

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Dave Price: updates every day, usually around 11 a.m. during COVID.

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Dave Price: Which… That has to… That has to be brutal to go through.

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Dave Price: to stand through. Obviously, there were… if you, as we all know, there was so much they didn’t know back then about COVID, and remember way back, we were wondering whether we were supposed to wash down our groceries and all kinds of stuff that we just had no idea, and she’s standing there trying to explain, each day after day after day, are you gonna force masking and vaccinations and shut this down and shut that down and all that?

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Dave Price: And that had to really… I feel like she probably changed During that process.

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Dave Price: And I’m not sure she was nearly as accessible as frequently.

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Dave Price: after that. I mean, she’s been governor for quite a while here, better part of a decade. Lately, this year, it’s a little… I feel like she’s sort of stepped up.

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Dave Price: during this last legislative session, it was more frequent doing news conferences and gaggles, as we call it, where we have a chance to ask our off-topic questions and all those kind of things after an event, but

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Dave Price: I know that there were years in there where we would… we would go weeks without seeing anything on a public schedule.

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Dave Price: And having any ability to really ask her anything, which was really a change from…

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Dave Price: the predecessors. We sort of got spoiled by Terry Bransted’s Every Monday Morning thing, because, I mean, man, that sort of set the agenda for the week. Culver wasn’t that way. Vilsack probably did a lot, maybe he did more of those than Culver did, but…

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Dave Price: Without a doubt, we, you know, we would like to at least have access once a week where you can ask the governor of the state.

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Dave Price: You know, pertinent questions.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, and, you know, is weekly access really necessary? I don’t know. I mean, Vilsack didn’t like to do those unless he had something to announce. I mean, Branstead would just, you know, there were times when he would just, you know, stand up there and take questions, and not.

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Dave Price: Which is awesome for us, right?

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Kathie Obradovich: No, not…

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Dave Price: anything good.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, and Vilsack definitely wanted to have, you know, something prepared every time that he did it, and didn’t want to do it if he didn’t have, you know, something like that, which I can understand. But yeah, it’s, you know, and, you know, just to spin it forward into the current.

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Kathie Obradovich: campaign. I mean, that is something that I think people should ask candidates, you know, that they should ask them, you know, what is your commitment to

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Kathie Obradovich: you know, putting out a public schedule, to meeting regularly with the media, to, you know, taking questions, to having your staff respond to questions, for heaven’s sake. You know, I think that that…

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Kathie Obradovich: It’s not just for us, it’s for our readers and viewers, and so there’s my little soapbox about, you know, please, please, next governor, you know, be more open and more accessible.

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Laura Belin: I’m just… while we were talking, I just looked up a post that I wrote in 2019, because during one of the governor’s debates in 2018, she had been doing somewhat regular press conferences, then she stopped in the summer of 2018, and she didn’t do any more press conferences for about the last 4 months of the campaign, and it came up in one of her debates against Fred Hubbell, and she said that if elected, she would do weekly press conferences, but I wrote

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Laura Belin: this piece.

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Laura Belin: in, looks like, August of 2019, because she was already not keeping up with the weekly press conference promise promise. And you may say that it’s not important, but I think it is important. And I just… sorry to interrupt you earlier, Dave, but I just had to say that, because during my experience during COVID is that I was never allowed to participate in a single press conference that she did, and her office stopped responding to any of my public records requests, which led to the loss

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Laura Belin: that Iowa Capital Dispatch was also involved with in late 2021, more than… I had… I had multiple records requests that were more than a year old, with no response until we filed the lawsuit, so… And I would say… Anyway, we got a little bit off track there.

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Dave Price: Oh, sure. I think Governor Reynolds also, and maybe this is typical, but I think she was better served by some of her top staffers at different points during her tenure than she was at others. In particular, what you went through, Laura.

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Dave Price: you know, there was a change after that. There are… there’s a big difference between somebody who sort of comes of age during… on the campaign side.

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Dave Price: And how that person views…

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Dave Price: you know, you’re a public employee, and your job is to provide information to Iowans, in our case, since we’re in Iowa, and the campaign is over, and while those things get intertwined quite a bit, I think

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Dave Price: there is a… there is a difference in roles, campaign side versus the official side, and I think we appreciate those who commit to the official side to see this as the conduit of information. They’re always going to spin it to try to make their boss look good, perhaps, but…

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Dave Price: We would hope they still see a role in public service of

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Dave Price: being the disseminator of information that is pertinent to Iowa’s… Iowans.

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Kathie Obradovich: Well, and good… people… it’s a cliche because it’s true, but good policy is good politics. And… and I always thought, and I’ve said this before, that Kim Reynolds was always her own best advocate, you know? And I think that by sort of…

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Kathie Obradovich: making herself inaccessible for the periods that she did. She was just… she was missing great opportunities to advocate for her policies. And, you know, those… those opportunities, once they’re missed, they… they never come back. So… so I do think it wasn’t really, you know, it just wasn’t in her best interest, and that’s too bad, because I… I thought… I always thought

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Kathie Obradovich: that.

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Kathie Obradovich: You know, when she was out on the trail and making a case for her policies, that she was her… she was the best advocate for herself.

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Dave Price: Okay, let’s… let’s not talk about Republicans or Democrats.

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Dave Price: Let’s talk about libertarians.

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Dave Price: That is a party that has interested me almost for the time that I’ve lived in this state, because… no offense to you libertarians listening.

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Dave Price: However, the organizational side of this for libertarians could be a Netflix doc.

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Kathie Obradovich: And…

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Dave Price: two steps forward, three steps back, right? They seem to struggle

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Dave Price: they make some progress, they get on the ballot as a major party, and then things blow up, and then they have to sort of start all over again. Without a doubt, they face different obstacles, and Laura, you sat in the room and watched this, and, you know.

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Dave Price: As we know, for Republicans, they don’t necessarily want to see a bunch of libertarians on the ballot, especially in 2026, where the governor’s race looks competitive, some of these congressional races look competitive.

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Dave Price: They’re not so sure that they remember the case of, you know, Cindy Axne getting elected to Congress when David Young was the Republican incumbent, and there was a Libertarian in that race.

