Kathie got caught up on Derek Wulf as Lahn’s pick for Lieutenant Governor, this time noting his Ag Committee chairmanship could ease some rural skepticism toward Lahn. Then Laura dropped the real news: court filings show close to a million dollars in foreclosure and judgment cases tied to Wulf’s farm, something his campaign chalks up to broader struggles facing family farmers.

We also dug into Kim Reynolds’ legacy as Lieutenant Governor compared to how visible Branstad kept her, plus Laura’s own frustrating run-ins trying to get access during COVID. Read more on that here: Branstad determined to make Reynolds next governor and here: Reynolds hides Gregg

And we have some interesting Libertarian news. Two of four candidates got bounced from the ballot, one over a name dispute, one over missing paperwork, with both heading to court. Laura also reported candidates say they got pressure calls from RFK Jr. and a visit from Zach Nunn’s camp urging them to drop out before the challenges hit.

To continue to help us cover production costs for this incredibly informative podcast please consider becoming a paid subscriber by clicking the link above, or click the link below to make a one-time contribution that helps Julie Gammack and her work with the Iowa Writer’s Collaborative including Iowa Down Ballot.

Auto-generated transcript below:

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Dave Price: Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Iowa Down Ballot podcast, our weekly confab with two collaborators from the Iowa Writers Collaborative.

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Dave Price: Usually two. Last week was one. Kathie Obradovich has returned by popular demand. Laura Bellin was here with us last week and returns as well. Hello, ladies.

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Kathie Obradovich: Hello! Happy Friday, happy Juneteenth.

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Laura Belin: Yeah, happy Juneteenth.

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Dave Price: Happy Friday slash Saturday, I’m gonna say, since this… we recorded

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Dave Price: drops on Saturday. Last week, we were…

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Dave Price: not so artfully, behind the scenes trying to figure out a record time, because Kathie, despite the fact that she was supposed to be off.

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Dave Price: not working on Fridays so she could spend time with family, was still dedicated to try to do the podcast, and we were trying like crazy to make sure we knew the news about

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Dave Price: Zach Lahn choosing State Representative Derek Wulf as his running mate, so we were trying to figure all that into our record time, and the math did not work, so we left Kathie

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Dave Price: Unfortunately, out of the conversation. So, should we do it like a PS on that, Kathie, since you didn’t get to weigh in? What’d you think of the choice?

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Kathie Obradovich: You know, I think, that, I had predicted he would pick, you know, somebody with legislative experience, so that certainly, qualifies, and, you know, his choice of.

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Kathie Obradovich: of Derek Wulf as, you know, he’s the Ag Committee Chairman in the House. You know, I think, definitely plays up to rural interests that perhaps Zach Lahn may not be that close to, in the case of some of the big ag

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Kathie Obradovich: Manufacturers and producers who, you know, he’s had a kind of an anti-big-ag message.

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Kathie Obradovich: That, so I don’t know what the choice of Wulf signals there, that maybe he’s, you know, perhaps a… a little bit of a moderating force on that particular line of questioning.

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Kathie Obradovich: And, you know, I think, it seemed like, you know, despite the hiccup at the Republican state convention, where some of Adam Steen’s supporters tried to nominate him, you know, I think that that, you know, ultimately

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Kathie Obradovich: Republicans probably felt fairly confident or comfortable with Wulf as a choice.

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Dave Price: I always wonder what’s going on behind the scenes, and whether Rob Sands’ choice of Dave Mulbauer as his running mate, and of course, Dave is a farmer.

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Dave Price: Derek is a farmer. Did that have anything to do, you know, did that push Derek up the list to try to combat… combat this so we can go cattle rancher versus cattle rancher in this Lieutenant governor debate, where they both…

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Dave Price: They both wear their hats, and maybe we do this debate out on a countryside or in a barn or something, in a different.

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Kathie Obradovich: I was laughing, laughing at the hats. It’s like, you know, if somebody accidentally switched photos of these two guys, would anybody notice?

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Dave Price: They do look a little similar. Their wives would probably disagree.

