We had a packed week in Iowa politics to break down on this episode with our loyal guests and collaborators Laura Belin of Bleeding Heartland and Kathie Obradovich of Iowa Capital Dispatch.

We start at the Statehouse, where health advocates pushing for a tobacco tax increase arrived to find legislators already headed home for Easter — leaving us wondering whether the April 21st adjournment date is anywhere close to realistic, with House budget targets still outstanding and real divisions between the chambers.

On the campaign trail, Rob Sand held a news conference rolling out reform proposals including term limits, age limits for officeholders, and changes to primary voting. We dig into the politics of keeping the details vague and what the Republican-controlled legislature is likely to do with any of it.

Then we turn to Zach Lahn, whose week felt like an unofficial campaign launch — a new West Des Moines headquarters, an Iowa Press appearance, and 180+ people at a Grimes town hall. We look at his populist “extraction economy” message, how he positions himself as a change candidate without criticizing his own party, and whether two months is enough time to catch Randy Feenstra.

A note on Rob Sand’s primary voting proposal:

During our discussion, we didn’t have all the details on hand. Sand wants a single open primary ballot — no party registration required. Voters pick their top choice per race, the top three to five vote-getters advance to the general, and the candidate with the most votes wins.

Thanks to all of you that make us a part of your weekly routine, we really appreciate it. If you are able to contribute financially, or do already, we are grateful. Have a Happy Passover and Easter, we’ll see ya next Saturday morning :)

AI generated transcript below:

Dave Price: Hi, and welcome back to the Iowa Down Ballad Podcast. Thanks for tuning in this week. I’m Dave Price, along with my Iowa Riders Collaborative

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Dave Price: colleagues, that’s like a tongue twister, Kathie Obradovich and Laura Belin joining us on this Good Friday. Hello, ladies.

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Kathie Obradovich: Hello!

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Laura Belin: Good to see ya.

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Dave Price: I don’t want to get, like, too super personal on these things, but may we please offer a shout-out to Kathie, who is off work on this Friday, but sent a very kind message to us this week.

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Dave Price: letting us know she was off, but still committing to yak it up with us. So, thank you very much before you…

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Dave Price: holiday weekend.

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Kathie Obradovich: This is like a, you know, sitting down with friends, with a cup of coffee, and, you know, so…

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Dave Price: What do you mean it’s like sitting down with friends? Is it not sitting down with actual.

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Kathie Obradovich: Right, right.

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Kathie Obradovich: We’re not in the same room together, but we are sitting down. Fair point.

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Dave Price: record, I stand, but whatever. You know, whatever. Hey, a bunch of stuff we want to talk to you about in the race of governor. Rob Sand put out some things this week that we want to talk about this week. Zach Lane, it sort of feels like this is almost like his launch.

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Dave Price: In a few ways as he’s, out and about. But I wanted to start with the legislature, and both of you have covered that place for a long time as well.

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Dave Price: The one thing I just wanted to mention is that sometimes it’s fascinating to me how their decisions will impact well-intentioned people, and I was standing there at a news conference early Wednesday afternoon, and it’s sort of the second swipe at this for the health advocates who are trying like crazy to get this tobacco tax increase.

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Dave Price: push through, and on vaping products and such. And so…

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Dave Price: Good speakers, they have doctors, health advocates,

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Dave Price: organizational leaders, and a good crowd of several dozen people in front of them, and they were explaining, hey, let’s be respectful, tell your story, when we’re done here, go upstairs, meet with the legislators, lay this all out about why this is important to do this, you know, be good listeners, respect their time, blah blah blah. And it’s almost like this split-screen moment, though, as I’m standing

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Dave Price: there, because as they’re going, and we’re on the first floor of the rotunda there.

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Dave Price: There are legislators with their satchels over their shoulders, hoofing it out there for the long weekend because

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Dave Price: both chambers weren’t really going to do much of anything Wednesday, and definitely not Thursday. You know, there were some, maybe, committee meetings throughout the week, but they’re going home for the long weekend.

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Dave Price: And I was thinking, man, that’s gotta suck for these people. The speakers were great, let’s go get them, let’s tell our stories, da-da-da-da-da.

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Dave Price: And they go upstairs and find a bunch of empty desks.

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Kathie Obradovich: The better advice for those folks should have been stand in the parking lot.