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Dave Price: Took some votes, David Young lost, they know how to add up math here. So, Laura, can you kind of walk us through… you were inside that room.

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Dave Price: maybe a little setup here about what’s going on, but this… this boils down to whether these libertarians did the process correctly to get on the ballot for November. It’s a little more complicated than that.

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Laura Belin: So there were 4 Libertarian candidates who filed, Thomas Lane for U.S. Senate, Nicholas Gluba for Governor, Marco Batali in the 3rd Congressional District, and Rick Stewart in the 2nd.

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Laura Belin: And we all knew Republicans are going to go through everything as close… looking as closely as they can to find any reason to remove these libertarians from the ballot. That’s what happened two years ago, where there were three Libertarian congressional candidates, and they were all kicked off the ballot in a challenge brought by Republicans. So, they could… apparently, they could find nothing wrong with Thomas Lane’s nominating papers, because

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Laura Belin: he was… was not challenged. But the other three libertarians were challenged, and 2 out of 3 of them were kicked off the ballot, at least that was the ruling of the state objection panel, which normally consists of the Secretary of State, Paul Pate, Attorney General Brenna Bird, and most of the time, State Auditor Rob Sand, although he recused himself

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Laura Belin: from hearing the objection to Nicholas Gluba’s nominating paperwork for governor because he’s running for governor, and obviously it could be a conflict because a Democrat would benefit from having a Libertarian on the ballot. So they unanimously ruled that Rick Stewart can stay on the ballot in the second district. The challenge was

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Laura Belin: claiming that his petition said Richard Stewart, but his other… his affidavit, and what he wanted to appear on the ballot was Rick Stewart, and that that didn’t match, and they… they held that there are many examples of candidates running under shortened versions of their name, so they, they dispense with that one quickly. Marco Battaglio was not as fortunate. It turns out that that’s not his name. I had no idea. I’ve been writing about this guy since

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Laura Belin: since 2018. I mean, I’ve covered… I’ve been very interested in libertarians as well, so I’ve written quite a bit about the Libertarian Party of Iowa over the years. Never knew that his name, his legal name is Mark Anderson. That’s what he signed on his affidavit of candidacy, but all of his petitions said Marco Battalia. And so this was a split decision with… Rob Sand would have kept him on the ballot, but Paul Page and Brenna Bird held that

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Laura Belin: Iowa code does not allow somebody to run for office under a fictitious name. And the libertarians are going to appeal to court, and the statute does… it just says the candidate’s name. It doesn’t say the candidate’s legal name or the candidate’s real name, so I think that’ll be the central issue there. Marco Batalia has been on the ballot a number of times before and was never challenged for that reason.

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Dave Price: as Marco Battalia.

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Laura Belin: Yes, as Mark

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Laura Belin: I mean, in fact, and Rob Sands said this during the meeting, it would actually be more confusing to voters if he were on the ballot as Mark Anderson, because there have got to be a lot of Mark Andersons in Iowa, but he’s the only Marco Battalia, and he’s run for office before. His advocate, the Libertarian Party of Iowa State Chair, who was speaking on his behalf at the meeting, Stephanie Berlin, said, you know, I mean, there’s so many articles, if you Google Marco Battalia.

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Laura Belin: find all of this coverage. If you were looking for information about Mark Anderson, you wouldn’t have any idea that it was connected to this person. But the argument that the Republicans will bring, and Alan Ostergen was the attorney representing the Republicans who brought the challenge, who are both connected to Zach Nunn.

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Laura Belin: he said, look, if you allow this to happen, then next election, somebody can go and collect signatures and be on the ballot and say, my name is Chuck Grassley and I’m running for Senate. You know, if you just let people pick any name. So that… so I don’t know what the court is.

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Dave Price: Yeah, it’s complicated.

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Laura Belin: It is going… it is going to court. And the Libertarian one, I just… I’m frustrated with myself, because I went to the Capitol on June 2nd, the day they submitted their papers, and I interviewed the candidates at the Capitol. But I did not walk with them over to the Lucas Building, which is where the Secretary of State’s staff are located, and where they actually turned in their paperwork, because there’s a factual dispute.

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Laura Belin: And it turns out to be really important. It would have been very helpful if I had been there to see what happened, because

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Laura Belin: Nicholas Gluba’s running mate, Jules Cutler, did not submit an affidavit of candidacy to be the candidate for Lieutenant Governor, and she maintains that she was there, that she offered this affidavit, and that the staffer in the office said, no, that’s not necessary, we don’t need that, so she took it home.

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Laura Belin: Whereas the Secretary of State staffer denies that that happened. She says she… there are certain things she doesn’t remember, but she denies that she was ever presented with this affidavit of candidacy, or that she ever said that it wasn’t necessary. So, the upshot is that the law says both the governor and lieutenant governor candidate have to submit an affidavit of candidacy, and Jules Cutler didn’t.

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Laura Belin: Therefore, the ticket is off the ballot, even though more than 8,000 people signed their signatures… signed their petition. So, that’s going to court as well, and I don’t know how that’s gonna work out.

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Dave Price: What’d you make of all this, Kathie? I mean, this is…

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Dave Price: I appreciate that these people are, you know, this is their lives for the next couple of months, whether they get on the ballot or off the ballot, but it’s so complex, it’s also so fascinating.

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Kathie Obradovich: it will be the most press that the Libertarian Party has had, you know, and probably the most they will have all year. So, on the one hand, I don’t think that it hurts them to…

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Kathie Obradovich: you know, make the case that they’re being persecuted by, you know, the major party, that they are so afraid of us, that they… they don’t want to let us on the ballot. You know, that kind of narrative for a… for an underdog, might be… might be helpful for those who actually make the ballot. But…

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Kathie Obradovich: it is also a helpful narrative, I think, for Democrats, that, you know, that, Republicans have to, you know, once again, as part of sort of a narrative, with the Trump administration as well, that, you know, they can’t beat us,

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Kathie Obradovich: you know, except by, you know, try to rig, rig the ballot, or, you know, make, make a, you know, try to, try to take voters’ choices away, basically, I think, is, you know, what we’re gonna hear there. And, and so.

