The Iowa Republican gubernatorial race delivered a week’s worth of drama that we could barely contain in a single episode. Dave , Laura , and Kathie break down the wild chain of events surrounding candidate Eddie Andrews and his last-minute petition filing — stolen signatures, a chaotic two-day objection hearing, procedural fumbles by the Secretary of State’s office, and allegations that the Adam Steen campaign orchestrated a ballot challenge through a third party. The trio examines what it all means for a five-person primary where Rep. Randy Feenstra is the presumed front-runner.

Also covered this week: a correction on Democratic Senate fundraising numbers, an update on Rob Sand’s now-uncontested primary, Xavier Kerrigan’s exclusion from the 3rd Congressional District Democratic ballot, and the broader trend of candidate attrition since January.

AI Generated Transcript Below:

Dave Price: Welcome back, everybody, to the Iowa Down Ballot podcast, as we talk to you on a Friday. I’m Dave Price, joined by my Iowa Writers Collaborative’s cohorts, Laura Bellin and Kathy OBradovich. Hello, ladies!

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Kathie Obradovich: Hello, Dave.

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Laura Belin: Good to see ya!

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Dave Price: For those of you who are listening and not watching, you do not get to see that Kathy is decked out in her Cyclone shirt, because we’re recording this late morning on Friday.

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Dave Price: Which, unfortunately, for Kathy’s bedtime, is nearly 12 hours before the Cyclones actually take the court in Chicago, but by the time that you good folks listen and watch this.

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Dave Price: We’ll know if they, like Iowa, will make it to the Elite Eight.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yes, go Cyclones!

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Dave Price: And Laura and I are just wearing, like, regular shirts, so whatever. We don’t get any kind of special praise for us. Okay, Laura, so you would like to…

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Dave Price: clarify something from last week. Like, that’s sort of the cool thing, right? I, it is nice when you get to the point where enough people listen and watch these things that if they have issue with something and that they actually reach out, that…

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Dave Price: we can respond. So, here we are.

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Laura Belin: Yeah.

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Dave Price: onto something in one of the previous recordings.

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Laura Belin: Yeah, so I misspoke when we were talking about the Democratic race for Senate, and I think I said that Josh Turek had raised more money, and I was thinking about the third quarter.

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Laura Belin: of the… of last year, but overall, Zach Walz has raised more money, and he also raised more in the fourth quarter, so that’s… and he has more cash on hand. We’re gonna get a new set of fundraising reports in the middle of April, covering the first three months of this year, but just wanted to make that correction.

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Dave Price: Alright, very good, and we appreciate the feedback for that stuff. Okay, ladies…

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Dave Price: I was sort of salivating, figuring out, when we emailed back and forth about what to talk to.

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Dave Price: When I send out the note to the TV station group for which I work, to let all the stations know what kind of stories we’re turning and all that, I think I literally said in the update, what the what is going on in the Iowa Republican gubernatorial race.

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Dave Price: Holy cow, this past week… Is just full of the catnip-type

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Dave Price: drama… I don’t even know how to characterize this. I think it’s, like, each day, as we went from…

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Dave Price: Monday to Tuesday to Wednesday to Thursday night, like, each day was like a new episode in a Netflix, like, special series, right?

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Kathie Obradovich: You can see.

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Dave Price: Seriously do multiple ones, and it’s… there’s literally no way to, like.

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Dave Price: Boil this down into, like, a 30-second… Recap, because it was…

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Dave Price: I mean, it is just out there, right?

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, it’s… I mean, it just… it sort of tells you that, these candidates are really feeling the pressure, but, you know, I don’t know, one of you guys can describe this, but, you know, this actually started when Eddie Andrews at first didn’t make his,

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Kathie Obradovich: You know, his petitions were challenged, and, you know, the way the process works, you have to turn in, so many signatures from so many counties,

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Kathie Obradovich: in order to qualify for the primary ballot, and he ran in on the last day, on Friday the 13th, like, 10 minutes before the deadline, the 5 p.m. deadline, with, like, you know.

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Dave Price: Like a college kid turning in your final.

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Kathie Obradovich: or something, right?

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Kathie Obradovich: And, and so, you know, that got challenged, and then he, he did make the ballot. If you guys want to fill in, the state objection panel ultimately decided he made the ballot, but it also sort of brought out, you know, who made that challenge, and why, and then…

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Kathie Obradovich: Eddie Andrews accused the STEAM campaign of being behind this challenge. So somebody take it from there.

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Dave Price: Well, but then also a couple other little nuggets with that, like, Andrew’s claims that during that whole…

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Dave Price: situation where they’re trying to organize their signature petitions and get them all organized, and they’re trying to figure out, do they need to be in alphabetical order, do they not? Are they supposed to be in binders, not in binders? Are they supposed to be organized by county?