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Laura Belin: Yeah.

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Kathie Obradovich: between the building and the legislator’s parking lot, because then you can talk to them all as they’re heading home for the weekend.

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Laura Belin: So, it’s so hard to plan, and you’re at the mercy of what’s happening in the legislature. I’m involved with a nonprofit, A Thousand Friends of Iowa, and we do an annual awards ceremony in the rotunda that is planned 8 or 9 months ahead of time, and in 2023, we had reserved the rotunda for a Tuesday morning, and then…

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Laura Belin: we got bumped because the governor was signing the school voucher bill that had just passed in the House on the Monday night. So, you know, you just…

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Laura Belin: It’s very difficult. You never know what’s… no one would anticipate that that early in January that you would have a major bill signing in the rotunda when it happened.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, although the Wednesday before Easter, you can’t anticipate that, I think. It’s, you know, the Thursday before Easter is usually dead time at the legislature. Everybody wants to go home and spend the holiday with their families, etc. So yeah, there’s not… there’s not usually much happening, unless there’s a big bill that leaders want to push through, and then they will debate

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Kathie Obradovich: you know, they’ll debate it on Thursday, knowing everybody wants to go home, so…

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Dave Price: I was also stopped, reminding me on Wednesday that Thursday was supposed to be the University of Iowa Day in the Rotunda. That was the day they were able to get the space and get signed up on the calendar, and they decided

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Dave Price: There’s really not going to be much point here, because the legislators are going to be long gone, so they canceled it, so the Hawkeyes don’t get their time in the moment up there.

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Kathie Obradovich: They should just send Herky up on a random day.

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Dave Price: Maybe Hercy could help figure this out. We talked about this in our pregame chat, but I also wondered Wednesday if this is sort of our foreshadowing of what we are going to see. When this drops on the weekend, we will have slightly more than two weeks left in this scheduled session.

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Dave Price: Of, this… this calendar year, the 100 days…

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Dave Price: That they have in their timetable, and I’m just wondering, with some of these major decisions they still have to make, if they’re gonna have to essentially call timeout here sometime soon, where they send most of the members home, and committee chairs and leadership try to figure out these final agreements.

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Kathie Obradovich: I asked a very experienced Republican legislator, after the Pioneer Lawmaker joint session, you know, whether he sees any signs that

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Kathie Obradovich: the legislature might be moving toward the exit, you know, in a relatively on-time fashion. And I can’t really repeat the word that he said, but it was… he said, this is a something show.

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Dave Price: What could that four-letter word be?

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, I’ll just let you guys ruminate on that, but yeah, you know, he was like, no, no.

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Kathie Obradovich: And it, you know, basically because of the divisions between House and Senate, which I think will… everybody will want to tune in and hear us talk more about that next week.

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Dave Price: Yeah, and we should get, in this coming week, the House Republican budget targets. The governor’s put hers out, obviously, a while ago, and the Senate Republicans put theirs out, so now we’re kind of waiting on the House, and…

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Dave Price: We will see if the math will further show the divisions between the… between the chambers especially, but, clearly there’s some legislative…

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Dave Price: pauses that we’ve seen between the two chambers, so I suspect next week we’ll have a lot to dig in there.

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Laura Belin: Yeah, I have a… I have a family event in early May, and I told them, not… don’t count on me definitely being there. I mean, the scheduled adjourn date is April 21st, but… and I know that they… a lot of them, especially the ones who have primary challengers, they’d love to get out of there by early May, but I’m not sure that’s gonna happen.

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Dave Price: But they could go home and campaign while the decision makers are figuring it out.

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Kathie Obradovich: That’s true. Yeah, they can’t… they can’t raise money during the legislative session, so… Yeah. Right.

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Dave Price: Another incentive. All right, so a nice transition to the campaign side of things, and there were two big ones over this past week that I wanted us to get a chance to dive into. Let’s start with the Democratic

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Dave Price: pretty soon we call him the nominee, right? Rob Sand, he laid out on Thursday a number of initiatives. I think he had teased these up previously on social media, but this was a chance to do a news conference and lay some of these things out. Laura, you… you were,

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Dave Price: viewing online.

