We made it through the Iowa legislative session — barely. The Republican leadership powered through last weekend in a marathon that didn’t wrap until Sunday evening, leaving lawmakers, staff, and reporters running on fumes. We break down what that grueling stretch actually produced.

The two big finishers: a property tax reform package and the standings bill. On property taxes, the Senate looked very different from the House — almost all Senate Democrats voted yes, while most House Democrats voted no. But here’s the catch nobody should miss: don’t expect to see anything on your tax bill until September 2027 at the earliest, and at least one Republican House member admitted in his newsletter he’s skeptical it will make a difference even then.

We also dig into the water quality announcement — including a last-minute Senate amendment that rerouted $300,000 away from the University of Iowa’s real-time water monitoring program and toward the DNR, forcing UI researchers to compete for a grant to access money that was essentially already theirs. The $25 million headed to Central Iowa Water Works drew some grumbling too, and don’t count on skipping the lawn watering ban this summer.

Plus: Tom Harkin endorses Josh Turek in the U.S. Senate Democratic primary ahead of the debate we’re co-hosting next week with KCCI. Elizabeth Warren is coming to Iowa for Zach Wahls. J.D. Vance was here. Ted Cruz headlined Faith and Freedom. Brooke Rollins has apparently moved in. And Senate Majority Leader John Thune rounds out an unusually star-studded week in Iowa politics.

Thanks for being a part of the show, as always any shares are appreciated. We’re getting closer and closer to the primary and now is the time to get your friends and family on board!

Auto-generated transcript below:

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

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Dave Price: Ladies, we have been through a lot since we last met in this forum.

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Dave Price: Although, Kathie, I must say I spent more time sitting next to Laura than I have spent sitting next to my wife in a long time. I don’t know anybody in my life I’ve spent as much time, too, sitting next to continuously as Laura. It is…

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Dave Price: I have checked in this past week, and I’m sure you both have too, with people totally not related to…

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Dave Price: our profession, and when you try to explain the experience that everybody had as the Republican leadership decided to power through the legislative session last weekend and just keep going until they finally reached a deal, it is tough to put it into words, isn’t it?

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, it’s grueling, and it’s a marathon, and, you know, everybody feels really crappy afterward, and during, for that matter.

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Kathie Obradovich: And, you know, speaking only for myself, because I’m older than both of you guys, I am too old for these all-nighters, for sure.

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Kathie Obradovich: I, I… Definitely cool.

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Laura Belin: I am a night owl, and I actually pull a lot of all-nighters, so staying up and working…

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Dave Price: Crazy.

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Laura Belin: I like having the big block of uninterrupted time, so working until 5 a.m. or 6 a.m, I can handle, but they didn’t finish until after 7 p.m. on Sunday, and that’s where I could tell on Saturday when I realized they were not in a position.

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Dave Price: and today.

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Laura Belin: finish at 4 or 5 or 6 in the morning. They were… initially, I was thinking, oh, they could be going until noon on Sunday. Of course, it was a lot later. And then I started to get worried, because I really start to run out of steam after 6 or 7 in the morning, after pulling an all-nighter, and it’s just a bad way for people to be making decisions. Wayne Ford, who

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Laura Belin: many of our listeners may remember, because he served in the Iowa House for a long time, he wrote a guest editorial for my website this week, and he was talking… he cited the research that when you’ve been awake for 24 hours straight, it’s like having a blood alcohol level of 0.1. I mean, it impairs your ability to function.

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Dave Price: Found myself… Go ahead, sorry.

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Kathie Obradovich: I was gonna say, think of how many of those folks, left the State House and got on the road and drove home. Right. A lot of them did, I bet.

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Dave Price: I found myself,

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Dave Price: I don’t want to say half the time, but it seems like a lot of the time.

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Dave Price: trying to essentially have off-the-record conversations with anybody who would converse about trying to gameplay how this thing was gonna play out. I was trying to figure out, how to schedule my colleague in the TV bureau about

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Dave Price: you know, should she go home and sleep for a while? You know, how should we play this out? And as I was explaining to people, in my station group, what made it so difficult is that you knew that they were trying to reach final agreements on a bunch of big stuff.

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Dave Price: But there was so much horse trading going on that, you know, if you go for this, then we can support this, you know, between the two chambers and within the caucus and all that stuff.

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Dave Price: So it… there were so many moving parts that were so connected that… Laura and I must have talked, like, a hundred times with different scenarios about… because I think you and I were both sort of in the same mindset about, dang, it feels like they could… this could go for a long time, and getting, you know, little nuggets from people here and there saying, oh, we don’t seem to have agreement here, and, you know, whatever. But we also knew that

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Dave Price: when you reached it, when the breakthrough finally happened, it could go fast, and, like, it took, you know, forever to get there, but once they reached that point on Sunday, and we were primarily in the house.

