Two big results: Zach Lahn edged out Randy Feenstra in the Republican gubernatorial primary — a surprise upset fueled by a dominant Polk County performance and a late push from conservative commentator Steve Deace. On the Democratic side, Josh Turek won the U.S. Senate primary more comfortably than expected.

Looking ahead, we talked about why Lahn is a trickier general election opponent for Rob Sand than Feenstra would have been — he’s a change candidate with no voting record to attack. With both the governor’s race and U.S. Senate seat open simultaneously for the first time in 58 years, Iowa’s general election is set to grab A LOT of attention.

Thanks so much to those of you that have become paid subscribers or made a one time donation. Please click the subscribe button above or one-time donation button below to pitch in! Also, we reached #70 on Rising U.S. Politics on Substack this week. We wouldn’t have been there without your support. THANK YOU!

Auto-generated transcript below:

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Dave Price: Welcome, everybody, to the Iowa Down Ballot podcast, the post-primary election edition. I’m Dave Price, joined by Kathie Obradovich and Laura Belin. Hello to both of you as we begin this first weekend past the primary. How are you?

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Kathie Obradovich: Fabulous.

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Laura Belin: I’m recovering.

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Dave Price: We survived.

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Laura Belin: Nights, yes.

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Dave Price: Yeah, but

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Dave Price: All in all, to have primary night wrapped up by the time everything essentially was, was not bad. Kathie, what’s your headline?

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Kathie Obradovich: So, couple of surprises. One, I thought that this U.S. Senate Democratic primary, would be a lot closer than it was. It caught us off guard a little bit when AP called the race, excuse me, for Josh Turek.

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Kathie Obradovich: as early as they did, we thought it would go, go later and be a lot closer. And then secondly, you know, I think we saw that this could have been a possibility of Zach Lane edging out, Randy Feenster for the nomination. I mean, we saw the trend lines happening there. But again, you know, I sort of thought.

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Kathie Obradovich: you know, we were going to be going till 2AM on this race, or, you know, the potential for it to go to convention, and, the fact that, here’s the surprise, that Feenstra conceded, really, at the… at the… he was less than a percentage point behind Lane, and he conceded even before AP called the race. So, that surprised me as well.

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Dave Price: Laura, what was your headline?

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Laura Belin: Oh, I think the lane surge. I was kind of feeling the lane-mentum. I went to his rally in Ankeny on Sunday, and on Tuesday night, I started the evening at the Iowa Democratic Party’s

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Laura Belin: election night event, but when I saw the Polk County number come in really big for Zach Lahn, he had a margin of about 2,500 votes from Polk County, and Polk County tends to be one of the first to report, I scooted over to West Des Moines to go to the Lahn Victory Watch, because even though it was tight, he was hanging in there. I don’t think he ever gave up the lead at any point when they were

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Laura Belin: adding batches of votes. So, but my biggest surprise was not that Lahn won the primary, but

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Laura Belin: how many counties he carried. He carried 52 counties, and he actually carried most of the counties in Feenstra’s own congressional district, which I thought was amazing. He got

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Laura Belin: 40% of the vote in Sioux County, even. I mean, Feenstra carried Sioux County, but you would expect him to be absolutely dominating in his home county, so that did surprise me. I was also surprised in the second congressional district. Joe Mitchell won the… that was expected that he would win the nomination, but he only had, like, 62% of the vote or so. I thought he would do better against a very underfunded

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Laura Belin: opponent. So, in general, there was a pretty big anti-establishment streak in those Republican primary results.

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Dave Price: We have…

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Kathie Obradovich: It was interesting to see… just a quick addition to what Laura said. It was interesting to see how dominant Lahn was in the third district. You know, that’s really where he won it. Feenstra, they were pretty close, in the first and second district. Feenstra carried his own home 4th district, but not, as Laura just said, not by very much.

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Kathie Obradovich: But I think where Lahn really won it, was in the 3rd District, Central Iowa, Polk County, and he, he was… he was quite a bit further ahead there. So, I was a little bit surprised by that.

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Dave Price: I also was surprised that the Turek margin was as big as it was, although it really did feel like… I think we all sort of hinted at this the week before, that, it was… he looked like he had established himself as the… as the frontrunner with this.

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Laura Belin: It was… it was.

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Dave Price: The one thing that…

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Laura Belin: I was… I’m sorry, the Vote Vets’ internal polling was showing him 20 to 25 points ahead, so it was pretty consistent with that.