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Dave Price: Which I think is a good idea for these campaigns, right? I’m surprised they don’t do more of this, and it was a controlled setting, so…

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Dave Price: Technologically, since it was at his headquarters, it was an easy way to do this. House and Senate Democratic legislators do their weekly news conference like this, too, which is nice for people who aren’t right there. Anyway, so you were viewing through technology

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Dave Price: Some of the things that he was laying out struck me as…

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Dave Price: generically specific? I don’t know what the right word is. He’s throwing out some topics without…

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Dave Price: putting all of the finishing touches on there, saying that the idea here is get people talking about this, I believe in these in principle.

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Dave Price: I’m gonna be the Democratic governor, Republicans are still gonna be in charge of the legislature, we’ll work out the specifics, but let’s get the conversation going. What’d you make of it?

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Laura Belin: And I think this package, it’s a combination of some things that Rob Sand has been talking about at literally every town hall and event that he’s done. So, implementing transparency and new rules for the school voucher program, for instance, or restoring the powers of the state auditor’s office, so reversing that 2023 law that he talks about so often. But some of them were new age limits.

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Laura Belin: for people serving in public office, term limits, and as you said, he didn’t say… he didn’t have a specific number in mind. The mandatory retirement age for judges in Iowa used to be 72. It was recently raised last year to 78, so he said he’d be open to 78, he’d be open to 72, this is all something that could be negotiated. And likewise with term limits, I thought it was interesting that he said not

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Laura Belin: Not only was he talking about governor and legislature, but all of the statewide elected officials, and of course, Iowa recently had the longest-serving attorney general and the longest-serving state treasurer in U.S. history, but he’s interested in making… well, and governor, that’s true, but he’s interested in making all of those offices term-limited, but he didn’t throw out a specific number of terms or years.

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Dave Price: But he also said with that, that…

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Dave Price: he would be willing to negotiate whether you grandfather people in, which might be the appropriate term here, too, for those who are already in there, and it’s sort of the next class that would be affected by this. Kathie, I didn’t mean to cut you off.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, no, that’s okay. Your point, though, about not putting in too many details, is it politically wise, because

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Kathie Obradovich: the more you put in details, the more somebody will say, well, I know, you know, my grandpa’s 78, and he’s sharp as a tack, and he could be governor of Iowa, no problem, you know, and somebody else could say, well, you know, I’m 75, and there’s no way I have the energy to be, you know, a governor, or, you know, state treasurer, or whatever. So people, I think, put their own

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Kathie Obradovich: experience onto these numbers, and I think it’s very hard, you know, to reach a consensus, if you can even reach a consensus that there should be an age limit at all. And didn’t he mention, that he wants cognitive tests?

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Laura Belin: Cognitive test.

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Kathie Obradovich: And a civics test, right, to… and so…

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Kathie Obradovich: I mean, I think that those things would be very hard to get through the legislature, but, but you, you know, the age limit thing, you know, that, that affects Republicans and Democrats. That is not… that’s not really…

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Kathie Obradovich: a partisan effect, at least. And then secondly, the term limit thing, which I think, you know, there’s a lot of pros and cons on term limits, but again, you, you have both Republicans and Democrats who have served way more than, you know, 3 or even 4 terms. So, so it’s interesting how

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Kathie Obradovich: You know, people will… vote their own self-interest, I think, on that.

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Laura Belin: Oh, I…

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Laura Belin: The House Speaker, Pat Grassley, the grandson of 92-year-old U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley, is not, in my opinion, likely to let any age limit legislation reach the floor of the Iowa House, but I guess we’ll find out if it comes to that.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, and term limits, you know, governors…

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Kathie Obradovich: You know, if you term limit… if you term limit

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Kathie Obradovich: office holders. It just gives… it tends to give a lot of power to the bureaucracy. You know, you… because they’re the ones, then, who have the longevity and the institutional knowledge. I, you know, I… I think that there’s… there should be some concern about that.

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Kathie Obradovich: But secondly, the part that appeals to me about term limits is the tendency of

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Kathie Obradovich: lawmakers, when they know they’re leaving office, to suddenly develop some independent thinking, you know, that they, you know, they… and, you know, I think we have some of that in the Iowa legislature anyway, with people who are running for re-election. But, you know, when… suddenly, when they’re unfettered by the idea that they have to run for re-election, you know, we’re seeing this right now in Congress with Senator Tom Tillis for

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Kathie Obradovich: for example, going off on Kristi Noem in a

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Kathie Obradovich: in a Senate hearing, you know, having the courage to be able to do that sometimes only happens when an elected official is headed for the exit. So, I would like to see more of that. I would like to see more, you know, internal, you know, some more contestinal or constitutional fortitude.