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Dave Price: Like, it did go through reasonably fast when you’re talking about a property tax bill and the standings bill, which was primarily budget, although policy, too.

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Laura Belin: There were 40 pages, there was lots of policy in it.

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Dave Price: You know, so those two huge things, the debate didn’t take that long. Granted, everybody was…

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Dave Price: Torched by that point, but, you know, a couple hours, and they plowed through that and adjourned and called it good.

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Laura Belin: Yeah, I mean, in retrospect, you look at the action calendar, and there were windows where there were 4 or 5 hours where not very much was going on, but you don’t know, right? You don’t want to go home and go to sleep, and then find out that they came up with a property tax bill, and it’s all done by the time you can get back to the Capitol.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, that’s… I actually wrote a thank you note, early this week to Pat Grassley’s, comms person, Melissa Seitz, because she, you know.

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Dave Price: Legendary.

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Kathie Obradovich: You know, when they’re coming back, she would, you know, tell you what’s the short list of bills that they’re going to do, and you could plan, and I wrote in this note, I really wish that your counterparts in the Senate would follow your example, because

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Kathie Obradovich: it was a mystery over there. You didn’t know when they were coming back from caucus, you didn’t know really what bills they were going to do, and so you had to keep watching, and keep watching, and keep watching, and, you know, if they didn’t come back for 4 hours, you still just had to keep watching, because you never know when they’re going to come back and knock out 3 or 4 bills and then… then go away again.

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Dave Price: I’m so glad you gave Melissa a shout-out, and I don’t think this would be divulging anything that’s… that’s confidential, but it’s, like, impossible to put into words how valuable Melissa is to all of us.

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Dave Price: to give us the heads up. At the beginning of the week, she kind of gives you a heads up for the House Republican Caucus about, hey, here… you know, and obviously they have the majority. Here’s what we think is gonna play out Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, whatever she can tell us.

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Dave Price: And she gives us a heads up when they’re coming back after they’ve met in caucus on a specific day, maybe what bills may come up, or maybe where the committee, activity will be, or whatever. It is so super helpful, and, you know, and the agreement is that we’re not gonna burn her.

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Dave Price: And we’re not going to report a bunch of stuff prematurely, or partially, or what have you, but it is…

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Kathie Obradovich: It’s all on background and nuts.

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Dave Price: Yeah.

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Kathie Obradovich: And it’s subject to change, so… but yeah, it’s still super helpful.

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Dave Price: And, yeah, to… I wish we did have, I wish, in the future, maybe the Senate Republicans, which… who I presume will continue their majority next year, if they would commit to something like that. It’s so incredibly helpful, and I… there were so many times during this session, like in a TV story, where…

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Dave Price: there’s, like, no way to really… you know, that’s sort of inside baseball stuff, but you almost feel obligated in your story to be like… and a special thanks to Melissa. She was so helpful over the weekend to try to guide us through, and for me, it was a big help, so that’s when I knew I could send my colleague home to go rest for a while.

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Laura Belin: Well, it’s kind of funny, because I… I…

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Laura Belin: Not to get too deep in the weeds on this, but I tried for 5 years to get credentialed in the Iowa House, and I ended up having to file a federal lawsuit to finally get credentialed in 2024. And I didn’t even know that the House communications staff used to send out these emails. It’s very difficult when you’re monitoring the livestream, as I always used to do, and you have no idea when they’re coming back from caucus.

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Laura Belin: You have the big debate calendar that’s published, but they don’t always debate everything that’s on the calendar, so those emails would explain, we’re coming out of caucus now, here are the bills we’re actually going to do today. If I had even known those emails existed, I would have put that in my lawsuit. It’s like, this is something important that I’m missing out that is extremely useful for news gathering.

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Kathie Obradovich: And that isn’t something that’s always happened, either. It’s been more like the last couple of years, I think, so…

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Dave Price: Yeah, but she’s… she’s definitely invaluable. So what’s your… what’s your takeaway,

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Dave Price: I’m trying to process… there were two things I’m trying to process. We… I think we mentioned this last Friday, man, that was a long time ago. We had that water quality news conference.

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Dave Price: With the Secretary of Ag, Mike Naig, who had been kind of working with lawmakers to get this deal put together pretty late in the session. The governor was there.

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Dave Price: the DNR director was there, and some of the legislators were there as well. And, I mean, it’s sort of hard…

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Dave Price: I found doing a day turn story, it’s kind of hard, because there were so many parts of this, and the general theme was

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Dave Price: hey, we’ve done some of these things in the past, maybe we’re not getting a lot of bang out of it, we’re gonna shift money from this over to this, and we knew at the end of the day they were gonna give about $25 million to Central Iowa Water Works.

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Dave Price: Which… which provides water service for, like.