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Dave Price: Yeah. The one thing I thought about is, I don’t remember exactly at what time lanes, numbers…

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Dave Price: jumped above Feenstra. I was standing behind, in front of this big monitor for our TV streaming broadcast that we did all night, and it would automatically refresh. And I remember looking, and all of a sudden, Lahn had jumped up, the early numbers had Feenstra up.

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Dave Price: But it just reminded me that this is not scientific by any means, but I talked about this a couple of weeks ago here on the podcast. Like, sometimes you can just feel some stuff.

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Dave Price: When you go out and witness some of these campaigns in action, and it doesn’t… what you… maybe what you feel as the reporter, at least for me, doesn’t necessarily match, maybe, my head.

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Dave Price: So, like, when this campaign started, Feenster’s clearly the frontrunner, right? Most money, most well-known.

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Dave Price: a member of Congress, you know, whatever. And we have talked numerous times on this podcast about, boy, you know, it doesn’t seem to be a lot of enthusiasm for this guy, whatever. Laura, you went to the Lahn event in Ankeny. I went to the one Friday night in West Des Moines right beforehand.

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Dave Price: Which, P.S, great point about Polk County, because they really leaned in hard to point… to Polk County and won handily. And that’s the margin right there, if you start looking at his overall numbers. But you could just feel the juice, and Friday night, I felt like you could still feel the juice in Lahn rally, even though hours before, they got the gut punch that the president had endorsed Feenstra.

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Dave Price: and, you know, changed his mind, or whatever happened behind the scenes, or somebody influenced him to get involved in the race. But it was just another indication to me about sometimes what the… I would say head and heart, but, I’m neutral here, so I don’t really have the heart involved in these things, but sort of heart and gut, maybe?

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Dave Price: But Gut was telling me that Lahn was gonna surpass, and Head was telling me…

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Dave Price: boy, Feenster should probably be able to hold on here, right? And then, boy, once that flip happened, and I was texting throughout the night with, Feenster supporters, and you could tell that there was angst almost from the get-go.

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Dave Price: And then desperation sort of set in, like, they were looking at Montgomery County numbers, which were late… later coming in, but that was sort of the Hail Mary…

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Dave Price: And, you know, there weren’t enough people there that were gonna make enough of a difference anyway.

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Kathie Obradovich: I was…

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Kathie Obradovich: You know, beforehand, we weren’t… didn’t really have a lot of information about what Lahn’s get-out-the-vote operation was going to be like. You know, I was sort of assuming that Feenstra and Steen might both have an advantage there, with Steen, you know, having his tried-and-true supporters from the family leader, etc.

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Kathie Obradovich: But, yeah, the… either, you know, that organization is not quite as influential as it has been, or, there wasn’t enough difference between Steen and, Lahn and Feenstra in terms of how people felt as far as their, you know, religious, Christian conservative, values.

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Kathie Obradovich: So…

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Laura Belin: Well, Steve Dace, who was an early Steen endorser and a big Steen endorser, came out on Saturday, the day after the Trump endorsement, and said.

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Laura Belin: I’m still voting for Steen, but if you want to stop Randy Feenstra, who’s gonna lose to Rob Sand, you have

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Laura Belin: You have to vote for Zach Lahn. That’s what he said. You have to vote for Zach Lahn. And when he… I mean, he has a big megaphone, he has tens of thousands of followers, the Lahn campaign texted this video of Steve Days to everybody, and I gotta believe that that got him a couple thousand votes. I mean, his margin statewide over Feenster was only a couple thousand votes, so that also, I think, when people started to see Steen as less viable.

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Laura Belin: That… that could have pushed Lahn over the top for sure. I wanted to mention, this is something we did, like, a special post-election broadcast of KHOI’s Capital Week, and I noticed when I was looking at the county results.

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Laura Belin: that Feenster had these clusters where he did, well, like, in the… he won almost all the counties in the Quad Cities market, most of the counties in the Omaha market, in the Rochester, Minnesota market, and I think Lahn only won one county in the Omaha, or not Omaha, Ottumwa, Kirksville market. And I would guess that Lahn probably just wasn’t spending that much on TV outside Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Sioux City.