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Dave Price: like, they left from the Secretary of State’s office, and I think they went down the hall into the old Supreme Court chambers.

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Dave Price: to try to lay it all out and organize it, and Andrews said that he then ran into somebody from the Adam Steen campaign, where there was some kind of, like, conversation or something, and the way Andrews explains it, the Steam folks were like, you know, hey, if you want to drop out and support us.

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Dave Price: So he doesn’t do that, and he’s kind of perturbed by it, so they turn in their stuff, and he also didn’t fill out the, affidavit that the candidates themselves have to do, so he did that in Pate’s office. So they turn it all in, they think they have enough.

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Dave Price: They get challenged, and then we sort of have to go forward some days, and then they have the state objection panel, the three…

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Kathie Obradovich: One more thing, though, before you go there. He also alleged that.

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Dave Price: Yeah, sure.

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Kathie Obradovich: were stolen out of his car, which is… this is a bizarre thing that I have never heard of, anything like that.

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Dave Price: I did not file a police report.

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Laura Belin: When he… I was trying to press him, was it… I said, were they taken from your home, an office, or somewhere else? And he was really vague. He didn’t want to say that. I mean, I have not heard of candidates’ petitions being stolen. I think it’s more likely that a volunteer or somebody misplaced them, or lost them, or whatever.

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Laura Belin: It’s unlikely that a group of county petitions… so he claimed that he had to go back, he and his volunteers had to go back and get several counties, get more than 100 signatures.

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Laura Belin: in those several counties just in the last 3 days. But he clearly had not read the rules. I mean, if he didn’t know that they have to be organized by county, and they have to be fastened in some way, I mean, there was a… a certain lack of preparation was evident in that.

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Kathie Obradovich: There are actually rules about the paper size, you know, and this is a very picky, picky little process, so…

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Laura Belin: But then he was able… he apparently got permission, or I don’t know if somebody, staff in the Secretary of State’s office said it was okay. He had some

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Laura Belin: petitions on non-standard paper size, that was wide, so it had extra columns, and that was one of the reasons why some of his petitions were challenged, but that was ruled that that was okay, because I think he had received assurances from the Secretary of State’s staff that he could have that. I mean, I…

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Laura Belin: You know, people talk a lot about election integrity, and I know… I understand that it’s very important that candidates meet these thresholds. You want to make sure that there are a significant number of people who want to see a candidate on the ballot. But to me, I mean, whether somebody signed a page that was 8.5 by 11, or a different size paper, I mean, that’s not, to my mind, an election integrity issue at all. I mean, there are people who signed

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Laura Belin: their names to say that Eddie Andrews should be on the ballot.

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Dave Price: And, just for those who want to follow along with the math, so for this statewide office, a candidate would have to get at least 100 signatures from at least 19 counties, but they have to add up to at least 3,500 signatures statewide, and that then took us… and I totally can’t…

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Dave Price: believe, Kathy, that I left out the stolen petitions angle of this. When he told me the story the first time, I don’t think he mentioned it was his car, so that little nugget got added in there. But anyway, so you go to the first

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Dave Price: hearing, which was on Tuesday, so Andrews is sitting there with his attorney, and to add one more wrinkle to this, the three-person

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Dave Price: panel should have been Secretary of State Paul Pate, Attorney General Brenna Bird, and State Auditor Rob Sand. Sand recused himself for good reason, since he’s running for governor, maybe he could even run against Andrews one day, so he recuses himself for that portion and one of the State House challenges, and so Mike Naig, the Secretary of Ag, pinch hits

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Dave Price: So he sits in there, so that’s the three-person panel, but then as this thing is going.

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Dave Price: then Andrews is perturbed, because he’s sort of going back and forth with Paul Pate on this, where he’s like, hey, we didn’t get all this stuff. And he’s annoyed that Pate’s office sent stuff late on a Friday, Andrews is saying, hey, I was out campaigning, and then I’m watching basketball, and…

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Dave Price: I didn’t check the email, so I didn’t even find this out until Monday. The hearing’s on Tuesday, Pate’s like, you know, it’s your responsibility to get this stuff. And Laura, I don’t know what you made about it, but there was clearly tension back and forth, and I believe at the end of all of it.

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Dave Price: paid… had to then acknowledge, and I think maybe eventually understood, that there was a portion

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Dave Price: of this, the documents and such, that were not sent to Andrews and his team. So then they sort of, like, paused, and then there was one dude who kind of scurried out of the room, who I believe works for Pate, because they were like, well, can you just forward us?

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Dave Price: Can you just email the thing to us? And so then there was this break.

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Laura Belin: Well, I mean, the whole process was terrible, but first of all, if…

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Laura Belin: If you’re Eddie Andrews, and you know you’re close to the line, you know you’re close to the edge, you know it’s likely that your signatures will be challenged, because he later told reporters that not only did staff for Steen apparently make these comments to him on Friday the 13th, but he claims that he got a couple of phone calls the following week.