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Dave Price: what is it, 1 in 5 Iowans, something like that? It’s, you know, a huge region in central Iowa, to remove all the nitrates that are coming there, both from the ag side and from residential side, and other commercial side, I guess, too. But it’s kind of hard to know, right? You have so many different things, and Laura, I know you talked to Chris Jones.

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Dave Price: Who clearly doesn’t like the way, NAG has led the department. But it’s, you know, for a day-turn story, I know for me, that’s where I want to do more future reporting, is that

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Dave Price: I don’t understand this stuff well enough, and these… these different funding…

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Dave Price: places before that they’re now gonna transition as something out. Like, I think they did a pretty good job of explaining it all, but it’s the… the deep…

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Dave Price: You know, if you’re trying to… if you’re telling people, hey, we tried this before.

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Dave Price: these are underutilized, we’re gonna shift money to here, this is what we’re gonna do going forward. Now it’s the carryout of this, and the monitoring, and all that other stuff. There’s not a lot of mandatory stuff, if any.

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Dave Price: On the ag side, where a lot of these nitrates are, for various reasons, are getting into the water supply, but that’s where I feel like we’re going to need a lot of attention as this transition goes forward.

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Kathie Obradovich: I want to mention… Go ahead, Laura.

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Laura Belin: There was a last-minute change to the plan on Saturday, because on Friday, they were talking about how the plan gives a half a million dollars to the Iowa DNR for their ambient water monitoring program, and then there were $300,000 separately, that was in the Ag and Natural Resources budget that was going to go to the University of Iowa for their water sensor network, which provides real-time data.

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Laura Belin: And I confirmed that after the press conference with Senator Ken Rosenboom. And then, all of a sudden, on Saturday, the Senate amended that Ag and Natural Resources budget

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Laura Belin: to take, instead of that $300,000 just going to the University of Iowa, they sent it to the DNR, and now the University of Iowa researchers will have to try to write a grant

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Laura Belin: to get to that money, and I overheard the House Chief Clerk was speaking, and she said she… they were not expecting that Ag and Natural Resources budget to come back with a Senate amendment, so I don’t know exactly what happened to cause that change on Saturday, but it’s so difficult to follow everything that was going on over the weekend.

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Kathie Obradovich: that was one of the two things that I heard pushback on from Democrats, just besides the sort of notion that it’s, you know, it was not enough. But that, because the University of Iowa’s Water Monitoring Program is, is in real time and more accessible to the public, because they put all of

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Kathie Obradovich: that on a website dashboard, so you can actually see where things are.

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Kathie Obradovich: That, you know, even, I think.

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Kathie Obradovich: Even some Republicans wanted to see that, monitoring system go on. One of our reporters, Brooklyn Drazy, talked to, Norlin Momsen,

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Kathie Obradovich: early this week, and he said, yeah, you know, that he thinks that University of Iowa can get that money through a grant from DNR. Larry Rubber, who runs the hydrology department at University of Iowa, which oversees this water monitoring program, said, you know, that they will also

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Kathie Obradovich: continue the work and just find the money elsewhere. So we’ve got, you know, cities and counties, et cetera, contributing money. But…

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Kathie Obradovich: you know, the cities and counties that are contributing money, you know, that’s where they want the water to be monitored. You know, it’s not necessarily, you know, some of these smaller towns and, you know, less wealthy counties in Polk County, may not get their money into

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Kathie Obradovich: be able to say, look, we want this, you know, some of these sensors in our… in our county. The other thing that… and sort of related to this, that we heard on the… on the floor, was that, this 25… a little bit of grumbling about this $25 million for Central Iowa Water Works, which, you know, feeds the… the… the biggest

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Kathie Obradovich: part of the state, most populous part of the state, but there’s a lot of other parts of the state that need help with their water quality and taking pollutants, especially nitrates, out of their water.

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Kathie Obradovich: And so there was some grumbling about the fact that that $25 million was going

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Kathie Obradovich: only to Central Iowa Water Works and not to other communities. So, I think, you know, that those are probably two things that we’re going to see that conversation have to continue in the future. Plus, Central Iowa Water Works had a news conference this week and said.

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Kathie Obradovich: you know, because obviously these improvements are not going to happen instantly. It’s going to take a couple years. This is a… this was a 3-year, $25 million appropriation, and they said, yeah, we’re probably going to have another lawn watering ban, this summer because of high nitrate levels, so…

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Kathie Obradovich: People are definitely not going to see an immediate improvement.

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Dave Price: And I had wondered with… when they did the watering ban last year.

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Dave Price: If that would take water quality…

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Dave Price: awareness to another level, right? You start hitting the suburbs where people don’t normally think about that, especially if they’re not paying attention to what the treatment plants have been doing to try to push out and clean up all this additional nitrate flow.