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Kathie Obradovich: I think that the libertarians, what you said before about their organizational ability, you know, they did… they had to have known that their, you know, all of their paperwork was going to be under scrutiny, and… and they still didn’t make it. It always… it always, you know, befuddles me, you know, when candidates

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Kathie Obradovich: can’t do… and yeah, these are difficult things, but candidates can’t, do the paperwork to make the ballot. You know, it does make you wonder, well, you know, how are they gonna run a campaign, and how are they going to do in office if they can’t get this part right? So…

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Laura Belin: Dave, I forgot to mention that Marco Battalia

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Laura Belin: has asserted, and Rick Stewart also, supposedly, they both received phone calls from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, urging them to withdraw their candidacies before these objections were filed. And Marco Battalia further alleges that Zach Nunn and one of his campaign consultants came to his house

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Laura Belin: And tried to pressure him to withdraw his candidacy before the challenges were filed.

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Dave Price: Which adds yet another layer to all of this. Let’s leave it at that for this week. Kathie, Laura, good to catch up with you. Have a great weekend. Kathie enjoyed… Kathie, once again, is supposed to be spending time with a loved one right now.

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Dave Price: And as we record, he’s probably in the other room saying, man, I’m hungry, I sure hope we eat lunch.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yes.

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Kathie Obradovich: Well, we get Juneteenth off in my organization, so… so it’s a day off. But, you know, I never want to miss an opportunity to talk to you guys and everybody out there.

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Laura Belin: Dave, happy Father’s Day.

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Dave Price: Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Have a great weekend. Thank you all for joining us for Iowa Down Ballot Podcast. Thank you for those of you who’ve become new paid subscribers. We very much appreciate you. You allow us to keep doing this week after week. If you haven’t done that yet, and you have the ability to do that, please look for the link below this post where you can do this, and please also share the links from this podcast to your

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Dave Price: Friends and family, coworkers, neighbors, all those kinds of things that allows us to grow week after week as well.

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Dave Price: We will talk to you next week. Have a great week.

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Dave Price: Thank you both.

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Laura Belin: Sorry, I got us off track with

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Laura Belin: And then we did… we can circle back on the ESAs and the.

Zach Lahn named state rep Derek Wulf as his running mate, a cattle farmer and early Trump endorser, likely a move to shore up MAGA support after Lahn didn’t get Trump’s endorsement in the primary. Trump has since walked that back publicly, saying he got “bad info.”

Rob Sand went with Dave Muhlbauer, a rural Democrat who’s held office in deep-red Crawford County. The pick sends a clear message that Sand isn’t writing off small-town Iowa.

Both tickets are now set, several Libertarian candidates are fighting ballot challenges on paperwork technicalities, and debate talks are underway. Laura called this the most exciting Iowa election cycle she’s ever covered. Hard to disagree.

Thanks for subscribing, we continue to grow! We reached 30k total audio downloads since we launched this show a little over a year ago. If you would like to support the shows production costs, please hit the subscribe button above. If you’d like to make a one-time donation please click the button below.

Auto-generated transcript below:

Two big results: Zach Lahn edged out Randy Feenstra in the Republican gubernatorial primary — a surprise upset fueled by a dominant Polk County performance and a late push from conservative commentator Steve Deace. On the Democratic side, Josh Turek won the U.S. Senate primary more comfortably than expected.

Looking ahead, we talked about why Lahn is a trickier general election opponent for Rob Sand than Feenstra would have been — he’s a change candidate with no voting record to attack. With both the governor’s race and U.S. Senate seat open simultaneously for the first time in 58 years, Iowa’s general election is set to grab A LOT of attention.

Thanks so much to those of you that have become paid subscribers or made a one time donation. Please click the subscribe button above or one-time donation button below to pitch in! Also, we reached #70 on Rising U.S. Politics on Substack this week. We wouldn’t have been there without your support. THANK YOU!

Auto-generated transcript below:

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Dave Price: Welcome, everybody, to the Iowa Down Ballot podcast, the post-primary election edition. I’m Dave Price, joined by Kathie Obradovich and Laura Belin. Hello to both of you as we begin this first weekend past the primary. How are you?

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Kathie Obradovich: Fabulous.

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Laura Belin: I’m recovering.

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Dave Price: We survived.

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Laura Belin: Nights, yes.

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Dave Price: Yeah, but

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Dave Price: All in all, to have primary night wrapped up by the time everything essentially was, was not bad. Kathie, what’s your headline?

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Kathie Obradovich: So, couple of surprises. One, I thought that this U.S. Senate Democratic primary, would be a lot closer than it was. It caught us off guard a little bit when AP called the race, excuse me, for Josh Turek.

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Kathie Obradovich: as early as they did, we thought it would go, go later and be a lot closer. And then secondly, you know, I think we saw that this could have been a possibility of Zach Lane edging out, Randy Feenster for the nomination. I mean, we saw the trend lines happening there. But again, you know, I sort of thought.

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Kathie Obradovich: you know, we were going to be going till 2AM on this race, or, you know, the potential for it to go to convention, and, the fact that, here’s the surprise, that Feenstra conceded, really, at the… at the… he was less than a percentage point behind Lane, and he conceded even before AP called the race. So, that surprised me as well.

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Dave Price: Laura, what was your headline?

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Laura Belin: Oh, I think the lane surge. I was kind of feeling the lane-mentum. I went to his rally in Ankeny on Sunday, and on Tuesday night, I started the evening at the Iowa Democratic Party’s

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Laura Belin: election night event, but when I saw the Polk County number come in really big for Zach Lahn, he had a margin of about 2,500 votes from Polk County, and Polk County tends to be one of the first to report, I scooted over to West Des Moines to go to the Lahn Victory Watch, because even though it was tight, he was hanging in there. I don’t think he ever gave up the lead at any point when they were

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Laura Belin: adding batches of votes. So, but my biggest surprise was not that Lahn won the primary, but

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Laura Belin: how many counties he carried. He carried 52 counties, and he actually carried most of the counties in Feenstra’s own congressional district, which I thought was amazing. He got

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Laura Belin: 40% of the vote in Sioux County, even. I mean, Feenstra carried Sioux County, but you would expect him to be absolutely dominating in his home county, so that did surprise me. I was also surprised in the second congressional district. Joe Mitchell won the… that was expected that he would win the nomination, but he only had, like, 62% of the vote or so. I thought he would do better against a very underfunded

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Laura Belin: opponent. So, in general, there was a pretty big anti-establishment streak in those Republican primary results.