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Laura Belin: Because it just seemed to me like in the areas with those smaller media markets, that people just didn’t know as much about Lahn, and Feenstra was able to hang on. So, Feenstra’s strategy all along of, like, well, let’s just assume that nobody else can consolidate the support, if you didn’t have Zach Lane putting in $2.5 million of his own money to fund this very aggressive advertising campaign, I think that

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Laura Belin: that would have worked for Feenstra. And the Trump endorsement, I mean, what if Trump had endorsed a few months ago? Maybe Lane never would have gotten that momentum. Or what if he had endorsed last summer, and maybe Lane would have decided not to run for governor at all?

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Dave Price: I, I would like…

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Kathie Obradovich: Interesting questions.

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Dave Price: Yeah, I would love to have… Exit polling on this.

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Dave Price: because I had wondered at the time, was it too late when the president got involved, and would it even… these were 5 guys who all supported the president, so you didn’t have any of them who, you know, were speaking ill of the president by any means. I’m still super curious who…

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Dave Price: who convinced him to get involved in this so late? There had to be some kind of behind-the-scenes effort. I really question that he did this on his own.

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Laura Belin: Oh, no, there, no, yeah.

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Dave Price: Some, something, something caused this, and, contributed to this,

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Dave Price: within our border, I would assume. But I would love to know, somehow, if we could find out how many people, if any, were motivated to support Feenstra because of the president’s endorsement, but then this whole thing with Steve Dace at the end, and really even Bob Vanderpla’s.

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Dave Price: did they… did that make any difference at all? Did people look at this like… because there… I got messages from people about, what is this?

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Dave Price: So you got a guy who’s endorsed him, now he’s saying this.

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Dave Price: And then he took credit after the election that maybe what he did,

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Dave Price: made a difference here and contributed to the win. Would love to know, like.

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Dave Price: some proof, one way or the other, you know, like, I don’t know how we’re ever gonna know, it’s all gonna be anecdotal.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, I mean, we talked to voters in all four, all four congressional districts on Tuesday, my reporters and some stringers, and some of the Feenstra voters did, you know, specify that the president’s endorsement, you know, made a difference to them. Some said, that they were Trump supporters, but that they hoped Trump’s endorsement

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Kathie Obradovich: would not, influence people’s votes, because they were, they were Berlain or steampunk.

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Dave Price: Oh, sure.

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Kathie Obradovich: So, Trump’s endorsement was, you know, maybe, important to some voters, but, it wasn’t an anti-Trump vote if they… if people chose Lane or some other candidate.

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Laura Belin: Oh, Gary Loeffler, the Trump tractor guy, was a big Lane supporter, and he was there… he was there in Ankeny on Sunday, and he was there on Tuesday night at the Victory Party.

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Dave Price: I’m, like, looking ahead toward the general election, I’m really fascinated

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Dave Price: what the LAN campaign will look like.

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Dave Price: how the campaign team will grow, who comes into this, are they gonna bring… bring in some Feenstra people? Are they gonna bring in…

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Dave Price: outside people, will Republican Governors Association be part of this? I mean, there had been talk…

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Dave Price: about the RGA getting involved if Feenstra held on to get a different-looking campaign post-primary, because there was so much…

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Dave Price: consternation about the way they ran it, and I… I can’t remember if I mentioned this on the podcast, so… just…

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Dave Price: beat me out here if I’m repeating this, if I’m doing an old man,

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Dave Price: a recount that I’ve already said this once before, but big picture, and maybe I was only talking to a friend of mine, and I didn’t say this on the podcast, so I’m a little careful with what I say on here before something happens.

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Dave Price: I…

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Dave Price: I would be curious with you two, with all the campaigns we’ve covered over the years, both statewide and presidential.

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Dave Price: When I was talking to a friend, I was trying to think of a time when there was a legit candidate, not some fringy, nobody knows who this person is kind of thing, but somebody who’s, like, legit, who was looked upon as somebody who could win. I don’t remember ever covering a campaign like Randy Feenstra’s.

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Dave Price: where I had so many true supporters of his, Complaining.

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Dave Price: about what they were and were not doing, and I’m wondering if either of you can help me… I’ve got 25 years here now, and I was going through my middle-aged memory bank to try to see if I could remember anybody, and I can’t think of anybody that would be a good comp, and I’m wondering if either of you can?