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Kathie Obradovich: You know, from lawmakers who are running for re-election, but if this is the only way to get it, I’d be maybe willing to look at that.

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Laura Belin: I mean, political scientists are very skeptical about term limits, because it does empower, in addition to the bureaucrats and the executive agencies, it empowers lobbyists and legislative staff, because you no longer have legislators with that deep institutional memory of how things used to work. And so, personally, I’m not a fan of term limits, but it’s always… the polls always show it’s very popular, and so that’s why we see Zach Walls and

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Laura Belin: Sarah Trungariat and some other candidates have also said, I think Joe Mitchell has made term limits one of his central planks, so it’s something that’s popular in both parties.

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Kathie Obradovich: You know, in Iowa, another… and just one other point, because Iowa has nonpartisan redistricting.

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Kathie Obradovich: There is, more turnover, I think, in our legislature because of that every 10 years than, than we see perhaps in some other states. So, you know, it is a popular concept, and like I said, I’d love to see it in Congress, just because of the, you know, ability, perhaps, to break some of these stalemates.

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Kathie Obradovich: But I don’t think we really, really need it in Iowa.

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Dave Price: Just to play on the other side of it, you know, to play devil’s advocate maybe for those who criticize Sand or anyone else pitching things that don’t have a realistic path, like.

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Dave Price: I don’t… I think some voters, though, would reward that effort. And… and…

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Dave Price: don’t think that it’s a bad thing to just discount something that is unlikely to pass. He may push the conversation, and some of these things, as Laura’s pointed out, would be popular with people. Flipping this around so that elected officials have to pass a civics test, or whatever the heck that would look like, which, let’s be honest, that’s…

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Dave Price: pretty far-fetched that that’s likely gonna go through, right? But there is a way to kind of flip the script there, to kind of put the onus on them to see, like, alright, you’re gonna represent us, let’s see what the heck you know about things.

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Dave Price: The other thing that we… I don’t think we mentioned yet with his proposals would be the, making it easier for independents to vote in primaries. Yes.

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Laura Belin: Thank you for mentioning that.

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Dave Price: And that… that, to me, is one more way that he’s running as this… despite being a dude who was elected as a Democrat and a two-termer here, he’s sort of running as this… or attempting to run as this outsider, distancing himself

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Dave Price: from the Democratic brand. Laura, we’ve mentioned this on the show a few times about your research, looking at the uphill climb for a Democrat because of the registered voter disadvantage that Democrats have, but that’s probably a smart political play.

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Dave Price: Here, right? Reaching out to independents, saying, hey, if you want to vote for a Democrat for the Senate, but a Republican for governor, you ought to have those. You ought to have that ability.

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Laura Belin: And he’s been saying that. I heard him say that in the town halls last summer as well, and he’s… really, he’s been running a general election-style campaign all the way through, even when he thought he would have a Democratic primary opponent, Julie Stouch. He always seemed to be…

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Laura Belin: to me, messaging more of a general election campaign. But Iowa’s primaries, I think they already are fairly accessible to independents, because you… we have same-day voter registration, so any independent…

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Dave Price: You can’t split, though.

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Laura Belin: You can’t… well, but you have to choose one or the other, but even under his system, you would still have to choose one or the other. I mean, independents wouldn’t be able to vote in.

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Dave Price: I couldn’.

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Laura Belin: primary.

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Dave Price: his answer, and there was a follow-up that my partner asked there, and we didn’t… because I whispered it to her, and it didn’t… he didn’t feel… he didn’t really answer it. So, is it set up? I didn’t understand the… how he’s trying to do this.

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Laura Belin: I don’t… well, I mean, in the states that have open… so, okay, so some states have completely closed primaries.

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Dave Price: You have to…

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Laura Belin: be a Democrat or a Republican to vote in the primary. Iowa has… but Iowa has more of a mixed system. Because we have same-day voter registration, it’s very easy for independents to show up and change their voter registration to Democrat or Republican and vote in that primary. Some states don’t make it as easy. And then, some states have completely open primaries, but I think even in those states.