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Dave Price: But they do look really similar when they’re in their heads.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, no, I mean, ultimately, I don’t think the choice of lieutenant Governor really makes that much difference, to voters. I mean, unless it turns out to be a terrible choice, and that, you know, the Lieutenant Governor candidate becomes, you know, something of a target. But…

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Kathie Obradovich: you know, where it does matter, I think, is whether the governor and lieutenant governor can be a team and work together. That is something that Terry Bransted always lived by, that he, you know, ultimately what was more important to him was picking somebody that he could actually trust and work with.

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Kathie Obradovich: And, you know, obviously somebody who could be prepared to take over if the worst should happen. So, I think those are the things that are important. I don’t think that otherwise the Lieutenant Governor Choice really brings that much to the ticket, you know, in terms of trying to get elected.

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Laura Belin: Dave, one thing we didn’t talk about last week, because it was so new and I hadn’t had time to look into it, but last weekend, I was looking on Iowa Courts Online and going through some of the filings. There are a lot of

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Laura Belin: Legal cases, and a petition for foreclosure, and a few legal judgments.

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Laura Belin: against Derek Wulf or his farm, and so I feel like… I mean, that’s only what is available right now on Iowa Courts Online. I feel like if there are more legal issues that we don’t know about that may come out during the campaign, I feel like that’s a risk

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Laura Belin: that Zach Lahn didn’t necessarily need to take. Although the Lane campaign told me that this is just an example, a lot of farmers are having hard times, and that basically this is an example of why we need to work to help

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Laura Belin: farm stay in family hands, and that they… they told me that Derek Wulf is working on some kind of refinancing, and that all of the debts are going to be paid. But it’s… if you add up all these cases together, it’s close to a million dollars in unpaid bills and other obligations.

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Dave Price: I find it fascinating that, you know, probably unintentionally, but on the Republican side.

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Dave Price: both of these guys, their private lives will be part of public discussion now, right? With Derek Wulf and his family, and the financial struggles they’ve had with their farming operations, and he’s… as he tries to refinance all of that to get on the right side of that.

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Dave Price: Clearly, that if they choose to, that could be… that could,

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Dave Price: Provide an entry point to talk about how difficult life is for so many small farmers who live on the margins.

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Dave Price: And as they’ve been squeezed with higher input costs, and this whole trade uncertainty, and obviously now the… you’ve got two wars going on with Iran, and then the Russian-Ukraine thing that’s been going on forever, that has disrupted so many different things on the energy side and on the fertilizer side.

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Dave Price: If he’s willing to talk about this, and this could…

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Dave Price: Obviously, it’s very personal stuff, and his family may or may not want to talk about this stuff. And then we have Zach Lahn, who we’ve already discussed, but here’s a guy in his second marriage, and he has children in two different states, and so people may have different views of

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Dave Price: How he and his current wife and ex-wife, because his current wife also had a previous marriage where she had children as well, so they have kids together, they both have kids with other people.

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Dave Price: from their former marriages in Kansas, so that becomes a complicated situation, and I sat down with Lane and talked about that. He used the word complicated to talk about this, and I’m fascinated about how, especially on the Republican side.

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Dave Price: These two are going to be willing, if they are, to address some of this personal stuff, because it does, if they want to, provide a kind of an opening into some pretty complicated measures.

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Kathie Obradovich: not that hypocrisy is a thing in politics anymore, but I can’t see all of these Trump voters, you know, somehow

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Kathie Obradovich: being shocked and appalled by someone with a messy personal history and, you know, multiple, spouses, etc, and messy personal finances. I mean, I just, that narrative, seems to have gone right over Trump voters’ heads in Iowa.

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Kathie Obradovich: And so I, you know, I do have, you know, I question how much that stuff still matters in politics.

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Dave Price: I do too, and I wonder how effective Sam’s side will be.

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Dave Price: to try to, you know, paint Lane as a carpetbagger, and not really an Iowan, and really more of a Kansas resident. I mean, does that kind of stuff stick, or does Lane counter that by saying, hey, I’m trying to be active in my kids’ lives, and I have the means to do it, I have a plane, and…

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Dave Price: I fly back and forth, and we make sure that this is the arrangement we have with the respective parents, and we want to be there for our kids.