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Laura Belin: suggesting that he could get on Team Steen, or his petitions were going to be challenged. So, I don’t know how it was possible that he didn’t check his email and he claimed to not find out until days later that he was even getting challenged. And I would think that the Secretary of State’s office should, as just a matter of routine practice, anytime a candidate is challenged, they should automatically send those candidates

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Laura Belin: all of the material related to the challenge. It seems that they sent an email informing Eddie Andrews that his ballots, his petitions have been challenged, but they didn’t…

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Laura Belin: send him all of the supporting files that explained the photocopies of the various petitions that showed which signatures were being counted. And I mean, several of us in the press had that, because on Monday, we had asked the Secretary of State’s office to forward to us all of the materials, so I was just so

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Laura Belin: stunned that Eddie Andrews and his attorney said that they didn’t have those materials. Of course, that would be important to prepare for a hearing like that, and I think that’s why they took this recess, as you mentioned, and then when they came back, they said they would defer consideration on that item until Wednesday morning, because I think there were some real due process concerns. Eddie Andrews’ lawyer said that… I mean, they were emailed some of these materials while the hearing was ongoing.

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Laura Belin: on Tuesday morning, and that’s not adequate time for them to prepare a defense. So, in any case, it was just dropped balls by the candidate, and in my opinion, by the Secretary of State’s office as well.

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Dave Price: And correct me if I’m wrong.

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Kathie Obradovich: So then a beef by the person who filed the challenge, who was not at the, the first hearing.

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Dave Price: Initially.

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Kathie Obradovich: camp.

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Dave Price: He did show up.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, initially, and then, you know, claimed that he was totally…

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Kathie Obradovich: wouldn’t be allowed to speak and didn’t need to be there, and turned out that was kind of not really good advice, and so he kind of had a bone to chew with the Secretary of State’s office as well, you know, about

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Kathie Obradovich: You know, how this hearing was going to be conducted, and what his role in it might be.

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Dave Price: There was one thing, Laura, correct me if I’m wrong on this, I thought there was also an exchange where…

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Dave Price: Pate was getting on Andrews and his attorney about, hey, if you were missing stuff.

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Dave Price: you could have reached out on Monday to get it, right? Yes. Is that the way you understood?

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Laura Belin: I mean, I think it’s true that Eddie Anders, certainly, if I were a candidate and my positions were challenged, I would make sure, I would say, send me everything that’s related to this, but

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Laura Belin: I do think that the Secretary of State’s office, that should just be part of their normal process when anyone is challenged. I just can’t believe that they didn’t provide the candidate with all of the relevant documents. So yes, but there was, there were some sharp exchanges going back and forth with

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Laura Belin: Paul Page saying, we could have sent this to you, and you didn’t ask for it on Monday. But, I mean, the whole thing… yes, David Bush, who was the person who filed the challenge.

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Laura Belin: if it’s true that somebody in the Secretary of State’s office told him that he wouldn’t have an opportunity to speak, and then the first thing that happens on Tuesday when they go to that agenda item is.

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Laura Belin: is the challenger here to speak in support of the objection to the petitions. I mean, the whole thing was really fouled up, so… so he was able to come and speak at Wednesday morning’s hearing.

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Kathie Obradovich: So the missing petitions aside, though, I mean, I think it’s been a long-standing and much…

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Kathie Obradovich: I think much demonstrated axiom of this process is that you never get the minimum of signatures that you need, for the ballot. You need to get way more, because signatures do get challenged, and people do sign Mickey Mouse to petitions, you know? Somebody throws… puts a petition in your face and asks you to sign it, and just…

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Kathie Obradovich: So you sign your, you know, dog’s name, or whatever. And so… so you cannot… and, you know, potentially, if signatures were stolen, that’s… or went missing, that’s… that’s another issue, but you never just do a minimum of the signatures that you need. And running in there at the last minute was, you know, definitely a recipe for failure.

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Kathie Obradovich: So…

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Dave Price: Going through Tuesday’s hearing, Laura, I don’t know what was going through your head, but… so I’m sitting there listening to… and I’m trying to follow the math, right? Like, we sort of needed, like, an overhead projection or something with all the tallies up there, but as I mentioned, so you need 19 counties, you need 100 in each one of those.

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Dave Price: And as they were looking through and counting them, there was a portion of that Tuesday meeting where in at least two of the counties, it appeared that he would be below the 100 signature threshold. So as I was counting, I felt like he was stuck at 18 counties for a while.