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Laura Belin: you have to choose one or the other. You can’t vote in both parties’ primaries on the same day, so… because otherwise, everybody, there would be an incentive for everybody to just become a registered independent and then go make mischief in the other…

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Dave Price: about that. I want to ask him more about it, because I may have gone down the wrong path. I thought he was pushing some kind of system where you would be able to…

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Dave Price: Go both ways.

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Kathie Obradovich: Well, he did say, or no primary, which would be more toward the ranked choice voting, right?

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Dave Price: ranked choice, I think, right.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, it’s…

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Laura Belin: It’s already banned in Iowa law, right?

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Kathie Obradovich: You have multiple candidates on the ballot, though, and then, you know, you might have a runoff or something like that instead of, instead of a traditional primary. Speaking of somebody, though, who doesn’t register either Republican or Democrat, for professional reasons, you know, registering as a Democrat to vote in a primary and then switching back

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Kathie Obradovich: is not… is not really viable for me. I mean, there are people that don’t choose a party, just, you know, either for professional reasons or other… other reasons. So… so it’s not… Iowa doesn’t have an open system. And, you know, that’s a public record, though.

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Laura Belin: Yeah, you’d be in the same boat, though, Kathie, under his system. If you remained an independent and then voted in the Democratic or Republican primary, it would still be a public record as part of your voting file that you did cast a ballot in that year’s Republican or Democratic primary. So I don’t think it would solve that problem for people.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, yeah.

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Dave Price: I’m trying to get some clarification on this. I don’t mean to be rude and have you look at the top of my head while you two were sharing your insights. I’m gonna try to get an answer on one of these questions here.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, it’s… I think it’s a purely academic discussion anyway, that’s the…

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Laura Belin: Yeah, the legislature is probably not gonna do this, I would guess.

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Laura Belin: And I think, again, a lot of political science… I mean, there’s a debate over it, but many people favor closed primaries because they say you should have some investment in a political party to control who that party’s nominee is. I mean, if you have no allegiance whatsoever to a party.

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Laura Belin: then why should you be involved in choosing? I mean, so that’s the counterargument, but clearly a lot of people, and especially the growing share of the Iowa electorate who do choose to affiliate with neither party, this is going to be a popular thing to say, let’s make it easier for independents to participate in the process.

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Kathie Obradovich: And there are a lot of places in Iowa where the primary is the election, right?

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Laura Belin: Right.

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Kathie Obradovich: you know, look at the 4th District, for example, you know, no disrespect to the Democrats who are running, and we’ve seen a lot more here in this cycle than we have in the past, but in a lot of places in Iowa, you know, and including, you know, for local offices here in Polk County, where I live.

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Kathie Obradovich: You know, if I wanted to, actually make a mark and vote in a county supervisor race, for example, or, you know, in my, in my neck of the woods, probably the primary is the election, so…

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Dave Price: Okay, so Zach Lane, the Republican candidate, it felt like this is kind of launch week for him, so we’re about almost exactly 2 months out from the June 2nd primary, and this was… felt like kind of the blitz. He did a handful of…

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Dave Price: campaign appearances, he did his campaign headquarters opening on Thursday in West Des Moines, he did Iowa Press on Iowa PBS, recorded that on Thursday as well.

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Dave Price: Laura, you went to the headquarters opening, so we segued from sand in the late morning to Zach Lane in the mid-afternoon, and he did kind of brief remarks to the people, had a…

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Dave Price: maybe two dozen people, something like that, gathered there, did some brief remarks, and then took media questions for a while, and I’m curious what your take was.

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Laura Belin: I mean, he…

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Laura Belin: He has a… he was talking about how this is a nicer campaign office than anybody should have. I mean, he’s got quite a good setup there. I think that it’s gonna be really tough…

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Laura Belin: with only 2 months left before the primary, for him to get his name ID up, and that was something that he emphasized in his remarks to the media. First of all, he’s done some very major national podcasts recently with huge audiences, and he’s got digital advertising already going, probably some of our listeners have seen those ads already, and that he’s gonna have a very aggressive push on

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Laura Belin: TV, direct mail, radio, so people are going to be hearing a lot from him. I’m so curious to see

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Laura Belin: what… how many people this message will resonate with, and whether there is time. He has a very different message from the other Republican candidates, and can he get enough traction? I mean, he said we’re peaking at the right time, we didn’t peak too early, and we’re gaining steam, so… but two months is not a long time.