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Laura Belin: Well, Rob Sand at his general election rally, he said, you know, God bless Zach Lahn and his commitment to his family, but we need a full-time governor. I think that’s something that we’ll continue to hear from his campaign, because

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Laura Belin: Zach Lahn hasn’t yet spelled out exactly how this is going to work. I mean, he said that it’s not going to interfere with his ability to be governor, but is he going to be scheduling official duties and other… and official events around his kids? I don’t know, what’s if one of… if his kids are in a school concert or an important sports game? I mean, what… how is this going…

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Laura Belin: to work, with… with… if his kids are continuing to live in another stage. And if…

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Laura Belin: if he claims that they’re coming to live in Iowa, I mean, how is it… usually that kind of thing is not something that one parent can decide unilaterally. If there’s a divorce agreement and a custody agreement, that’s not something that you can just up and change right away. So I think that will be a story. I don’t know about Derek Wulf. I mean, all this Rob Sand campaign has said about Derek Wulf so far is that he voted for school vouchers, he voted to defund the

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Laura Belin: water sensor, monitoring sensors, and that he’s, you know, part of the status quo, and so they’re… they haven’t brought up anything related to his… his finances.

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Dave Price: Did… I’m curious what you both think on…

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Dave Price: You know, we just spent the first X number of minutes here talking about lieutenant governors, essentially, and it’s hard to imagine that a lot of people really are going to choose either Zach Lahn or Rob Sand because of the choice and the number 2.

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Dave Price: But one thing that I’m thinking about, and Kim Reynolds was just on Iowa Press this week, when you think about her legacy, Kathie, you brought up Terry Bransted, and I just remember covering… I wasn’t here for the first, when Terry Bransted was governor the original time.

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Dave Price: But… he seemed to have Kim Reynolds featured prominently, and she was…

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Dave Price: usually always there in the news conferences and that. I don’t know that maybe at the beginning when she had Adam Gregg, he was there, but that seemed to change, and Adam Gregg wasn’t really… we didn’t really get public schedules with his events for a lot of weeks.

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Dave Price: And then when… when Greg quit, to leave politics, basically, and Chris Kanoyer got in there, she’s been pretty low profile as a lieutenant governor. Does it strike you at all, the difference in the way Bransted used Reynolds versus Reynolds featured her?

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Dave Price: Lieutenant.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, so, first of all, I think, you know, it’s worth pointing out that Bransted had a lot higher profile than Kim Reynolds did. I mean, he did, he did weekly news conferences every single week, and yes, she was there. And I think, you know, part of it was that he was up front, that he was grooming her to be his successor. I mean, he.

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Kathie Obradovich: he… he made that clear up front, you know, and I think that part of it

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Kathie Obradovich: You know, might have been because he was older and, you know, a lot more experienced as governor, and probably a lot more secure, you know, in his, his… both his public persona and

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Kathie Obradovich: you know, there was a little… now that I think about it, there was a little hiccup early on, where Reynolds said something off the cuff, or sort of off the reservation. There was a message… I don’t remember if it was about gay marriage, or if it was about…

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Laura Belin: I thought that was during the campaign. Was it during the campaign? It was about civil unions.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, so…

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Laura Belin: Something like she wasn’t against civil unions or something.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, so that… there was a little bit of a hiccup there, and, she was not as prominent on the campaign trail immediately after that, but… but once they were elected, yeah, she was always a fixture. She traveled with him, a lot, and I, you know, I… I looked at it as, yeah, she’s learning the job. People did, you know, say, oh, well, she’s just, you know, all she’s

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Kathie Obradovich: does is stand behind him, you know? Sure. But being… there’s a lot to say for being present and learning that job.

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Kathie Obradovich: And, you know.