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Dave Price: We have…

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Kathie Obradovich: It was interesting to see… just a quick addition to what Laura said. It was interesting to see how dominant Lahn was in the third district. You know, that’s really where he won it. Feenstra, they were pretty close, in the first and second district. Feenstra carried his own home 4th district, but not, as Laura just said, not by very much.

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Kathie Obradovich: But I think where Lahn really won it, was in the 3rd District, Central Iowa, Polk County, and he, he was… he was quite a bit further ahead there. So, I was a little bit surprised by that.

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Dave Price: I also was surprised that the Turek margin was as big as it was, although it really did feel like… I think we all sort of hinted at this the week before, that, it was… he looked like he had established himself as the… as the frontrunner with this.

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Laura Belin: It was… it was.

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Dave Price: The one thing that…

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Laura Belin: I was… I’m sorry, the Vote Vets’ internal polling was showing him 20 to 25 points ahead, so it was pretty consistent with that.

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Dave Price: Yeah. The one thing I thought about is, I don’t remember exactly at what time lanes, numbers…

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Dave Price: jumped above Feenstra. I was standing behind, in front of this big monitor for our TV streaming broadcast that we did all night, and it would automatically refresh. And I remember looking, and all of a sudden, Lahn had jumped up, the early numbers had Feenstra up.

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Dave Price: But it just reminded me that this is not scientific by any means, but I talked about this a couple of weeks ago here on the podcast. Like, sometimes you can just feel some stuff.

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Dave Price: When you go out and witness some of these campaigns in action, and it doesn’t… what you… maybe what you feel as the reporter, at least for me, doesn’t necessarily match, maybe, my head.

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Dave Price: So, like, when this campaign started, Feenster’s clearly the frontrunner, right? Most money, most well-known.

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Dave Price: a member of Congress, you know, whatever. And we have talked numerous times on this podcast about, boy, you know, it doesn’t seem to be a lot of enthusiasm for this guy, whatever. Laura, you went to the Lahn event in Ankeny. I went to the one Friday night in West Des Moines right beforehand.

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Dave Price: Which, P.S, great point about Polk County, because they really leaned in hard to point… to Polk County and won handily. And that’s the margin right there, if you start looking at his overall numbers. But you could just feel the juice, and Friday night, I felt like you could still feel the juice in Lahn rally, even though hours before, they got the gut punch that the president had endorsed Feenstra.

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Dave Price: and, you know, changed his mind, or whatever happened behind the scenes, or somebody influenced him to get involved in the race. But it was just another indication to me about sometimes what the… I would say head and heart, but, I’m neutral here, so I don’t really have the heart involved in these things, but sort of heart and gut, maybe?

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Dave Price: But Gut was telling me that Lahn was gonna surpass, and Head was telling me…

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Dave Price: boy, Feenster should probably be able to hold on here, right? And then, boy, once that flip happened, and I was texting throughout the night with, Feenster supporters, and you could tell that there was angst almost from the get-go.

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Dave Price: And then desperation sort of set in, like, they were looking at Montgomery County numbers, which were late… later coming in, but that was sort of the Hail Mary…

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Dave Price: And, you know, there weren’t enough people there that were gonna make enough of a difference anyway.

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Kathie Obradovich: I was…

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Kathie Obradovich: You know, beforehand, we weren’t… didn’t really have a lot of information about what Lahn’s get-out-the-vote operation was going to be like. You know, I was sort of assuming that Feenstra and Steen might both have an advantage there, with Steen, you know, having his tried-and-true supporters from the family leader, etc.

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Kathie Obradovich: But, yeah, the… either, you know, that organization is not quite as influential as it has been, or, there wasn’t enough difference between Steen and, Lahn and Feenstra in terms of how people felt as far as their, you know, religious, Christian conservative, values.

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Kathie Obradovich: So…

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Laura Belin: Well, Steve Dace, who was an early Steen endorser and a big Steen endorser, came out on Saturday, the day after the Trump endorsement, and said.

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Laura Belin: I’m still voting for Steen, but if you want to stop Randy Feenstra, who’s gonna lose to Rob Sand, you have

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Laura Belin: You have to vote for Zach Lahn. That’s what he said. You have to vote for Zach Lahn. And when he… I mean, he has a big megaphone, he has tens of thousands of followers, the Lahn campaign texted this video of Steve Days to everybody, and I gotta believe that that got him a couple thousand votes. I mean, his margin statewide over Feenster was only a couple thousand votes, so that also, I think, when people started to see Steen as less viable.

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Laura Belin: That… that could have pushed Lahn over the top for sure. I wanted to mention, this is something we did, like, a special post-election broadcast of KHOI’s Capital Week, and I noticed when I was looking at the county results.

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Laura Belin: that Feenster had these clusters where he did, well, like, in the… he won almost all the counties in the Quad Cities market, most of the counties in the Omaha market, in the Rochester, Minnesota market, and I think Lahn only won one county in the Omaha, or not Omaha, Ottumwa, Kirksville market. And I would guess that Lahn probably just wasn’t spending that much on TV outside Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Sioux City.

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Laura Belin: Because it just seemed to me like in the areas with those smaller media markets, that people just didn’t know as much about Lahn, and Feenstra was able to hang on. So, Feenstra’s strategy all along of, like, well, let’s just assume that nobody else can consolidate the support, if you didn’t have Zach Lane putting in $2.5 million of his own money to fund this very aggressive advertising campaign, I think that

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Laura Belin: that would have worked for Feenstra. And the Trump endorsement, I mean, what if Trump had endorsed a few months ago? Maybe Lane never would have gotten that momentum. Or what if he had endorsed last summer, and maybe Lane would have decided not to run for governor at all?