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Kathie Obradovich: You know, he’s interesting in a way, also, I think, trying to appeal to people who are not, traditional.

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Kathie Obradovich: MAGA Republicans. He’s going off-script in some cases from the party line, not in the same way that Rob Sand is, but

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Kathie Obradovich: But I can draw a comparison there. You know, for example, he is… I think, like some Republicans, have become, very distrustful of big business.

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Kathie Obradovich: And so, some of the things that he is saying, which could, you know, attract some middle-of-the-road voters or people who, you know, might be more aligned with Democrats on environmental issues, for example, talking about ag chemicals, really making the cancer issue, a very central part of his message.

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Kathie Obradovich: In a way that…

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Kathie Obradovich: you know, could be… could be very bipartisan. But then on the other hand, you know, he also, has been endorsed by the Maha PAC. He’s got a pretty, significant anti-vax, position, which he had, at this event, I think, or maybe it was Iowa Press.

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Kathie Obradovich: tied that back to his distrust of big business, the big pharmaceutical companies. He thinks that the vaccine.

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Dave Price: But, but that’s.

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Kathie Obradovich: Thank you.

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Dave Price: To counter anti-vax, And he asked that… Laura, did you… I’m sorry.

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Kathie Obradovich: Anti-vax mandates, perhaps, is maybe…

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Laura Belin: Anti… and anti-liability protections, immunity.

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Dave Price: Yeah, yeah.

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Laura Belin: I did ask him at that media availability, I asked him about the measles outbreaks, because we’ve seen so many more measles cases. 2025 was a 34-year high, and then the first three months of 2026 were double the number of measles cases as the first 3 months in 2025. So I wanted to get at

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Laura Belin: is he concerned about that, and what does he think government should do about it? But he gave more of a broad answer about vaccines.

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Dave Price: Yeah, sorry, Kathie.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, no, no, that’s all right. I, you know, I think we do have to clarify that, because he’s not saying people should not get vaccinated.

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Laura Belin: No, no.

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Kathie Obradovich: But what he is saying is that the pharmaceutical companies have had too much sway over government when it comes to decision-making about recommending vaccines, vaccine schedules, etc. And then, you know, of course, the mandates, so…

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Laura Belin: But to Kathie’s point, I went in the evening, early evening, I went to Zach Lane’s town hall that he did in crimes, and there were well over 100 people there.

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Dave Price: Yeah, 180, I think they said.

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Laura Belin: But when he was… when he starts talking, and he went pretty deep in his opening remarks about what he called the extraction economy in agriculture, honestly, you could be listening to Chris Jones, the Democrat running for Secretary of Agriculture, with some of his criticism of the big ag companies, and how they try to rig the system and keep prices high and keep farmers locked in. He didn’t talk about diversifying

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Laura Belin: the crops the way Chris Jones talks about that. But he did

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Laura Belin: talk about how these… this system is not working. It’s not working for farmers. He said his whole life, everything’s only gotten worse for farmers as these companies and special interests have gotten more and more powerful, and so it is an interesting message. I have not heard any Republican talk about those issues that way.

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Dave Price: I thought the way… I had asked him, and I’m, as long as I can get this piece done this weekend, although, to follow Laura’s precedent that she has set on this show, Kathie, first of all, let’s be honest, Kathie’s clearly the more organized one, because never when we record this is she fretting about, oh my gosh, I hope we get this done in time, and she looks at a thousand stories a week from her staff that she’s got a

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Dave Price: Laura and I sit here with our heads spinning about, dang, I sure hope I get this done. So when we say it in a recording, it holds us to it to push other stuff out of the way. Anyway, one of the pieces I was working on for this weekend, or am working on for this weekend, is I had asked him, because I’m personally fascinated for the Republican field, like, it’s easier for Rob Sand, right? He’s a Democrat, so he can, you know, whatever.

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Dave Price: We’ve had Republicans in charge a long time, and you can pick stuff out. To me, it’s more difficult if you’re one of the five Republicans, and Zach Lane, to me, feels like, almost like a change guy.