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Kathie Obradovich: I wish that she would have learned the lesson from Bransted that, being present, you know, also means being present for media. I mean, she, she went through, you know, you mentioned Adam Gregg. I mean, she went through periods, not only was he invisible, but so was she. And so, I do think

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Kathie Obradovich: You know, it didn’t surprise me when he left when he did, for certainly a job that pays a lot better than being Lieutenant Governor. But yeah, it didn’t feel like she gave him a lot to do.

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Laura Belin: We’ll… maybe we’ll see if we can get our producer to put these in the show notes, but I wrote a whole series of posts in around 2013 and 2014 about how unusual it was

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Laura Belin: for the way Terry Branstad was bringing Kim Reynolds along to all of his events, because normally you would deploy… the lieutenant Governor would cover a lot of events that the governor didn’t have time to go to. That’s what Sally Peterson and Patty Judge were doing, but Branstad and Reynolds were always doing events together, and he gave her a lot of really prominent roles and jobs. And then, when Adam Gregg resigned.

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Laura Belin: unexpectedly, I think, to most people.

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Laura Belin: I wrote something about the contrast, where she really didn’t give him anything. I mean, it was shocking how few obligations and responsibilities he had, and he also wasn’t visible to the media. But beyond that, he just didn’t seem to have much of a role in her administration at all.

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Dave Price: And I wonder, this might be a deep dive conversation for another day, but especially when Kim Reynolds is out of office and she goes back and reflects on this, I had wondered if…

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Dave Price: going through COVID when she was very, very accessible, and my recollection…

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Laura Belin: me, Dave.

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Dave Price: Well, yeah.

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Dave Price: That may be true.

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Dave Price: to… for the daily news conferences that she did at Iowa PBS.

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Dave Price: which may have been called Iowa Public Television back then, I can’t remember when the rebrand happened, but out in Johnston. She was doing…

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Dave Price: updates every day, usually around 11 a.m. during COVID.

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Dave Price: Which… That has to… That has to be brutal to go through.

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Dave Price: to stand through. Obviously, there were… if you, as we all know, there was so much they didn’t know back then about COVID, and remember way back, we were wondering whether we were supposed to wash down our groceries and all kinds of stuff that we just had no idea, and she’s standing there trying to explain, each day after day after day, are you gonna force masking and vaccinations and shut this down and shut that down and all that?

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Dave Price: And that had to really… I feel like she probably changed During that process.

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Dave Price: And I’m not sure she was nearly as accessible as frequently.

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Dave Price: after that. I mean, she’s been governor for quite a while here, better part of a decade. Lately, this year, it’s a little… I feel like she’s sort of stepped up.

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Dave Price: during this last legislative session, it was more frequent doing news conferences and gaggles, as we call it, where we have a chance to ask our off-topic questions and all those kind of things after an event, but

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Dave Price: I know that there were years in there where we would… we would go weeks without seeing anything on a public schedule.

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Dave Price: And having any ability to really ask her anything, which was really a change from…

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Dave Price: the predecessors. We sort of got spoiled by Terry Bransted’s Every Monday Morning thing, because, I mean, man, that sort of set the agenda for the week. Culver wasn’t that way. Vilsack probably did a lot, maybe he did more of those than Culver did, but…

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Dave Price: Without a doubt, we, you know, we would like to at least have access once a week where you can ask the governor of the state.

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Dave Price: You know, pertinent questions.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, and, you know, is weekly access really necessary? I don’t know. I mean, Vilsack didn’t like to do those unless he had something to announce. I mean, Branstead would just, you know, there were times when he would just, you know, stand up there and take questions, and not.

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Dave Price: Which is awesome for us, right?

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Kathie Obradovich: No, not…

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Dave Price: anything good.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, and Vilsack definitely wanted to have, you know, something prepared every time that he did it, and didn’t want to do it if he didn’t have, you know, something like that, which I can understand. But yeah, it’s, you know, and, you know, just to spin it forward into the current.

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Kathie Obradovich: campaign. I mean, that is something that I think people should ask candidates, you know, that they should ask them, you know, what is your commitment to

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Kathie Obradovich: you know, putting out a public schedule, to meeting regularly with the media, to, you know, taking questions, to having your staff respond to questions, for heaven’s sake. You know, I think that that…

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Kathie Obradovich: It’s not just for us, it’s for our readers and viewers, and so there’s my little soapbox about, you know, please, please, next governor, you know, be more open and more accessible.