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Dave Price: But if this would give it a little greater prominence in people’s minds about, hey, we better figure out something with water, and this sort of pre-warning that, hey, here’s what’s gonna happen again if you’re not careful with your water use, that…

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Dave Price: There may be another lengthy ban because of what’s happened.

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Kathie Obradovich: Well, also the focus on cancer in Iowa, and we’ve had a couple prominent reports now about the

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Kathie Obradovich: high incidence in Iowa of certain kinds of cancers, and, you know, not really any definitive answers yet about how water quality relates to that, but I think that that may be more than lawn watering, which I don’t know. I’ve got a lawn, never water it, but that.

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Laura Belin: We also don’t ever watch.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, but, you know, I think that the cancer discussion also really helps to get people’s attention.

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Dave Price: The… to do a rapid subject change, since we’ve talked about property tax reform so much during this legislative session, and I don’t think I brought this up on…

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Dave Price: here before, and I’m sorry if I did,

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Dave Price: I… after listening to this whole debate, and Republicans have clearly made this a big priority, so did the governor, so they have now passed this. And two things that stuck out to me. One in particular was the final vote on this compromise piece.

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Dave Price: in that all but Herman Kornbach, the senator from Ames, all Senate Democrats who were present and voted supported

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Dave Price: the property tax reform piece. It was a much different situation in the House. Laura, you gotta help me with my math. I want to say it was, like, 20-ish members voted against it. Does that sound right to you?

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Laura Belin: Yeah, most of the Democrats, all but 4 Democrats voted against it, and 2 Republicans also voted against it, and I didn’t have a chance to catch up with them on exactly what their concerns were.

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Dave Price: So I’m curious how Rob Sand will discuss the property tax.

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Dave Price: changes in light of the fact that Senate Democrats went around from this. On a far different side, I’m also curious, when people are paying their taxes this September.

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Dave Price: For those who haven’t watched this super, super closely, and they’ve heard all this focus about lowering property taxes, their bill’s not gonna go down in September.

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Dave Price: And now, it may not go down in the future either, we’ll see how this all plays out, but because we pay in arrears, and I mentioned that to some of the Republican members as we were sitting through that marathon weekend, like, are you concerned at all that, while you put a big focus on this.

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Dave Price: Voters aren’t going to see some kind of…

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Dave Price: immediate benefit, because they chose not to steal the borrow, whatever you want to say, the House Democrats’ idea about an initial rebate, to try to plug that maybe for one year until changes happen, or whatever. So, have you put so much juice into this, and then when people are thinking about this this fall, they’re like, man, my bill still went up, what the heck?

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, well, that was, you know, one of the things that came up on the floor in the Senate

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Kathie Obradovich: You know, Herman Kornbach got up and raised concern. One of the reasons he said he was voting against it was this was thrown together in the last hours of the last day, and yeah, while components of this have been in legislation all along, and people have had an opportunity to look at it, they haven’t seen this combination, they haven’t seen this particular bill.

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Kathie Obradovich: And, you know, there just needed to be more time. And, and Cindy Winkler.

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Kathie Obradovich: and Bill Dotzler both got up, and they supported the bill, and they were pointing out that it doesn’t take effect until 2027. And so the legislature actually would have time to come back and change parts of this bill before it takes effect, and before people are going to actually see any impact. And so they were looking at that.

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Kathie Obradovich: actually as a positive, that it wasn’t, you know, that there was still time to tinker with it, even though, you know, that they were passing this in the final hours of this legislative session. So… so yeah, definitely not going to be showing up on your tax bill before you go vote in November.

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Laura Belin: I noticed, and I subscribe to a number of the legislators’ weekly email newsletters, and I noticed that Representative Brian Loci, a Republican in the House, he did put… it was kind of buried in his latest newsletter. He said, like.

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Laura Belin: please note you won’t see any change in your property taxes until September 2027. And then he said, I have to admit, I’m skeptical that you will see any difference. So, even then, so there may be a political issue there. I just have to say that as a matter of policymaking, it’s just terrible to be doing this without any fiscal analysis, without any real time for stakeholders to weigh in on the final

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Laura Belin: package as a whole. Of course, yes, they’d had subcommittee hearings and a public hearing in the House on many of the components of this, but the tax increment financing changes, which are pretty complicated, I saw early this week the Des Moines Business Record reported that the City of Des Moines already put one project on hold, consideration of a project on hold, because they have to see how these changes to TIF will affect it, and I think that this

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Laura Belin: even though parts of the bill won’t take effect immediately, I still think that it could be really far-reaching, and it’s not something that they should do on such little notice.

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Dave Price: I did hear from some, Republican members, again, during the weekend, because we had plenty of time to talk to people, for those who wanted to converse, that if there’s a benefit to this about the delay in this, it’s that

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Dave Price: Now, city staff can really dig into all of this stuff, and since these changes don’t go into effect, as you pointed out, you know, for more than a year, basically.