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Dave Price: that you have to thread a needle because, I mean, you don’t wanna…

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Dave Price: Let’s see, I don’t want to directly use the word Kathie recounted the four-letter word when somebody said blank show.

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Dave Price: I will say, you don’t want to crap all over Republicans, you know, who had… you know, Branstad was elected in 11, right? Or elected in 10, took back… took office back in 11, they’ve had the trifecta since 17. So it’s a Republican…

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Dave Price: I mean, the economy, the whatever, like, Republicans own it, right? I mean, for whatever they can control, they’ve been in charge a long time. So I was curious how a candidate can thread the needle there as a change guy, saying, hey, we need to focus on some stuff.

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Dave Price: And so the way he answered it to me was, tax cuts were good, shrinking government, all those things, good priority, educational choice, all that stuff.

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Dave Price: But there are long-standing issues that this state has that neither party’s been able to figure out. How to keep families on the farm.

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Dave Price: He mentioned when he was a kid, education was number one in the country, the cancer crisis… like, it… I felt like he did the pivot without trashing…

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Dave Price: His party, but also trying to find a way to bring people in, like these independents or whoever else, about, look, stuff’s not working, and we’re gonna have to find a new way to do it.

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Laura Belin: And it was a good question, Dave, and I thought his answer was very politically adept, and then he broached this.

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Dave Price: For a rookie candidate.

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Laura Belin: at the town hall, and he used a word that I hadn’t heard in a while, but I did hear it a lot during the 2024 campaign, is saying that he would be against what he calls the uniparty. The uniparty of the special interests and the big corporations and lobbyists.

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Laura Belin: who have too much control, and the problems, the big problems, the systemic problems that neither of the major parties are addressing, and I think he’s a little bit… he seems a little plugged into this online culture and the podcasts and everything, but I think that that uniparty is a way to set him apart from the Republicans without seeming to criticize what Governor Reynolds and the Republican legislature has done.

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Kathie Obradovich: One thing I was interested in, when you talk about tax policy, he was talking about property taxes and, you know, maybe the way out of this issue is to charge higher property taxes for out-of-state property owners, which I thought was interesting.

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Kathie Obradovich: It’s so complicated, though, because you’ve got families like mine, for example, where the family farm was inherited by

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Kathie Obradovich: My great-grandmother’s children and grandchildren now, and they are now spread out around the country, and they still own a piece of this farm.

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Kathie Obradovich: Which then is being rented out, has to be managed, and so charging a higher property tax rate to the people who live in Indiana versus the people who live in Iowa is just kind of… it’s kind of a nightmare. But that’s just one slice of how complicated it is. But on the other hand, he was also asked on Iowa Press about eliminating the income tax.

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Kathie Obradovich: And how… how would he go about doing that? And I wish that they had pressed him a little bit more, because

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Kathie Obradovich: he threw out some things like, you know, getting rid of tax credits that are just corporate welfare and, you know, some of those kinds of things, which, you know, the things he mentioned specifically, you know, might add up to a billion dollars or less. And, you know, how do you replace $5 billion worth of income and corporate income tax income?

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Kathie Obradovich: You know, with that waste, fraud, and abuse and, you know, and corporate giveaway stuff. Candidates really, if they want to talk about that, they have to be prepared to do the math and show us how that works.

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Dave Price: Kathie, the one thing I wanted to add one more point to Laura’s point about, is it too late? Listening to him explain it about not peaking too soon and all those kind of things, it reminds me more of what we’ve witnessed, perhaps, in some of the caucuses.

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Dave Price: Cockeye? What’s the plural? Can it really be cockeye? It’s cooler to say cockeye. Cockeyed sometimes, too.

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Dave Price: But, you know, we’ve seen, like, I remember… what year would that have been? 04, where John Edwards had the late surge, and it wasn’t quite enough on the Democratic side, he couldn’t quite catch John Kerry, but it felt like…

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Laura Belin: Yeah.

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Dave Price: If the caucus were maybe…

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Laura Belin: One more week. We get one more week later.

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Dave Price: or maybe.

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Laura Belin: taken, Carrie.

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Dave Price: Yeah, and we’ve… so we’ve seen some of these late surges, but can you think of a time… let’s… let’s put this poor woman on the spot here. Can you think of a time, like, in a primary, though.

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Dave Price: where… I’m really struggling to think of good primary… I mean, we had the good Republican one in 02.