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Laura Belin: I’m just… while we were talking, I just looked up a post that I wrote in 2019, because during one of the governor’s debates in 2018, she had been doing somewhat regular press conferences, then she stopped in the summer of 2018, and she didn’t do any more press conferences for about the last 4 months of the campaign, and it came up in one of her debates against Fred Hubbell, and she said that if elected, she would do weekly press conferences, but I wrote

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Laura Belin: this piece.

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Laura Belin: in, looks like, August of 2019, because she was already not keeping up with the weekly press conference promise promise. And you may say that it’s not important, but I think it is important. And I just… sorry to interrupt you earlier, Dave, but I just had to say that, because during my experience during COVID is that I was never allowed to participate in a single press conference that she did, and her office stopped responding to any of my public records requests, which led to the loss

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Laura Belin: that Iowa Capital Dispatch was also involved with in late 2021, more than… I had… I had multiple records requests that were more than a year old, with no response until we filed the lawsuit, so… And I would say… Anyway, we got a little bit off track there.

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Dave Price: Oh, sure. I think Governor Reynolds also, and maybe this is typical, but I think she was better served by some of her top staffers at different points during her tenure than she was at others. In particular, what you went through, Laura.

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Dave Price: you know, there was a change after that. There are… there’s a big difference between somebody who sort of comes of age during… on the campaign side.

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Dave Price: And how that person views…

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Dave Price: you know, you’re a public employee, and your job is to provide information to Iowans, in our case, since we’re in Iowa, and the campaign is over, and while those things get intertwined quite a bit, I think

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Dave Price: there is a… there is a difference in roles, campaign side versus the official side, and I think we appreciate those who commit to the official side to see this as the conduit of information. They’re always going to spin it to try to make their boss look good, perhaps, but…

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Dave Price: We would hope they still see a role in public service of

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Dave Price: being the disseminator of information that is pertinent to Iowa’s… Iowans.

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Kathie Obradovich: Well, and good… people… it’s a cliche because it’s true, but good policy is good politics. And… and I always thought, and I’ve said this before, that Kim Reynolds was always her own best advocate, you know? And I think that by sort of…

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Kathie Obradovich: making herself inaccessible for the periods that she did. She was just… she was missing great opportunities to advocate for her policies. And, you know, those… those opportunities, once they’re missed, they… they never come back. So… so I do think it wasn’t really, you know, it just wasn’t in her best interest, and that’s too bad, because I… I thought… I always thought

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Kathie Obradovich: that.

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Kathie Obradovich: You know, when she was out on the trail and making a case for her policies, that she was her… she was the best advocate for herself.

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Dave Price: Okay, let’s… let’s not talk about Republicans or Democrats.

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Dave Price: Let’s talk about libertarians.

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Dave Price: That is a party that has interested me almost for the time that I’ve lived in this state, because… no offense to you libertarians listening.

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Dave Price: However, the organizational side of this for libertarians could be a Netflix doc.

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Kathie Obradovich: And…

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Dave Price: two steps forward, three steps back, right? They seem to struggle

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Dave Price: they make some progress, they get on the ballot as a major party, and then things blow up, and then they have to sort of start all over again. Without a doubt, they face different obstacles, and Laura, you sat in the room and watched this, and, you know.

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Dave Price: As we know, for Republicans, they don’t necessarily want to see a bunch of libertarians on the ballot, especially in 2026, where the governor’s race looks competitive, some of these congressional races look competitive.

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Dave Price: They’re not so sure that they remember the case of, you know, Cindy Axne getting elected to Congress when David Young was the Republican incumbent, and there was a Libertarian in that race.

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Dave Price: Took some votes, David Young lost, they know how to add up math here. So, Laura, can you kind of walk us through… you were inside that room.