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Dave Price: And I had whispered to a couple people close to me, holy crap, like, is it gonna work out that he is literally, like, one or two signatures short of qualifying when this is all said and done? Because that would be…

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Dave Price: I mean, my gosh, almost unforgivable, right? To not do enough work so that… and you end up falling that short. But then they… then they’re kind of going back, and… and Brenna Bird, to her credit, was very…

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Dave Price: Methodically going through and saying, okay, now you threw the, you know, this one was…

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Dave Price: signature was thrown out, what she would ask the Secretary of State’s staff, you know, what was wrong with this, what was this? She made it very… without… I sort of joked about a white screen, but it was a lot easier for us to follow, honestly, because we couldn’t see this stinkin’ thing, so we don’t know what’s exactly wrong with them. So she would… it seemed like she had done her due diligence to really get through them.

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Laura Belin: I think she was trying to be more methodical, which I appreciated, but there were so many problems, because the pages… sometimes they were referring to the page numbers on the objection that was filed, and sometimes they were referring to the pages

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Laura Belin: of the original petitions, and so I kind of wish they had done it a different way, like, let’s just start, for every challenged county, let’s just do page one, Secretary of State’s office, tell us how many signatures you counted on this page, and which ones you invalidated, and for what reason, because it was very hard to follow, and they ended up doing something very close to that near the end of Wednesday’s meeting, but it was…

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Laura Belin: Frustrating to listen to, and it was difficult to follow all the back and forth.

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Kathie Obradovich: Well, wasn’t it the paper size that initially got some signatures thrown out, and then they decided that the paper size was okay, and so at the very end, they were able to bring those signatures back.

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Laura Belin: That was…

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Kathie Obradovich: saved him, yeah.

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Laura Belin: There was that… that was… that was at least one county, and then there was at least one county where… so, for people who haven’t ever looked at these petitions, there’s a certain amount of information at the top of the page that’s, like, the candidate’s name, the county that the candidate’s from, the office they’re seeking, which primary it is, and then which county these signatures are from. And so…

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Laura Belin: certain fields at that top of that page, if the information is missing, you have to disqualify the entire page. But there was something where some of the petitions were challenged because there’s a box that checks, like.

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Laura Belin: candidate vacancy or something, and that box was not checked. And so, the challenger, this David Bush, had said all of those should be thrown out. But they determined that the law actually doesn’t require that candidate vacancy box to be

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Laura Belin: checked. So that was why, I think it was Harrison County got pulled back, because he had had whole pages of signatures disqualified that they ended up counting. But I was very confused at the end of Tuesday’s meeting, and I even asked the Secretary of State’s staff, so is he at 17 now, or 18?

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Laura Belin: I was confused about how many, but then I thought, well, it’ll all be sorted out on Wednesday morning.

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Dave Price: And I think Andrew’s was also, because I talked to him afterwards, and I think he didn’t know for sure, and they were… he, the whole time, was saying, I think we’re gonna be okay here, but it’s probably gonna be close, but I’m like, well, where are you right now? Like, is it 17? Is it 18? Is it 19? So I don’t think he was all that certain. So then you fast forward to Wednesday.

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Dave Price: And then Bush all but, like, broke down in tears as he is talking about

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Dave Price: why he decided to get involved, and said his son brought this up, and that he believes in election integrity, and then I think he was talking about the federal legislation that Trump’s trying to get through.

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Kathie Obradovich: Well, and he had gotten…

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Dave Price: seem to get emotional.

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Laura Belin: Yeah.

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Kathie Obradovich: some online backlash for filing this challenge and then not initially being at the hearing, and I think he was feeling, perhaps under some pressure and maybe under attack.

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Kathie Obradovich: For having… having filed this challenge, so…

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Laura Belin: And I… by the way, if anyone wants to watch this, I did post… I posted the whole hearing from Wednesday, but I also posted just the portion of David Bush’s opening remarks on the Bleeding Heartland YouTube channel, if anyone is curious to see what we’re talking about. But I think also he was getting criticism, because David Bush had donated $5,000 to Adam Steen’s campaign.

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Laura Belin: And he wasn’t candid about the fact that Steen’s campaign staff or representative, somebody helped him compile this objection. I can just tell you from years of following these ballot access challenges at the state objection panel, there are some that are clearly just filed by a random citizen who says, you know, so-and-so doesn’t really live in the district, or whatever reasons they have. But you can tell when somebody submits

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Laura Belin: dozens of pages of material, and the way that they’re citing the law. Clearly, this wasn’t something that

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Laura Belin: some guy just did all on his own. Usually, that is a sign that some people or attorneys or somebody with a connection to another campaign probably helped them with it, and it would have been better, I think, for everybody if both the Steen campaign and David Bush had been more upfront from the beginning about where this challenge was coming from.

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Kathie Obradovich: So, yeah, and this is where the real dogfight is now coming in, right? You had Eddie Andrews sort of, sort of…

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Kathie Obradovich: accusing the STEAM campaign initially, and then, you know, the STEAM campaign was asked about it.