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Dave Price: they can go back in next legislative session and clean stuff up if necessary. And nothing against any of the staff involved, but you’re, you know, it wasn’t just us complaining that we’re pulling this all-nighter and lawmakers and stuff. You’re forcing

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Dave Price: the staff that does the runs, does the bill making, the write-up, all that stuff, like, they’re functioning with no sleep, too, so chances are there may be a comma left out or something more serious that somebody hasn’t really thought through, so this does give you the off-season,

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Dave Price: To really dig into all this stuff, and maybe… maybe you do some cleanup next legislative session.

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Kathie Obradovich: That happens every year, by the way. We don’t usually report on it, because a lot of times it’s just, like, little picky stuff, you know? But yeah, lawmakers have to come back and clean up legislation just about every year, and they call it the code editor’s bill, although sometimes there’s actual substance in there. But it also shows up in department

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Kathie Obradovich: Omnibus bills, as well, that they’re… they’re cleaning up.

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Kathie Obradovich: And in fact, we saw that, a lot of that, in the last bill of the year, which is always the standing appropriations bill, or standings, as we like to call it. And you can see, if you look through there, there’s a lot of language in there that was cleaning up bills that they had passed earlier in the session.

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Dave Price: Man, that is the catch-all, isn’t it?

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Kathie Obradovich: backdead bells, as well.

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Dave Price: dead bills policy, it’s just like, whatever you didn’t get done this session, you throw into this giant… giant vehicle, and anything goes in there. David Young was able to…

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Dave Price: to get a fix for, the school district where my kids go. So I’ve obviously been following that, but there was a valuation problem, that really screwed over, the Waukee schools, so clearly they based their budget, you know, based on… on the valuation, so they needed some help cleaning that up, and Young couldn’t get that in as a… as a separate, so that was something he was able to work in into this massive

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Dave Price: Ginormous, standings bill at the end of the year.

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Kathie Obradovich: One thing when you mentioned things that would need more reporting, was this massive change in electrical contracting, where, you know, essentially, a lot of the regulations that say you should keep your

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Kathie Obradovich: Electrical outlets, you know, further away from the shower, and the… and the…

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Kathie Obradovich: the sink in your bathroom, etc. You know, suddenly all of those things are being changed, and I think that there’s… I wouldn’t be surprised, actually, if the governor is hearing from a lot of people who would say, please item veto this, because it’s not safe.

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Laura Belin: Yeah, that… I actually pulled video clips from the House and Senate debate on that portion. That was one of the few parts of the standings bill that did get a little debate. There was tons of unrelated policy that nobody mentioned. The floor manager didn’t mention, and none of the Democrats brought up, but that electrical thing, that…

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Laura Belin: did cause some concern, so it’ll be interesting to see whether that gets signed into law. I mean, it passed the Iowa Senate, but then the House didn’t act on it, so that’s what a lot of these things, and the final horse trading, you know, the House members get some things that they want, and the Senators get other things that they want.

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Kathie Obradovich: what the House got, I guess, is, requiring the 6 hours of civics education for all, public university students, 6 hours of government and American, you know, American government civics, to be directed by the, civics, you know, the Center for Intellectual Freedom at the University of Iowa.

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Kathie Obradovich: counterpart programs at Iowa State and UNI, and that was a dead bill in the House that got revived and included in the standings bill and passed. So, it’ll be interesting to see how the universities are going to manage those programs.

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Dave Price: And I think the, I don’t remember the figure, was it $800 these code changes are supposed to potentially lessen in the cost of home building? Wasn’t that…

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Laura Belin: Was it the impetus behind it.

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Laura Belin: Well, that was the idea that Senator Scott Webster, who was pushing for these, said this can make housing more affordable, but Senator Tom Townsend, who’s a licensed electrician, himself, said that he spoke to a fellow electrician who had recently built a house, and estimated that this would have saved 700 and something

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Laura Belin: dollars if they didn’t have to do this, but if it… if one of these things causes a fire or a serious injury in a kitchen or something, that obviously would be much more cost… costly than $800.

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Kathie Obradovich: And you have to wonder if, you know, eventually, if that sort of thing caught on, how much more you’re going to end up paying in your homeowner’s insurance, you know, because of that.

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Laura Belin: Well, he’s… Senator Townsend even said that. He said, I can’t believe the insurance industry isn’t jumping up and down screaming about this.

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Laura Belin: Of course, they had very little time to react.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, if they were up at 2 in the morning when they were debating this, or whatever.

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Dave Price: Alright, speaking of Senate, Senators, we have a former Iowa senator who is weighing in now in the U.S. Senate Democratic primary with Senate… Senator Tom Harkin.