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Dave Price: I, I would like…

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Kathie Obradovich: Interesting questions.

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Dave Price: Yeah, I would love to have… Exit polling on this.

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Dave Price: because I had wondered at the time, was it too late when the president got involved, and would it even… these were 5 guys who all supported the president, so you didn’t have any of them who, you know, were speaking ill of the president by any means. I’m still super curious who…

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Dave Price: who convinced him to get involved in this so late? There had to be some kind of behind-the-scenes effort. I really question that he did this on his own.

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Laura Belin: Oh, no, there, no, yeah.

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Dave Price: Some, something, something caused this, and, contributed to this,

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Dave Price: within our border, I would assume. But I would love to know, somehow, if we could find out how many people, if any, were motivated to support Feenstra because of the president’s endorsement, but then this whole thing with Steve Dace at the end, and really even Bob Vanderpla’s.

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Dave Price: did they… did that make any difference at all? Did people look at this like… because there… I got messages from people about, what is this?

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Dave Price: So you got a guy who’s endorsed him, now he’s saying this.

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Dave Price: And then he took credit after the election that maybe what he did,

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Dave Price: made a difference here and contributed to the win. Would love to know, like.

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Dave Price: some proof, one way or the other, you know, like, I don’t know how we’re ever gonna know, it’s all gonna be anecdotal.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, I mean, we talked to voters in all four, all four congressional districts on Tuesday, my reporters and some stringers, and some of the Feenstra voters did, you know, specify that the president’s endorsement, you know, made a difference to them. Some said, that they were Trump supporters, but that they hoped Trump’s endorsement

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Kathie Obradovich: would not, influence people’s votes, because they were, they were Berlain or steampunk.

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Dave Price: Oh, sure.

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Kathie Obradovich: So, Trump’s endorsement was, you know, maybe, important to some voters, but, it wasn’t an anti-Trump vote if they… if people chose Lane or some other candidate.

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Laura Belin: Oh, Gary Loeffler, the Trump tractor guy, was a big Lane supporter, and he was there… he was there in Ankeny on Sunday, and he was there on Tuesday night at the Victory Party.

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Dave Price: I’m, like, looking ahead toward the general election, I’m really fascinated

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Dave Price: what the LAN campaign will look like.

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Dave Price: how the campaign team will grow, who comes into this, are they gonna bring… bring in some Feenstra people? Are they gonna bring in…

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Dave Price: outside people, will Republican Governors Association be part of this? I mean, there had been talk…

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Dave Price: about the RGA getting involved if Feenstra held on to get a different-looking campaign post-primary, because there was so much…

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Dave Price: consternation about the way they ran it, and I… I can’t remember if I mentioned this on the podcast, so… just…

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Dave Price: beat me out here if I’m repeating this, if I’m doing an old man,

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Dave Price: a recount that I’ve already said this once before, but big picture, and maybe I was only talking to a friend of mine, and I didn’t say this on the podcast, so I’m a little careful with what I say on here before something happens.

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Dave Price: I…

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Dave Price: I would be curious with you two, with all the campaigns we’ve covered over the years, both statewide and presidential.

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Dave Price: When I was talking to a friend, I was trying to think of a time when there was a legit candidate, not some fringy, nobody knows who this person is kind of thing, but somebody who’s, like, legit, who was looked upon as somebody who could win. I don’t remember ever covering a campaign like Randy Feenstra’s.

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Dave Price: where I had so many true supporters of his, Complaining.

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Dave Price: about what they were and were not doing, and I’m wondering if either of you can help me… I’ve got 25 years here now, and I was going through my middle-aged memory bank to try to see if I could remember anybody, and I can’t think of anybody that would be a good comp, and I’m wondering if either of you can?

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Kathie Obradovich: I mean, I think the closest parallel I can draw is with Jim Ross Lightfoot, where, you know, this was,

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Kathie Obradovich: again, an open governor’s race. He was the prohibitive favorite, and nobody knew who Tom Vilsack was. And, you know, that it wasn’t a situation where Lightfoot wasn’t getting out, and wasn’t doing media, or wasn’t doing debates, etc. The concern was his, was more like his message discipline, that

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Kathie Obradovich: he couldn’t stop talking about, you know, and sort of in technical terms, legislation in DC, as opposed to stripping down a message and focusing on state issues. So I think that that was the main thing that you would hear, you know, supporters of his saying, yeah, he’s got to stop talking about Washington, D.C. so much.

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Kathie Obradovich: You know, but that… that’s… I think that… that is not a direct, comparison, and… and you’re right, it’s been a, you know, it’s been a long, long time since we’ve seen, that much kind of grumbling behind the scenes about, you know, the party frontrunner.

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Laura Belin: I was living overseas at the time of the Vilsack-Lightfoot race, so I was not on the ground to observe it. I’ve never seen a worse candidate than Randy Feenstra in my life. I mean, and we had a warning sign when he only got 60% of the vote in his own primary.

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Laura Belin: two years ago against Kevin Virgil, but it seems like they didn’t learn any lessons from that. He was completely inaccessible to people, even in his own district, heavily conservative areas, and I think that he was just counting on being able to sail through in a fractured field, and I also thought that he was on track to win. I thought that several of the other people could beat Feenstra one-on-one, but with four-on-one, I thought that they would all

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Laura Belin: split the vote. So, but then when you have one of those four being extremely well-funded, and able to get his message in front of voters, and people were just looking… I mean, what reasons was Randy Feenster even giving people to vote for him? His ads were just all about how he’s with Trump.

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Laura Belin: But he wasn’t really giving anyone any reason to feel inspired about his campaign.

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Dave Price: And I believe we talked about that on here, that clearly they felt like the Trump thing was a problem.

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Dave Price: And they had to convince the base that…

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Dave Price: Feenstra was with the president and would support the president, and it was Trump, Trump, Trump, all the time in his launch videos, really everything, his introductory videos, and that was… they kind of ran on Trump, and he’d never…

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Dave Price: never shared any kind of vision. I was trying to think through, like, you know, you try to think of, like.