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Kathie Obradovich: And then, you know, this all blew up at a candidate forum, and, you know, the big picture for me is, one, look at how negative this campaign has gone all of a sudden. You know, it has not really been except

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Kathie Obradovich: directed at Randy Feenstra, who’s not really been at these forums, and he wasn’t at the one

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Kathie Obradovich: this week, but he’s, he has been the target all along. And now these challengers, you know, these people who are, you know, at least in the public’s eye, maybe seen as challengers to Randy Feenstra, who’s the best known of all of these candidates and the best funded, you know, all of a sudden, they are attacking each other. And my, my first thought when I, when I saw this was.

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Kathie Obradovich: Randy Feaster must be loving this.

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Laura Belin: Oh, yeah. It was the perfect… nothing could have turned out better for Randy Feenstra, because he has more candidates on the ballot, that’s better for his chances of winning with a plurality over 35%. And, as you said, these candidates who otherwise would be fighting to consolidate the non-Feenstra vote, now they’re all arguing with each other, so Randy Feenstra’s

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Laura Belin: key strategist, Brian Dumas, has been absolutely… you can tell he’s loving, getting in these little digs at Adam Steen all week.

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Dave Price: And the Steam campaign really had kind of differing explanations for what was going on, and it wasn’t until Thursday where they then

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Dave Price: put out a statement and talked about election integrity, it matters deeply, and as a part of our commitment to election integrity, our team reviewed the nomination petitions for each candidate in this primary, because I believe in ensuring every candidate lawfully meets the requirements to be on the ballot. And then, it talks about David Bush.

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Dave Price: And that he is a, quote, fine man, and while he pursued this challenge on his own.

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Dave Price: the campaign is saying we provided the petitions to him, and their initial statement was misleading about what this was, and it says, as a Christian, there will also be grace as we learn from this moment and move forward. And it…

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Dave Price: It’s…

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Dave Price: I guess I’m curious how this is going to stick with people. Look, maybe this blows up and it goes away and nobody cares.

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Dave Price: But it has become this flashpoint in this race. For Eddie Andrews, who doesn’t have…

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Dave Price: You know, he has a limited campaign infrastructure, he has limited dollars, he just barely squeaked in a couple of different ways, so he’s made his way in. Brad Sherman has jumped in on this and criticized Steen for this. I don’t know if Lane has yet. I’m not really sure if he talked about this, but Andrews, during the Thursday night dinner, called on Steen to drop out.

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Dave Price: Eva, and so this is sort of a… kind of a rallying cry for Andrews, and maybe his chance to kind of get some juice in the race.

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Laura Belin: I…

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Kathie Obradovich: And I got an email this week, and I’m not even going to go into it, because I don’t know who it’s from, but had a litany of complaints about Lane as well.

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Dave Price: I wonder if I have the same one.

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Laura Belin: Probably.

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Laura Belin: spammed everybody.

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Dave Price: From a person, I don’t know.

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Laura Belin: Correct.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, and so, you know, it just really… it was a variety of ways where this campaign just seems to have gone really negative all of a sudden, so…

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Laura Belin: Well, the best… I mean, Feenstra is in a great position right now, from my perspective. He’s… it’s… the likelihood of somebody else consolidating enough support to overtake Feenstra and get more than 35%, I just struggle to see how that can happen. And I don’t really think that Eddie Anders is going to get a ton of traction. I mean, he still has no staff.

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Laura Belin: and very little money. So, as the candidates try to reach the

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Laura Belin: pretty big voter universe for a statewide primary. We could have more than 200,000 people voting in this primary, and so I just think it’s gonna be hard… it’s hard for me to see Eddie Andrews picking up a lot of support from this.

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Kathie Obradovich: He did have a good moment from it, though. I mean, he gets up at a candidate forum and sings, I will survive, and gets a big round of applause, and so it’s entirely possible that he, you know, gets some, you know, favorable attention out of what really could have been

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Kathie Obradovich: a complete debacle, you know, for his campaign, and, you know, a sign that he’s

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Kathie Obradovich: You know, not, you know, not up to the… you know, if you can’t… if you can’t manage to file campaign petitions, right, you know, some people might think, well, you don’t really necessarily belong on the ballot.

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Kathie Obradovich: But, you know, I think he was able to turn that, then, into a positive, and that, you know, like, I don’t… I agree, I don’t really see this being a long-lived moment, but it was a good moment, and some candidates in a big field like this never, never even get that.

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Laura Belin: And the one thing he did was he turned in 22 or 23 counties where he had more than 100 signatures, so even though he lost a few of those, he was still able to barely make that 19. That’s where we had spoken on a previous show about Julie Stouch. That was her problem, was that

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Laura Belin: She submitted exactly 19 counties, and so then when there were problems on the header page for some of these petitions, and she lost the whole page of signatures, she didn’t have a cushion to absorb that.