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Kathie Obradovich: I mean, I think the closest parallel I can draw is with Jim Ross Lightfoot, where, you know, this was,

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Kathie Obradovich: again, an open governor’s race. He was the prohibitive favorite, and nobody knew who Tom Vilsack was. And, you know, that it wasn’t a situation where Lightfoot wasn’t getting out, and wasn’t doing media, or wasn’t doing debates, etc. The concern was his, was more like his message discipline, that

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Kathie Obradovich: he couldn’t stop talking about, you know, and sort of in technical terms, legislation in DC, as opposed to stripping down a message and focusing on state issues. So I think that that was the main thing that you would hear, you know, supporters of his saying, yeah, he’s got to stop talking about Washington, D.C. so much.

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Kathie Obradovich: You know, but that… that’s… I think that… that is not a direct, comparison, and… and you’re right, it’s been a, you know, it’s been a long, long time since we’ve seen, that much kind of grumbling behind the scenes about, you know, the party frontrunner.

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Laura Belin: I was living overseas at the time of the Vilsack-Lightfoot race, so I was not on the ground to observe it. I’ve never seen a worse candidate than Randy Feenstra in my life. I mean, and we had a warning sign when he only got 60% of the vote in his own primary.

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Laura Belin: two years ago against Kevin Virgil, but it seems like they didn’t learn any lessons from that. He was completely inaccessible to people, even in his own district, heavily conservative areas, and I think that he was just counting on being able to sail through in a fractured field, and I also thought that he was on track to win. I thought that several of the other people could beat Feenstra one-on-one, but with four-on-one, I thought that they would all

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Laura Belin: split the vote. So, but then when you have one of those four being extremely well-funded, and able to get his message in front of voters, and people were just looking… I mean, what reasons was Randy Feenster even giving people to vote for him? His ads were just all about how he’s with Trump.

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Laura Belin: But he wasn’t really giving anyone any reason to feel inspired about his campaign.

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Dave Price: And I believe we talked about that on here, that clearly they felt like the Trump thing was a problem.

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Dave Price: And they had to convince the base that…

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Dave Price: Feenstra was with the president and would support the president, and it was Trump, Trump, Trump, all the time in his launch videos, really everything, his introductory videos, and that was… they kind of ran on Trump, and he’d never…

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Dave Price: never shared any kind of vision. I was trying to think through, like, you know, you try to think of, like.

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Dave Price: obviously, from our standpoint, we want everybody to debate, and I did a four-candidate debate and really wanted to do a moderate a five-candidate debate for obvious reasons, right?

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Dave Price: But I guess I understood their point in that they felt there was nothing to be gained, and they thought he could be… if he was going to get pulled too far to the right on some issues, standing up there with the other four, it’d be hard to…

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Dave Price: to push back toward the middle, let’s just say, if that was one of their concerns or whatever. But they didn’t counter-program.

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Dave Price: So if that’s what.

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Kathie Obradovich: what you’re.

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Dave Price: about, then you could choose to go do… look what Rob Sand does with the 100 town hall things.

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Dave Price: Like, Feenstra could have done something similar, and just non-stop… and I appreciate he’s got a job in Congress, so it makes it a little more challenging to do it. But he had time. He also took a long time to officially get into the race.

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Dave Price: Which, frankly, annoyed some Republicans who were wondering, do you want this job? Do you not want this job? What the heck’s going on? But they could have counter-programmed, they could have been all over the place, and they chose not to. It was a really low-profile thing, and it wasn’t really until some of the activists and donors were grumbling that he…

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Dave Price: Kinda got out there a little bit more, but…

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Dave Price: Doing these sort of small pizza ranch gatherings and little select…

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Dave Price: almost felt like private-type things, they weren’t really private, but there was just no energy when you compare it to Lane, and even on a smaller extent, to Steen.

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Kathie Obradovich: One of the few… one of the few times that he actually did

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Kathie Obradovich: do an event. Was it the Westside Conservative Club, where he put his foot in his mouth, you know, and basically said, yeah, the ESA program, the Educational Savings Account, public dollars for private tuition, that those private schools should, if they’re going to take that money, should have to accept

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Kathie Obradovich: all students. And, you know, that, was basically a democratic talking point against.

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Dave Price: Yeah, which… Which is probably a pretty good general election. Yes, it would have been.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, but I, you know, all of the other candidates jumped on him, the governor jumped on him, the Republican lawmakers were unhappy with that, and so, you know, that sort of made me wonder, it’s like, okay, is this why they’re keeping him away from, you know, that he’s gonna put his foot in his mouth if he gets asked the right question, by a reporter?

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Kathie Obradovich: Or, you know, or somebody in the audience.