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Dave Price: obviously, from our standpoint, we want everybody to debate, and I did a four-candidate debate and really wanted to do a moderate a five-candidate debate for obvious reasons, right?

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Dave Price: But I guess I understood their point in that they felt there was nothing to be gained, and they thought he could be… if he was going to get pulled too far to the right on some issues, standing up there with the other four, it’d be hard to…

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Dave Price: to push back toward the middle, let’s just say, if that was one of their concerns or whatever. But they didn’t counter-program.

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Dave Price: So if that’s what.

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Kathie Obradovich: what you’re.

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Dave Price: about, then you could choose to go do… look what Rob Sand does with the 100 town hall things.

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Dave Price: Like, Feenstra could have done something similar, and just non-stop… and I appreciate he’s got a job in Congress, so it makes it a little more challenging to do it. But he had time. He also took a long time to officially get into the race.

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Dave Price: Which, frankly, annoyed some Republicans who were wondering, do you want this job? Do you not want this job? What the heck’s going on? But they could have counter-programmed, they could have been all over the place, and they chose not to. It was a really low-profile thing, and it wasn’t really until some of the activists and donors were grumbling that he…

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Dave Price: Kinda got out there a little bit more, but…

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Dave Price: Doing these sort of small pizza ranch gatherings and little select…

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Dave Price: almost felt like private-type things, they weren’t really private, but there was just no energy when you compare it to Lane, and even on a smaller extent, to Steen.

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Kathie Obradovich: One of the few… one of the few times that he actually did

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Kathie Obradovich: do an event. Was it the Westside Conservative Club, where he put his foot in his mouth, you know, and basically said, yeah, the ESA program, the Educational Savings Account, public dollars for private tuition, that those private schools should, if they’re going to take that money, should have to accept

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Kathie Obradovich: all students. And, you know, that, was basically a democratic talking point against.

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Dave Price: Yeah, which… Which is probably a pretty good general election. Yes, it would have been.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, but I, you know, all of the other candidates jumped on him, the governor jumped on him, the Republican lawmakers were unhappy with that, and so, you know, that sort of made me wonder, it’s like, okay, is this why they’re keeping him away from, you know, that he’s gonna put his foot in his mouth if he gets asked the right question, by a reporter?

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Kathie Obradovich: Or, you know, or somebody in the audience.

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Laura Belin: Look, I mean, even the last week, we talked about this because you went to that house party, Dave, that he did, but I was following his social media last week, and he was doing these private events, basically, at somebody’s farm or somebody’s home for 20 or 25 people. I was just speaking to the Urbandale area Democrats last night, and they had about 50 people just at their regular monthly meeting. I mean, I’ve seen larger meet and greets for city

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Laura Belin: council candidates than Randy Feenster was having in the final week of a statewide campaign for governor. It’s just ridiculous.

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Dave Price: I also wondered, you know, does it demonstrate, and we’ll see how Lane does this, he, he, Lane has brought in some new subjects, right? He is talking about some stuff, and we’ll have to see how it plays with people.

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Dave Price: But…

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Dave Price: We knew going into this, the challenge is, no matter who the Republican nominee is, you’re following long-time Republicans in the… who have been on the job, right? Since Brandstick got back in in 11. That’s a long time of Republicans, they’ve had the trifecta since 17. You’re not gonna realistically go in there, you wouldn’t think, and rip on what your party has done, so you have to

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Dave Price: Thread a needle about how you’re gonna… sort of,

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Dave Price: stay the course, to use George W.’s line from 04, you know, kind of build on it, though. And that… there is a little bit of a thread there, because you don’t want to rip on it, and you saw Feenster try to do that a little bit with Butt. He questioned how they did the budget.

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Dave Price: He doesn’t think that they should be dipping in all the reserves to make up for the deficits. And, you know, there were some people who didn’t like that, but that’s probably a theme he was going to have to have for the fiscal management side if he was governor.

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Kathie Obradovich: Right, and Lane, you know, a big part of his campaign was, you know, pushing back on big corporate control, you know, big pharma, and, you know, that comes out with, sort of with his MAHA affiliation, Make America Healthy again, and, you know, aligning himself with RFK Jr, who’s the Health and Human Services Secretary.

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Kathie Obradovich: There’s an anti-vaccine component to that.

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Kathie Obradovich: And then, you know, second, and this is, you know, he’s talking about Iowa’s skyrocketing cancer rate, and tying that concern to Big Pharma to that. Also, the big ag, and, you know, tying, tying farm chemical contamination also to Iowa’s rising cancer rate, which most other Republicans are not willing to do.

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Kathie Obradovich: they’ll talk about cancer, but they’re not really… they really don’t want to make that connection to farm chemicals, so… so he broke away from his party a little bit there. I’ll be interested to see how much he, emphasizes that part of his message now, going into the general election. I think that that…

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Kathie Obradovich: part of his message, can appeal across party lines, and so it may be worth it for him to continue with that discussion. But yeah, Lane, I think he’s… it’s going to be more difficult

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Kathie Obradovich: for Rob Sand to run against Zach Lane. He’s more of a wild card than it would have been for him to run against Randy Feenstra. You know, I think that Zach Lane

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Kathie Obradovich: there’s still a lot of things that we don’t know about him. He doesn’t have a voting record, etc. The Republicans did raise some negatives about him during the primary campaign, especially right at the end, when suddenly he started looking like a threat. But, you know, his part-time, residency in Kansas, or previous residency in Kansas, you know, his… some of his invest…

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Kathie Obradovich: investments that were sort of eyebrow-raising. Those, those things have, you know, started to come to light, or, or, you know, people are sort of digging into those a little bit more now, and I think that there’s, you know, more to know about Zach Lane, you know, potentially, things that are good for his campaign, maybe some things that aren’t so good. Rob Sand, on the other hand, you know.

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Kathie Obradovich: Republicans have been, running against him now for at least 7 years. They’ve raised a lot of, you know, they’ve raised concerns about him.

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Kathie Obradovich: over 7 years, but I don’t know if there’s anything new that we’re likely to hear about him, because they, you know, Republicans have been running negative, messaging about him for such a long time.