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Dave Price: I wanted to piggyback on something you said, Laura. Now that this appears to be a five-person race, and we assume they’ll all stick in there for the duration now that they’ve qualified.

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Dave Price: I… I have struggled to figure out what… like, Feenstra…

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Dave Price: is the favorite, obviously. Member of Congress, has money.

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Dave Price: has some of the establishment behind him. So then you have the other four. So, and, you know, clearly there’s some dissatisfaction with some in the… in the base.

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Dave Price: who do not like Feenstra for whatever reason. Some don’t think he’s socially right enough and hasn’t gone through with stuff. Some don’t think that he’s MAGA enough.

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Dave Price: you know, whatever their concerns are about him. But I’m curious with the other four.

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Dave Price: to win, let’s say to actually win-win, so to get more than Feenster on primary night and get the necessary 35+,

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Dave Price: Like, how will that happen? And is it… is it issues when there may not be a lot of daylight on some of the main issues?

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Dave Price: for these folks, like, how are they gonna separate? Is it gonna end up being, you know, sort of a personality contest? Is it… as long as you get enough money so that you get out in front of enough people? Like, I’m really wondering, you know, and I… Lane, I haven’t seen him a lot in action yet, as he’s just sort of ramping up, but you know, he’s really leaning into Maha, right? And so, thinks that… and that is a unique path, potentially, I don’t know if

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Dave Price: you know, we’ll have to find out if there’s enough of the potential Republican primary folks who would…

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Dave Price: who would follow him for that, but I don’t know that… I guess I’m struggling to see how issues will separate these guys enough. So then does it come down to, you know, to personality?

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Kathie Obradovich: Well, yeah, I mean, we’ve got Steen really leaning into the evangelical vote.

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Kathie Obradovich: He’s got the endorsement of not only the Family Leader Board, but the, you know, well-known leader.

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Kathie Obradovich: leader, and so, you know, I think that you have, people, they’re carving up the big Republican constituencies here. And, you know, I think part of the strategy has to be

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Kathie Obradovich: For convention, you know? How do you… Which they don’t want to say, right?

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Dave Price: Nobody says, well, I’m not gonna win.

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Kathie Obradovich: this. With a big field like this, for some of these candidates, nomination at convention is probably their only real path and their best hope.

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Laura Belin: Well, this was a big blow to Adam Steen then, because I think that was what they were banking on. The family leader was trying to turn out its network, and Steen turning out his network to get people elected as county convention delegates who could then go on to be district and state convention delegates. And I think that… I’m sure that there are quite a few of those delegates who strongly support Adam Steen, but if it does go to convention.

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Laura Belin: I mean, I don’t know that that’s gonna be messy, and I don’t think it’s gonna be decided on the first ballot, let’s just put it that way.

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Dave Price: It’s more fun if it’s not.

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Laura Belin: Of course, but this is what we as reporters don’t.

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Dave Price: want to go there and see one ballot and be done? Come on.

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Laura Belin: I mean, this was just a big backfire move. I mean, I understand the challenging of the petitions, and it was funny, because I posted a lot of material from these meetings this week, and I got some… some of the people who follow me who aren’t from Iowa, from Illinois, I had a couple people say, I don’t understand, like, why are people angry that the signatures were challenged? I mean, in Illinois, it’s just the expectation that, of course, you’re going to try to challenge your rival signature.

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Dave Price: Excuse me?

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Laura Belin: I said, well, in Iowa, I mean, there are a lot of hard… what I would consider fair game, hardball politics, but still fair game, but a lot of Iowans really don’t like that. They find it very unpleasant that somebody would challenge their rival’s petition. So, the way… the whole way it was handled by the Steen campaign was very clumsy, but I don’t… I think it’s…

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Laura Belin: I understand why he did that, right? He’s trying to consolidate the Christian conservative vote. Eddie Andrews is competing for the same niche of voters, and Eddie Andrews clearly seemed to be on the Fed. You know, it wasn’t clear.

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Kathie Obradovich: Dad.

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Laura Belin: Oh, why not, Challenge?

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Kathie Obradovich: that.

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Laura Belin: They should have just… they shouldn’t have tried to pretend that this David Bush was just acting independently. I mean, that whole part of it is… is where I think they fell down.

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Dave Price: And it sort of makes this…

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Dave Price: Kind of continue… the conversation continue on.

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Dave Price: unnecessarily. And, you know, and I think we should also point out that it doesn’t make anything sinister if Steen himself reached out to Andrews and said, hey, drop out and support me. That stuff happens all the time in these races. Right. Like, there’s not… while…

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Dave Price: No doubt, if you’re Eddie Andrews, yeah, that stings, and it’s, you know, kind of a kick to your ego that somebody does this, and you can take it as…

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Dave Price: as a slight, but it doesn’t make anything sinister about that. We see that all the time in politics. There’s just a lot of it that doesn’t necessarily creep out into the public domain. It’s kept, you know, it’s kept mostly confidential, these conversations.