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Dave Price: who is supporting State Representative Josh Turek of Council Bluffs in that primary matchup against State Senator Zach Wolfs.

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Dave Price: Perhaps not a surprise if Senator Harkin was going to endorse, it would have been for Josh Turek. This follows…

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Dave Price: the first debate that they had on Tuesday night, same day that, Vice President J.D. Vance was here, so we had kind of an action-packed day of, for the politically curious. So those two…

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Dave Price: those two sat down for their first debate. We have a debate next week, which I believe has been announced publicly. If not, I just screwed up and announced.

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Laura Belin: No, it has been, it has been.

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Dave Price: good. So my company is partnering with KCCI, so KCCI will host… provide the host site for this on Thursday night at 9 o’clock, and then it will also then

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Dave Price: be part of the gray media, television network for the different stations, across the state, where we will also have a one-hour debate with these two men. So no surprise, maybe, that Senator Harkin, if he chose to get involved, got involved in this. I’m curious if either one of you two…

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Dave Price: like, what your takeaways were from the first debate. We don’t see a ton of policy differences, necessarily, between Turek and Walls, and so they are emphasizing different things instead of policy in a lot of cases.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, Walz has been, just in the last couple of… there’s also been a previous forum where they were together, and I think Walz has been a lot more aggressive at going after Turek for various things, one of which is, you know, potentially could be portrayed as an actual policy difference. He’s… he was going after a, immigration vote that was taken a couple years

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Kathie Obradovich: ago that would… Allow, police in Iowa to… they essentially would make being…

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Kathie Obradovich: being in Iowa illegally after having been deported once, or more than once, make that a crime and have Iowa law enforcement actually be the ones to enforce that, as opposed to federal immigration enforcement.

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Kathie Obradovich: And Turek was one of very few Democrats who voted for that bill.

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Kathie Obradovich: And so Walz has been, you know, sort of really pressing on that vote.

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Kathie Obradovich: Turek, I think did a better job of explaining in the debate, as opposed to that first forum when it came up, that, you know, first of all, this was during the Biden administration, so we hadn’t seen the tactics that ICE is using under the Trump administration. Secondly, it only involves people who had already been deported.

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Kathie Obradovich: had come back.

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Kathie Obradovich: But also, you know, really to make the… really to emphasize that his wife is, an immigrant, she’s been naturalized, but they had to go through that entire process, and that he really understands it, and it’s important to him. So I think he did a better job of explaining that. It’s still…

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Kathie Obradovich: you know, the old adage in politics is that if you’re explaining, you’re losing, so that’s not a good… not a great issue for him. The other thing that, that Walls has been going after, Turrican, which I think is less… really less potentially effective, is trying to portray him as a…

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Kathie Obradovich: you know, as Chuck Schumer’s boy, and that,

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Kathie Obradovich: the Vote Vets, super PAC that has, contributed to advertising on Turek’s behalf, is somehow a, you know, calling it a dark money group, and, you know, trying to suggest that that’s also an arm of Chuck Schumer. And so I think

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Kathie Obradovich: you know, Turek sort of jumped back at that and hit walls on, you know, some of the fundraising that he’s done, in leadership in the Senate, etc. So… so I don’t know what voters will make of that exchange. You know, I… I don’t know if they care that much about the dark money allegations.

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Kathie Obradovich: But I think it underscores the fact that there’s so very few policy differences that they’re going after these sort of side issues.

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Laura Belin: I agree. I mean, people who have followed the legislature for a long time will remember that in the 2000s, there were some actual conservative Democrats in the legislature, people like Dolores Mertz, or at least, you know, less progressive McKinley Bailey is another one, and they… Doris Kelly.

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Laura Belin: Who served during the Democratic trifecta, but now there’s…

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Laura Belin: not much ideological difference at all. I mean, Josh Turek’s voting record and Zach Walls are almost identical, so yes, Walz is going to emphasize that immigration bill, which the ACLU of Iowa and many other progressives opposed, but it’s easy… easier to vote against all of those bills when you’re representing a blue district in Johnson County compared to a marginal district.

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Laura Belin: in Council Bluffs. But I feel like the electability argument that Josh Turk keeps making, it is related to all of this outside spending, and I understand why Zach Walz is making that argument, that there is, I mean, VoteVets, it is aligned with

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Laura Belin: Senate Democratic leadership, they’re spending a ton of money. They’ve now spent more than $6.5 million, which is a lot in the Iowa context. And Senator Elizabeth Warren is coming in this weekend to campaign with Zach Walz, and that they’re going to be talking about the insiders versus outsiders angle. But I think the reason why there has been so much outside spending on behalf of Turek is that a lot of people in Washington do believe that he’s the more elected

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Laura Belin: candidate, and so, yes, they’re weighing in on the primary. I don’t find that very surprising.