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Laura Belin: I think this is a very tricky matchup for Rob Sand. I’m sure that he would have rather run against Randy Feenstra, who was completely uninspiring and part of the old guard, and could be tied to both the state management and mismanagement fiscal, according to Rob San, and also the unpopular things that Congress has done, whereas Zach Lane basically blank slate, Dave, as you’ve mentioned, running on a change message.

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Laura Belin: And we saw the first memo from Rob Sand, and in some of his comments.

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Laura Belin: to reporters since the primary, saying things like, well, we’ve had 10 years of one-party rule, and Zach Lane just wants to continue another 4 years of one-party rule. Well, Zach Lane is going to present himself as very different from what Iowa’s had up to now. So that’s part of what Rob Sand is trying to do now, is going to be to convince people that he’s really going to bring more change, because he would bring divided government and

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Laura Belin: and all of the other things, rather than Zach Lane. But I do think it’s trickier. But Rob Sand is already making fun of all the time that Zach Lane spends in Kansas. There was Des Moines Register reporting about his many trips in Kansas where some of his children live, and that he made a comment to the Register, Zach Lane did, something like that he’s already had this conversation with his family, that if he’s elected governor, he’ll have

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Laura Belin: to spend as much time in Iowa as humanly possible. And Rob Sand quoted this in a video, and he said, most of us just live here.

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Laura Belin: Instead of saying, I’m gonna spend as much time in Iowa as humanly possible. So, that’ll be a theme we hear quite a bit about during the general election campaign.

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Dave Price: I do wonder how people are going to look at that. I mean, he’s… this is not a… this is not a summer home he has in Wichita. He has a home there because he has children there.

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Dave Price: And so, he goes back and forth. I’m gonna be curious how willing he is to be open about this, because you start talking about this, then this gets into your tricky first marriage and all of that stuff.

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Dave Price: But it’s probably… he’s going to have to…

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Dave Price: Probably speak at length about this, to explain how this is going to work, and how is he going to navigate this if he’s the governor.

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Dave Price: When I was… when you were talking about the ads that went against him, can we just get these dual ads out of the way, where…

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Dave Price: Lane invested in a company that later produced sex toys. Rob Sand used to be an underwear model. Can we just do a split-screen

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Dave Price: joint ad, get it over with, so we can then start talking about issues. They’re gonna find… Rob’s saying they already have the video of him, like, on a skateboard, or whatever that stuff is. They’re gonna make…

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Dave Price: The idea’s gonna be maybe make the other guy look like a weirdo.

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Dave Price: But I also think we can get rid of…

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Dave Price: the nature of these two candidates, it’s gonna be tough for Republicans to rip sand for being…

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Dave Price: The rich guy.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, I think.

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Dave Price: I think Lahn has probably made money on his own, too, but he married into money, so you’re gonna have to deal with that. Then you’ve got two guys who are really kind of pushing for change, so that kind of…

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Dave Price: balances each other out. I need to ask you both about… I don’t even know if you had time to read this. Kathie, you… you were knee-deep in a conference while you were doing everything else this week, covering the election, but have you read the release from the SAN campaign about the debate proposals?

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Laura Belin: Yes.

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Dave Price: So, he is… He’s basically trying to take charge…

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Dave Price: of the debate system, rather than having the media outlets, like we usually do, propose it, and then we negotiate with the candidates. He is saying he wants 4 of these, and this is…

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Dave Price: Part of this is similar to what Lahn did when he challenged Feenstra. He wants four regional debates, so spread across the state, and he picked the four bigger media markets.

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Dave Price: And…

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Dave Price: essentially, if I’m reading this right, the media outlets sort of apply to be able to do debates. I don’t know if SAN’s campaign thinks they’re the ones who are gonna make the decision on this, and put it all together, and then it’s up to Lahn to agree or not agree, but it’s gonna be four regional ones.

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Dave Price: And, if it doesn’t happen, then I think he’s got a challenge in there that Lahn needs to do a bunch of town halls or something like that. Clearly, it’s different. I like the idea about having four of them. I know, selfishly, as we put the one together that we did statewide with my company and with KCCI in Des Moines.

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Dave Price: that it’s hard. We had 90 minutes with 4 candidates, and so much that you want to ask about, you can’t.

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Dave Price: And you don’t get in-depth enough on stuff, you know? I mean, with 4 of them, you could get into a lot of things if, they would actually agree. It does sort of feel kind of an old-school way to do this, but I’m not sure what the media outlets are gonna think about SAN, if it looks like sand’s kind of in charge.

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Kathie Obradovich: Well, and if I were… if I were Lahn campaign, I would be really uncomfortable with having my opponent be the one to, you know, organize and bet the debates. I mean, the reason that the media outlets are the ones who organize it is that they’re, you know, at least, you know, expected to be neutral in terms of not, you know, trying to give an advantage to one campaign or another, or, you know, to

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Kathie Obradovich: you know, choose their moderators, you know, based on, you know, whether we think they’re going to ask tougher questions of the opponent. So I am uncomfortable with the… I love the idea for debates, regional debates. It’s good to get out around the state. Don’t love the idea of the SAN campaign trying to be the one to organize it.

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Laura Belin: Well, I… what I thought was interesting about the proposal is he kept saying, if our opponent does not agree, so it seems like he’s only interested in debating Zach Lahn, whereas

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Laura Belin: I mean, most of the time, Rob Sand is talking about how the two-party private clubs shouldn’t have a monopoly on this or that. I went to watch him vote on Tuesday morning, and he spoke to reporters, and the first thing he said was that this is… a third of the state is disenfranchised because independents have to declare with a party to vote in the primary, and so on, but it looks like a libertarian is going to be on the ballot. They’ve qualified for the ballot, Nicholas Gluba.

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Laura Belin: filed his nominating papers on Tuesday. I haven’t seen whether those will be challenged. He told me on Tuesday he was very comfortable that he was way above the threshold and wouldn’t be knocked off the ballot, but I didn’t see anything in Rob Sands’ proposal that indicated that he’s willing to debate anyone other than his Republican opponent, so that’s something I’m gonna try to find out next time I get a chance to ask him a question.