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Kathie Obradovich: And, you know, Eddie Andrews gave up his House seat to run. You know, he’s… he can’t run for re-election, can’t… can’t do both, so he is… he is giving something up to run, and, you know, if…

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Kathie Obradovich: If he had been, disqualified, you know, then he, you know, he’s not only not able to run for higher office, but not able to run for the one that he holds. So that, you know, that’s a different… that’s a sacrifice, you know, trying to…

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Kathie Obradovich: to run for office.

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Laura Belin: It is. I mean.

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Laura Belin: I don’t find it surprising that Adam Steen, or maybe other candidates as well, would reach out to Eddie Andrews and try to get his support in exchange for dropping out, because, let’s face it, the latest fundraising information we have is from January, but Eddie Andrews only raised about $30,000 last year. He had about $5,000 cash on hand. I mean, many state legislative candidates raised more than that. So it clearly, he was not…

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Laura Belin: building a viable statewide campaign operation, and so I think, I mean, maybe he was offended, or maybe he didn’t like getting the call, but he should have expected it.

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Kathie Obradovich: No.

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Dave Price: You mentioned Julie Stouch, and so that made me think of Rob Sand, and I was watching him, because I’m a people watcher to a fault, and so I’m sitting in the, you know, and as I mentioned at the early… at the onset of our recording here this week, so he rightly so,

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Dave Price: recused himself so that he wouldn’t be in on this decision. So he’s sitting off to the side, and I know the first day he was eating, like, a burger and drinking a milk or something, you know, while this was happening. He was kind of, doomscrolling on his phone or whatever he was doing. But I was thinking,

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Dave Price: I wish I could see, like, a thought bubble.

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Dave Price: Or if I could see who he was texting or communicating with, if he was doing that during, but, you know, like, how does… he no longer has a primary, and, you know, and, you know, nothing against Julie Stouch, but, I mean, that was an uphill climb, right? Even if she would have somehow qualified, that would have been a…

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Dave Price: a heck of a lot for her to overcome to topple him in the Democratic primary, but I just wonder.

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Kathie Obradovich: By the way…

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Kathie Obradovich: We should probably just mention, she didn’t make the ballot. I think when we talked about that race two weeks ago, which we recorded two shows on one day, we didn’t know that she didn’t.

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Dave Price: Yeah, the U.

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Kathie Obradovich: She didn’t make the ballot, and she had… it was, like, after we recorded later that day, on Friday the 13th, that she put out a statement saying she didn’t…

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Dave Price: Don’t shake it.

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Kathie Obradovich: Make it… yeah.

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Dave Price: Yeah, exactly, yes, thank you for that. So, so, you know, Sam doesn’t have an opponent, so, you know, he doesn’t have to sweat out the primary, but I just was thinking, like, what the heck is that guy thinking as he’s watching this messiness play out, and doesn’t have to weigh in, he can just kind of sit there and take it all in?

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah.

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Kathie Obradovich: I mean, certainly these candidates have a vital interest in what’s going on in the opposite party’s race, and, you know, he doesn’t know who he’s going to be running against, and I’m sure he has thoughts about which of these candidates he would prefer to run against.

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Kathie Obradovich: So… but yeah, I mean, he’s… he’s an astute guy. I’m sure that he realizes or recognized that this… this was nothing but great news for Randy Painstra, so…

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Laura Belin: Well, this is… the more discord there is in the Republican Party, the better it is for Rob Sand, whoever he ends up facing. I assume it’s gonna be Feenster at this point, but even if it isn’t, I mean, there’s gonna be bad blood, and the Republicans, they have an advantage, we’ve talked about before, they have a big advantage in recent election performance and voter registration numbers, but they are going to have to be unified, because Sand is a strong candidate.

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Laura Belin: it’s not, like, a sure thing that whoever their nominee is is going to be able to beat Rob Sand. And I thought it was interesting last week, I mean, Adam

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Laura Belin: Steen’s campaign has tried to highlight the ways in which they think he would be a stronger candidate against Sand, and all of this intrigue with Eddie Andrews, that just knocked that message completely out of the news.

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Dave Price: Do you realize we just filled an entire episode with literally one thing? I joked that this could be, like, one of those Netflix, like, 5 or 6 doc specials, but… I mean, goodness, this… I joked to somebody that it reminded me, from back in the day, the whole, Ron Paul scandal with Kent Sorensen and.

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Laura Belin: Oh, yes.

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Dave Price: Michelle Bachman and all of that, whatever, caucus cycle that was, was that.