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Dave Price: maybe a little setup here about what’s going on, but this… this boils down to whether these libertarians did the process correctly to get on the ballot for November. It’s a little more complicated than that.

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Laura Belin: So there were 4 Libertarian candidates who filed, Thomas Lane for U.S. Senate, Nicholas Gluba for Governor, Marco Batali in the 3rd Congressional District, and Rick Stewart in the 2nd.

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Laura Belin: And we all knew Republicans are going to go through everything as close… looking as closely as they can to find any reason to remove these libertarians from the ballot. That’s what happened two years ago, where there were three Libertarian congressional candidates, and they were all kicked off the ballot in a challenge brought by Republicans. So, they could… apparently, they could find nothing wrong with Thomas Lane’s nominating papers, because

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Laura Belin: he was… was not challenged. But the other three libertarians were challenged, and 2 out of 3 of them were kicked off the ballot, at least that was the ruling of the state objection panel, which normally consists of the Secretary of State, Paul Pate, Attorney General Brenna Bird, and most of the time, State Auditor Rob Sand, although he recused himself

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Laura Belin: from hearing the objection to Nicholas Gluba’s nominating paperwork for governor because he’s running for governor, and obviously it could be a conflict because a Democrat would benefit from having a Libertarian on the ballot. So they unanimously ruled that Rick Stewart can stay on the ballot in the second district. The challenge was

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Laura Belin: claiming that his petition said Richard Stewart, but his other… his affidavit, and what he wanted to appear on the ballot was Rick Stewart, and that that didn’t match, and they… they held that there are many examples of candidates running under shortened versions of their name, so they, they dispense with that one quickly. Marco Battaglio was not as fortunate. It turns out that that’s not his name. I had no idea. I’ve been writing about this guy since

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Laura Belin: since 2018. I mean, I’ve covered… I’ve been very interested in libertarians as well, so I’ve written quite a bit about the Libertarian Party of Iowa over the years. Never knew that his name, his legal name is Mark Anderson. That’s what he signed on his affidavit of candidacy, but all of his petitions said Marco Battalia. And so this was a split decision with… Rob Sand would have kept him on the ballot, but Paul Page and Brenna Bird held that

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Laura Belin: Iowa code does not allow somebody to run for office under a fictitious name. And the libertarians are going to appeal to court, and the statute does… it just says the candidate’s name. It doesn’t say the candidate’s legal name or the candidate’s real name, so I think that’ll be the central issue there. Marco Batalia has been on the ballot a number of times before and was never challenged for that reason.

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Dave Price: as Marco Battalia.

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Laura Belin: Yes, as Mark

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Laura Belin: I mean, in fact, and Rob Sands said this during the meeting, it would actually be more confusing to voters if he were on the ballot as Mark Anderson, because there have got to be a lot of Mark Andersons in Iowa, but he’s the only Marco Battalia, and he’s run for office before. His advocate, the Libertarian Party of Iowa State Chair, who was speaking on his behalf at the meeting, Stephanie Berlin, said, you know, I mean, there’s so many articles, if you Google Marco Battalia.

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Laura Belin: find all of this coverage. If you were looking for information about Mark Anderson, you wouldn’t have any idea that it was connected to this person. But the argument that the Republicans will bring, and Alan Ostergen was the attorney representing the Republicans who brought the challenge, who are both connected to Zach Nunn.

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Laura Belin: he said, look, if you allow this to happen, then next election, somebody can go and collect signatures and be on the ballot and say, my name is Chuck Grassley and I’m running for Senate. You know, if you just let people pick any name. So that… so I don’t know what the court is.

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Dave Price: Yeah, it’s complicated.

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Laura Belin: It is going… it is going to court. And the Libertarian one, I just… I’m frustrated with myself, because I went to the Capitol on June 2nd, the day they submitted their papers, and I interviewed the candidates at the Capitol. But I did not walk with them over to the Lucas Building, which is where the Secretary of State’s staff are located, and where they actually turned in their paperwork, because there’s a factual dispute.