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Dave Price: Laura, you… I wanted to, do a little PS on what you just said there. I’ve heard the criticism

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Dave Price: from some Republicans about sand, and that he’s basically trying to run away from being a Democrat. The one thing listening to you talk there reminded me that for almost as long as I’ve covered him, he has talked about the weaknesses of a two-party system.

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Dave Price: He is not talking about ranked choice voting, but I know he’s done… I think he’s read books on this, and he’s looked into how this would work and all of that. I mean, he’s got his own…

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Dave Price: his own, ideas that he’s put out there, but there are certain things for those who have talked to him for quite a while, he has been consistent about

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Dave Price: some of the things he’s talking about out there on the campaign trail as governor. This isn’t just…

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Dave Price: that the Democratic Party brand stinks, or something like that, and he’s trying to get away from it. He has… he has been talked… he has talked about the traps of a two-party system for quite some time.

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Laura Belin: Oh, yeah, years ago, I remember hearing him talk about it, and this primary, sort of a jungle primary.

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Dave Price: system.

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Laura Belin: That he wants to have.

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Laura Belin: That’s a newer proposal, but I think that he’s been open to that. I forgot to say, to pick up on something that you were talking about earlier, that the Zach Lahn wealth maybe makes it difficult for Republicans to campaign against Rob San. Zach Lahn, in his victory speech on Tuesday, tried to thread that needle by saying, kind of a Trumpian line of, I’m my own biggest donor, and therefore, I can’t be bought.

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Laura Belin: But Rob Sand is putting Iowa on the auction block because he’s taken money from these billionaires and also his wife’s family, so kind of… and glossing over the fact that Rob Sand has raised millions of dollars from thousands of donors, and

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Laura Belin: Zach Lahn has very few small grassroots donors by comparison, but in any case, they’re going to try to differentiate it that way, but I do think that it makes it complicated, that message is complicated, by Zach Lahn.

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Dave Price: All right, well, we will have much to discuss in the months ahead, and we are going to continue

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Dave Price: our weekly podcast. We may take a break, late summer, for everybody to get a little time off, but we’re gonna keep this sucker going.

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Dave Price: Can you seriously imagine what this year is going to be? We didn’t even really deep dive into the U.S. Senate race, which we will do in the weeks ahead, but the Hinson-Turek matchup is gonna be so fascinating, Sand and Lahn fascinating. We’re gonna have…

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Dave Price: 2, maybe 3?

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Laura Belin: 3…

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Dave Price: competitive congressional races, plus, I mean, you know, they’re always… I feel like the legislative races are always interesting on their own, you know, maybe they’re more hyper-local, I suppose, but seriously, though, for a non-presidential year, this is gonna be something else, right?

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, oh, I think so.

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Kathie Obradovich: I’ve referred to this before as it’s basically a generational opportunity for change in Iowa. You know, considering that it’s the first time we’ve had both an open governor and simultaneously U.S. Senate… open U.S. Senate race in 58 years, that is longer than almost everyone has even been able to vote.

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Kathie Obradovich: Let alone, you know, a lot of voters weren’t alive the last time that, that we had this wide open of a race. So, so yeah, and, you know, of course, it trickles all the way down the ballot. So, so this is a really big opportunity for change. Somebody also asked me, you know, could Iowa go back into the purple state category?

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Kathie Obradovich: And it’s like, well, if it can, this is the year, you know?

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Kathie Obradovich: It’s gonna be the year.

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Laura Belin: And, yeah, absolutely. I’m a believer in that second congressional district in Northeast Iowa. That is in play, definitely, in addition to the first and third, and we haven’t even talked about the Attorney General, Secretary of Agriculture race. Those are both going to be very interesting. So, I think it’s the most exciting Iowa election cycle I’ve ever covered.

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Dave Price: This… our Writers Collaborative features a lot of…

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Dave Price: different perspectives on things. For my personal standpoint, I don’t, I don’t go partisan either way, I’m neutral, I don’t take part in primaries. But may I just say, the most unsettling part of 2026? Do you know what that is for me personally?

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Dave Price: Regardless of which candidate

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Dave Price: becomes our next governor, regardless of which candidate becomes our next United States senator, I am guaranteed that I will be older than both of those winners.

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Dave Price: And I don’t know how to come to terms with this.

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Kathie Obradovich: This would be a first time for me, as well, so I… I would, yeah, you start to feel old when your, when your doctors, your priests, and your, you know, your governor are… are actually younger than you, so…

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Dave Price: I noticed that this was the first cycle where, like, especially talking to friends, I more frequently found myself referring to people, by their first names.

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Dave Price: And I don’t think that it was a sign of disrespect for anybody, I think it was the fact that some of these people are well younger than I am.

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Dave Price: It’s just what came out, so I…

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Dave Price: This is how it’s always going to be now, and I need to…

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Dave Price: Sit down in a quiet place and come to terms with this.

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Dave Price: Oh, that’s definitely a good place to wrap this sucker. Thank you to all of you who have joined us for all of our conversations about the Iowa legislative session. Let’s see if there’s going to be a special session, by the way.

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Dave Price: just… I’m just gonna throw that one out there.

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Kathie Obradovich: Probably not, but…

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Dave Price: You know, that’s still gonna… we’re gonna… those rumors will percolate occasionally. Anyway, for sticking with us on the long legislative session, getting through the primary election, now that we look ahead to the general election, we very much appreciate your support. We don’t do ads on this. We very much appreciate all of you who have made contributions to keep this going week after week after week, and we are committed to continue doing these throughout the general

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Dave Price: election, and the more support we can get from the community, the more

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Dave Price: that allows us to keep this going. So we very much appreciate all of you who have helped us do that, and if you’re thinking about doing it and haven’t yet.

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Dave Price: This would be a great time to get on there and do it. I’m gonna sound like those, fundraising drives on Iowa Public TV or Iowa Public Radio, but if you’re able to do it, we’d very much appreciate it. Thank you to Kathie and Laura. Ladies, have a great weekend, and we’ll talk to you next week. We will talk to everybody next week.