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Laura Belin: 2012.

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Dave Price: 2012, yeah.

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Laura Belin: 12.

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Dave Price: I should know that, because that was what my first book, part of that was in my first book, but it just sort of reminded me of that, that it’s like all of this unexpected drama

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Dave Price: that sort of came out of nowhere, and then it… but it wasn’t, like, one and done. It just had all these little parts that kept on going. And maybe this thing…

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Dave Price: you know, it’s Friday now, people are gonna be thinking about

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Dave Price: College basketball and their normal lives and everything else.

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Kathie Obradovich: Awesome.

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Dave Price: this chills. Yeah, nice cyclone shout-out again.

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Laura Belin: Before we close, can I just mention that the state objection panel did exclude Xavier Kerrigan from the 3rd Congressional District Democratic ballot. He was below the overall threshold and below the threshold

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Laura Belin: in the number of counties that he needed. He needed 1,726 total, and then he needed at least 47 signatures in at least half the counties in the district. So that… what that means is Saratogariot also does not have a competitive primary in that third con…

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Laura Belin: Yeah, just wanted to mention that.

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Dave Price: we could do a whole other show on this, but a lot of these, at one point, like, if we were talking in January.

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Dave Price: the difference between January and the end of March, man, we’ve lost a bunch of candidates for a variety of reasons, but I suppose that’s how the process works. But it at once… you know, the Sarah Trone Garriott, Jennifer Confirst primary was an interesting one, I thought, coming into this, and Confirst couldn’t raise the money that Trone Garriott could, and so she decided to step out, and

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Dave Price: Xavier Kerrigan, I’m not really sure. I think we probably had our doubts that he was going to be able to come through with what he needed, and he didn’t really put up a fight in the objection panel hearing. I mean, he basically just said, this is a tough process, and one part, I think he really wanted to praise the volunteers who helped him, and I think he said something about he should have worked harder.

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Laura Belin: I mean, a lot of candidates who don’t raise money and don’t have paid staff do manage to qualify for the ballot, so I certainly think that he could have qualified for the ballot. Travis Terrell in the 1st Congressional

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Laura Belin: He managed to easily qualify, and all three of the Democrats running in the 4th district, that’s a real long shot, but big district, so they need… there are more counties that they need to get… meet those signature thresholds in, and all three of them managed to qualify for the ballot. So, in any case, but I just wanted to mention that before we closed.

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Dave Price: Yeah, I’m glad you did. Alright, so when this drops, we will know if Kathy’s face continues to light up as it does now, and secondarily, I should text you Friday night during the second half to see if your phone is on silent.

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Kathie Obradovich: I’ll see if I’m awake.

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Dave Price: To see if you can actually just, like, take a… take a mid-afternoon little power nap, get a little late-afternoon caffeine, you can… you can power through the… it’s two… it’s a two-hour game!

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Kathie Obradovich: You know, I’m going from this call to early this afternoon, talking to a middle school class in Akron, Westfield about libel law, and the… do you guys remember the Cherry Sisters case, landmark?

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Kathie Obradovich: a fair commentary, fair comment, ruling from the Iowa Supreme Court, so yeah, I’m, I won’t be napping, I’ll be trying to educate

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Kathie Obradovich: Middle schoolers about the importance of fair comment.

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Dave Price: Very cool.

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Laura Belin: Thank goodness for the Iowa Supreme Court rulings that protect press freedom.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yes, yes.

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Dave Price: which seem to be under attack in many ways. Good to talk to you both. Thanks for letting me, letting us explore this topic. It was such a fascinating one this week. There are certain ones of these that I feel like…

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Dave Price: when we’re old and gray and retired, we’re gonna… we’re gonna… when we’re sitting around in the retirement home together, this will be one of them that we may remember because of its uniqueness. I mean, who knows? I almost want to fast-forward to the ending to see how this turns out, but we would miss.

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Kathie Obradovich: That’s okay.

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Dave Price: There, if we did that, so…

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Dave Price: Thanks for indulging me with that. And thank you, for all of your support, for those of you who have

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Dave Price: Subscribe to this podcast, who watch it, who listen to it, who have shared it with your friends and family. Thanks especially to those of you who have financially contributed to that to keep this sucker going. We very much appreciate it. I got a very nice text this past week, again, from somebody at the Iowa State House talking about that this was from a Republican who really enjoyed the discussion in last week’s episode, kind of

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Dave Price: the deep dive into the U.S. Senate race, where we frankly focused more on the Democratic side than the Republican side, but we very much appreciate the feedback from all of you and the support in this kind of independent journalism world. It’s very essential.

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Dave Price: To get that support, so we very much appreciate it. Thanks for joining us this week. Our thanks to Spencer Dirks, who puts this together every week, and we will talk to all of you next week.

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