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Laura Belin: And it turns out to be really important. It would have been very helpful if I had been there to see what happened, because

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Laura Belin: Nicholas Gluba’s running mate, Jules Cutler, did not submit an affidavit of candidacy to be the candidate for Lieutenant Governor, and she maintains that she was there, that she offered this affidavit, and that the staffer in the office said, no, that’s not necessary, we don’t need that, so she took it home.

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Laura Belin: Whereas the Secretary of State staffer denies that that happened. She says she… there are certain things she doesn’t remember, but she denies that she was ever presented with this affidavit of candidacy, or that she ever said that it wasn’t necessary. So, the upshot is that the law says both the governor and lieutenant governor candidate have to submit an affidavit of candidacy, and Jules Cutler didn’t.

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Laura Belin: Therefore, the ticket is off the ballot, even though more than 8,000 people signed their signatures… signed their petition. So, that’s going to court as well, and I don’t know how that’s gonna work out.

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Dave Price: What’d you make of all this, Kathie? I mean, this is…

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Dave Price: I appreciate that these people are, you know, this is their lives for the next couple of months, whether they get on the ballot or off the ballot, but it’s so complex, it’s also so fascinating.

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Kathie Obradovich: it will be the most press that the Libertarian Party has had, you know, and probably the most they will have all year. So, on the one hand, I don’t think that it hurts them to…

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Kathie Obradovich: you know, make the case that they’re being persecuted by, you know, the major party, that they are so afraid of us, that they… they don’t want to let us on the ballot. You know, that kind of narrative for a… for an underdog, might be… might be helpful for those who actually make the ballot. But…

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Kathie Obradovich: it is also a helpful narrative, I think, for Democrats, that, you know, that, Republicans have to, you know, once again, as part of sort of a narrative, with the Trump administration as well, that, you know, they can’t beat us,

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Kathie Obradovich: you know, except by, you know, try to rig, rig the ballot, or, you know, make, make a, you know, try to, try to take voters’ choices away, basically, I think, is, you know, what we’re gonna hear there. And, and so.

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Kathie Obradovich: I think that the libertarians, what you said before about their organizational ability, you know, they did… they had to have known that their, you know, all of their paperwork was going to be under scrutiny, and… and they still didn’t make it. It always… it always, you know, befuddles me, you know, when candidates

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Kathie Obradovich: can’t do… and yeah, these are difficult things, but candidates can’t, do the paperwork to make the ballot. You know, it does make you wonder, well, you know, how are they gonna run a campaign, and how are they going to do in office if they can’t get this part right? So…

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Laura Belin: Dave, I forgot to mention that Marco Battalia

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Laura Belin: has asserted, and Rick Stewart also, supposedly, they both received phone calls from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, urging them to withdraw their candidacies before these objections were filed. And Marco Battalia further alleges that Zach Nunn and one of his campaign consultants came to his house

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Laura Belin: And tried to pressure him to withdraw his candidacy before the challenges were filed.

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Dave Price: Which adds yet another layer to all of this. Let’s leave it at that for this week. Kathie, Laura, good to catch up with you. Have a great weekend. Kathie enjoyed… Kathie, once again, is supposed to be spending time with a loved one right now.

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Dave Price: And as we record, he’s probably in the other room saying, man, I’m hungry, I sure hope we eat lunch.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yes.

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Kathie Obradovich: Well, we get Juneteenth off in my organization, so… so it’s a day off. But, you know, I never want to miss an opportunity to talk to you guys and everybody out there.

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Laura Belin: Dave, happy Father’s Day.

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Dave Price: Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Have a great weekend. Thank you all for joining us for Iowa Down Ballot Podcast. Thank you for those of you who’ve become new paid subscribers. We very much appreciate you. You allow us to keep doing this week after week. If you haven’t done that yet, and you have the ability to do that, please look for the link below this post where you can do this, and please also share the links from this podcast to your

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Dave Price: Friends and family, coworkers, neighbors, all those kinds of things that allows us to grow week after week as well.

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

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Dave Price: Thank you both.

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Laura Belin: Sorry, I got us off track with

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Laura Belin: And then we did… we can circle back on the ESAs and the.

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