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Dave Price: I think there’s a reason that Ashley Hinson will frequently talk about running against Zach Walls. She does not talk about running against Josh Turek. That’s not by accident.

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Laura Belin: Right.

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Laura Belin: Republicans, certainly, they believe that Walz would be the easier candidate to beat. Now, I know a lot of Democrats who disagree with that, they’re free to disagree with that, but it… it is clear that that is… that is who Republicans would prefer to run against.

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Dave Price: And I feel like we should maybe mention VoteVets. Turek is not a veteran.

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Dave Price: But his father was a Vietnam War veteran, and that’s how they believe that Turek, was born with spina bifida, and went through dozens and dozens of surgeries, and why he’s in a wheelchair and all of that. So their involvement is maybe a little non-traditional, for the way they normally get involved?

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Kathie Obradovich: And yeah, just because of exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam is why they, are making that connection to the spina bifida. So, yeah, I mean, I don’t know, if you look at, VoteVets, you know, it is…

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Kathie Obradovich: you know, a lot of PACs… not all PACs are the same, and VoteVex Vets has had a connection with the… with the Senate Democratic leadership, but they also… a lot of… most of their money comes from veterans. I mean, it’s not… you know, it is an interest group by and for veterans as well, so it’s not really just…

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Kathie Obradovich: you know, dark, shady corporations, etc. It’s not a corporate pack, really. It’s… it’s a vets pack.

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Dave Price: We’ve sort of name-dropped a little bit here with, you mentioned Elizabeth Warren coming.

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Dave Price: Elizabeth Warren, bringing in a former presidential candidate and a longtime member of Congress is an interesting way to me to try to push back of the notion that the other… the other guy is the insider’s choice.

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Dave Price: But that’s… perhaps that’s a separate conversation. But, so all in one week, to toot Iowa’s horn here, we have Elizabeth Warren coming. We already had Vice President J.D. Vance, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins.

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Dave Price: who I… has either been here 3 or 4 times now. She’s been here a bunch. Clearly, the… to try to hold on to the support in…

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Dave Price: in Iowa ag community is important for the Trump administration, as they make a whole host of changes. We are recording this on Friday morning. On Friday afternoon, the Senate Majority Leader, John Thune, will be

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Dave Price: here for an event with Ashley Henson, so we’re getting a lot of outside attention this week, for just one week.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, I think it’s a… it’s two things happening. One, an indication that Iowa is in play, that there, you know, there’s a reason for these top national politicos to be coming here and trying to help members of their party here in these elections. But secondly.

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Kathie Obradovich: that Iowa, especially for Republicans, but, maybe, you know, still has a place in the, 2028 presidential lineup.

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Kathie Obradovich: That, you know, we’re seeing people who may have an interest in running for president in 2028 and coming out.

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Kathie Obradovich: to Iowa, and, you know, yeah, Republicans right now still have the first in the nation spot, but Democrats still get, you know, prominence, one, with the idea that Iowa may be in play, and secondly.

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Kathie Obradovich: because Republicans are in the number one slot for 2028, it makes sense for Democrats to come here, because the media will be here.

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Dave Price: And I should also mention that, because when we recorded last week, that was before Senator Ted Cruz, the 2016 Republican Iowa caucus winner, he was the pinch-hitter, headliner at the Iowa Faith and Freedom’s spring dinner, and…

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Dave Price: both Cruz and Vance watching them, they are both effective speakers, for sure. Cruz has… Cruz has this…

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Dave Price: This certain cadence that he’s really developed, and you know, he does that podcast a couple of times a week, too, but he is very experienced.

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Dave Price: in front of a microphone. There’s no… he’s not clunky moving around or anything like that. He really knows how to play to the room, and it seemed like his… his remarks went over very well, and I think the vice presidents did as well, and I felt like…

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Dave Price: on Tuesday, watching Vice President Vance

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Dave Price: he frequently would tie Zach Nunn and President Trump as working in concert to accomplish these goals that they were talking about, and I get it, and as Laura has pointed out a couple of times here, we’ll have to see how this plays out, right? Like, I mean, if the numbers…

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Dave Price: of high disapproval ratings remain this high for both the President and Vice President. We will see if this becomes more of an anchor for Congressman Nunn later, or a support. But at this point, if you’re trying to re-engage the MAGA base.

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Dave Price: I felt like Vance really went out of his way numerous times during his 20-25 minute speech to praise none, but really connect none to Trump about, hey, here’s what we’ve done, or here’s what we’re doing, and it’s these two working together who have done this.