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Dave Price: But, I mean, who… obviously, who knows? We’ve got 2 months here, and it, you know, does… is Feenster kind of where he’s going to be? You already know who he is? You know, is there a lot of room for growth there?

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Kathie Obradovich: We don’t have a lot of polling.

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Dave Price: I know. Yeah, it makes it so hard.

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Kathie Obradovich: So, that makes it hard, and, you know, I think that, you know, the one crowded primary that I can think of, which I don’t remember what the polling was like, but, but the Joni Ernst beating…

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Kathie Obradovich: challengers, you know, and beat them outright without having to go to convention, and just the momentum that that gave her then into the general election. But I don’t remember that she was a frontrunner all along, in that primary.

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Laura Belin: No, I think none of those candidates were very well known in that primary, whereas Feenstra is clearly

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Laura Belin: better known, but Feenstra has some major weaknesses, and he’s not doing, like, this, like I said.

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Laura Belin: Zach Lane was speaking to a very crowded room. Randy Feenstra is not doing a lot of events, and the events he’s doing are to very small, usually fewer than 20 people. And I don’t think that that gives you as much of an opportunity to hone your message as when you’re in front of a large group.

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Dave Price: I think Feenstra has really picked up the pace on events, though. I just don’t think they publicize them a lot. They just tend to be smaller, but I think he’s done a lot more over the last month and a half.

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Kathie Obradovich: Well, and with Congress out on recess, I expect we’ll see a lot of that here.

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Dave Price: Are they always on recess?

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Laura Belin: Seems like it.

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Dave Price: Yeah, I don’t… so 2 months left on that, so we’ll… Kinda see where the…

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Dave Price: I’m fascinated, to Laura’s point, though. Is that enough time And you’re trying to…

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Dave Price: Maybe bring people in, or at least a chunk of them who may not

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Dave Price: who may not normally show up, maybe even in a Republican primary, but to Kathie’s point, totally agree on that stuff, except he’s also taken his version of the Trump

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Dave Price: America first thing. Like, he’s all about

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Dave Price: you know, make Iowa first and keep Iowa first and all that, so it is a little… it’s a little spin of that. We also didn’t mention the campaign shakeup with Adam Steen’s campaign after the whole…

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Dave Price: the whole mess with the Eddie Andrews signature challenge, you know, whether that…

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Dave Price: I mean, he cut out his campaign manager and his communications person to try to see if he can distance himself and pivot out of this.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, I think… I think we’re… one of the ways we’re going to know is whether Zach Lane has any traction, is whether the other candidates start going negative on him. I’ve seen some little underground drumbeat of that.

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Kathie Obradovich: But nothing, you know, so far has popped out in public. So, I think it’ll be interesting to see, you know, if… because right now, you know, the Randy Feenstra, as we mentioned last week, got a little break.

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Kathie Obradovich: as the rest of the candidates kind of turned on Adam Steen, so we’ll see, you know, whether Zach Lane gets in on any of that.

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Laura Belin: And Adam Steen has the whole network of the family leader that will be working to help get out the vote for him, but as far as I know, Zach Lane is the only candidate who’s been interviewed on these really large national podcasts, Sean Ryan and Tucker Carlson, and

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Laura Belin: Of course, most of the audience, for those would be outside Iowa, but I’m sure there are a lot of Iowa Republicans who listen to those podcasts.

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Dave Price: For sure.

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Kathie Obradovich: So…

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Dave Price: Thank you both, and thank you, Kathie, for giving up part of your day to… To Jack.

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Kathie Obradovich: My pleasure. This may be the best part of my day, we’ll see.

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Dave Price: Ugh.

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Laura Belin: Yay!

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Kathie Obradovich: Fair.

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Laura Belin: Well, and Happy Easter to those who are celebrating, and Happy Passover to those like me who are celebrating.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yes.

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Dave Price: And thank you

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Dave Price: To all of you who support us each week, we appreciate those of you who have helped

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Dave Price: us grow this podcast. Thank you especially to those who financially contribute to pay the bills so we can keep this thing going week after week, and thanks to Spencer Dirks, who produces this and gets this distributed so you can watch it, listen to it, or read it, however you want to take it all in.

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Dave Price: We will talk to you next week. Have a great week.

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Dave Price: Kathie, I’m realizing.

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