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Laura Belin: And I think… I’ve speculated about this before, but then a week or so ago, Punchbowl published a batch of Republican polls that were commissioned in mid-March, and one of the districts they surveyed was Iowa’s 3rd District, and one of the takeaways from that Republican polling was that

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Laura Belin: Zach Nunn’s… overall, his favorability was underwater. He was doing pretty well with the MAGA base, but room to improve there. And I think that’s clearly why they brought in J.D. Vance to try to shore up, even though Zach Nunn doesn’t have a primary challenger, but just really try to make sure that Republican base is enthusiastic about supporting him, because they have to worry about their general election turnout, especially if the nominee for governor

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Laura Belin: ends up being Randy Feenster, who is, like, to put it mildly, not beloved by the Republican base.

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Dave Price: I talked to Steve Scheffler before the Faith and Freedom, and that was one of the things he pointed out, that he felt like one of their challenges will be particularly engaging with the younger people, maybe those 20-somethings, and particularly maybe the men, the young men, who…

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Dave Price: got involved and supported Trump in 2024. Trump’s not part of it in 2026 on the ballot. How do you keep those people engaged? And as Scheffler was talking about.

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Dave Price: to…

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Dave Price: help these young men understand the importance that, hey, if you liked Trump, you like what he’s trying to do, it’s imperative that you then get behind people who support Trump so that Republicans can maintain the majorities in both the House and the Senate. He said that’s what he believes, that they’re really gonna have to work on these next 5 or 6 months.

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Dave Price: to try to really connect with these young people to push them to show up in November.

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Laura Belin: I’m waiting for Marco Rubio to show up, because I listened to the focus group podcast that Sarah Longwell does, and she’s been finding in her Trump voting focus groups that people are really favoring Marco Rubio over J.D. Vance, increasingly, so I find that very interesting.

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Kathie Obradovich: I was just thinking the same thing, you know, Marco Rubio, also well known in Iowa, just like Ted Cruz, who actually won the Iowa caucuses. But Marco Rubio probably has kind of his hands full. He’s doing a couple of jobs in the Trump administration, and he’s got a war on as Secretary of State. So, I was kind of wondering just how much

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Kathie Obradovich: He actually would be able to get out on the campaign trail right now and ahead of the midterms, because

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Kathie Obradovich: You know, running a war has probably taken up a lot of his time.

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Dave Price: And there’s so many memes, as you well know, where they… they will put some kind of outfit on Rubio and says, you know, he just found out he’s running this, or he’s doing that, or he’s doing that, but I wonder if… I wonder if we don’t see him maybe later this summer, early fall, as a… as a later pitch. I have to be careful how I phrase this, because I don’t pick favorites by any means, but he was my…

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Dave Price: In the 2016 cycle, He was my Dark Horse surprise guy.

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Dave Price: that when I was looking at the field, I thought that maybe he had the potential to rise, and it seemed like he was for a while, and then probably got off-brand, where he really started going toe-to-toe with Trump, and the things he said about Trump, and the hands, and I’m not gonna explain the hands comment, you can go Google that if you…

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Dave Price: If you want to go down that rabbit hole, but, you know, and then kind of petered out and didn’t have the success that I thought maybe early on he could, but I’m curious, Rubio 2.0,

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Dave Price: what that would look like, but also the dynamics. If he’s interested in 28, Vance is interested in 28, and then… what if one or both of the Trump boys

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Dave Price: would be interested in running, too. I mean, how does that play out?

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Laura Belin: No idea, but it’ll be fun to watch. I, I, I’m just… I’m trying to remember, I think it was just in March, Attorney General Brenna Bird posted a picture of herself with Donald Trump Jr, but I’m not sure whether he was here or whether she was in D.C. for something. Anyway.

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Laura Belin: Or maybe she was in Florida, I’m not sure where he lives. But I did see a photo of the two of them together, not… it seems like not that long ago.

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Dave Price: Yeah, that… we could fill a whole show probably talking about that.

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Kathie Obradovich: It’s early to talk about 2028.

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Dave Price: It’s never, never too early. It’s just like catnip.

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Kathie Obradovich: I gotta drop it.

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Dave Price: again, every once in a while. Good to talk to both of you. Absolutely. Thanks for plowing.

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Kathie Obradovich: Bye.

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Dave Price: weekend and plowing through the week, we will hope for a little more chill this weekend.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yes, absolutely, except for Sunday, when we have to work.

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Dave Price: Oh yeah, I forgot, that’s when Elizabeth Warren’s here.

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Kathie Obradovich: Thanks.

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Dave Price: Good point. Thank you for sticking with us throughout this legislative session, to all of you who are subscribers, who follow.

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Dave Price: what we, chat about week after week. We very much appreciate the support. Please continue to share this with friends and family to help us grow. It’s been fun to see this conversation grow. And a special thanks to those of you who have made financial contributions so that we can keep this going week after week after week. A lot to talk about as we look at the final month or so until the primary election, then, of course, the November election.

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Dave Price: So we will have tons to talk about through the spring, summer, and fall. We hope you have a great weekend, have a great week ahead, and we’ll talk to you next week.

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