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Laura Belin: Look, I mean, even the last week, we talked about this because you went to that house party, Dave, that he did, but I was following his social media last week, and he was doing these private events, basically, at somebody’s farm or somebody’s home for 20 or 25 people. I was just speaking to the Urbandale area Democrats last night, and they had about 50 people just at their regular monthly meeting. I mean, I’ve seen larger meet and greets for city

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Laura Belin: council candidates than Randy Feenster was having in the final week of a statewide campaign for governor. It’s just ridiculous.

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Dave Price: I also wondered, you know, does it demonstrate, and we’ll see how Lane does this, he, he, Lane has brought in some new subjects, right? He is talking about some stuff, and we’ll have to see how it plays with people.

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Dave Price: But…

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Dave Price: We knew going into this, the challenge is, no matter who the Republican nominee is, you’re following long-time Republicans in the… who have been on the job, right? Since Brandstick got back in in 11. That’s a long time of Republicans, they’ve had the trifecta since 17. You’re not gonna realistically go in there, you wouldn’t think, and rip on what your party has done, so you have to

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Dave Price: Thread a needle about how you’re gonna… sort of,

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Dave Price: stay the course, to use George W.’s line from 04, you know, kind of build on it, though. And that… there is a little bit of a thread there, because you don’t want to rip on it, and you saw Feenster try to do that a little bit with Butt. He questioned how they did the budget.

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Dave Price: He doesn’t think that they should be dipping in all the reserves to make up for the deficits. And, you know, there were some people who didn’t like that, but that’s probably a theme he was going to have to have for the fiscal management side if he was governor.

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Kathie Obradovich: Right, and Lane, you know, a big part of his campaign was, you know, pushing back on big corporate control, you know, big pharma, and, you know, that comes out with, sort of with his MAHA affiliation, Make America Healthy again, and, you know, aligning himself with RFK Jr, who’s the Health and Human Services Secretary.

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Kathie Obradovich: There’s an anti-vaccine component to that.

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Kathie Obradovich: And then, you know, second, and this is, you know, he’s talking about Iowa’s skyrocketing cancer rate, and tying that concern to Big Pharma to that. Also, the big ag, and, you know, tying, tying farm chemical contamination also to Iowa’s rising cancer rate, which most other Republicans are not willing to do.

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Kathie Obradovich: they’ll talk about cancer, but they’re not really… they really don’t want to make that connection to farm chemicals, so… so he broke away from his party a little bit there. I’ll be interested to see how much he, emphasizes that part of his message now, going into the general election. I think that that…

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Kathie Obradovich: part of his message, can appeal across party lines, and so it may be worth it for him to continue with that discussion. But yeah, Lane, I think he’s… it’s going to be more difficult

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Kathie Obradovich: for Rob Sand to run against Zach Lane. He’s more of a wild card than it would have been for him to run against Randy Feenstra. You know, I think that Zach Lane

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Kathie Obradovich: there’s still a lot of things that we don’t know about him. He doesn’t have a voting record, etc. The Republicans did raise some negatives about him during the primary campaign, especially right at the end, when suddenly he started looking like a threat. But, you know, his part-time, residency in Kansas, or previous residency in Kansas, you know, his… some of his invest…

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Kathie Obradovich: investments that were sort of eyebrow-raising. Those, those things have, you know, started to come to light, or, or, you know, people are sort of digging into those a little bit more now, and I think that there’s, you know, more to know about Zach Lane, you know, potentially, things that are good for his campaign, maybe some things that aren’t so good. Rob Sand, on the other hand, you know.

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Kathie Obradovich: Republicans have been, running against him now for at least 7 years. They’ve raised a lot of, you know, they’ve raised concerns about him.

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Kathie Obradovich: over 7 years, but I don’t know if there’s anything new that we’re likely to hear about him, because they, you know, Republicans have been running negative, messaging about him for such a long time.

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Laura Belin: I think this is a very tricky matchup for Rob Sand. I’m sure that he would have rather run against Randy Feenstra, who was completely uninspiring and part of the old guard, and could be tied to both the state management and mismanagement fiscal, according to Rob San, and also the unpopular things that Congress has done, whereas Zach Lane basically blank slate, Dave, as you’ve mentioned, running on a change message.

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Laura Belin: And we saw the first memo from Rob Sand, and in some of his comments.

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Laura Belin: to reporters since the primary, saying things like, well, we’ve had 10 years of one-party rule, and Zach Lane just wants to continue another 4 years of one-party rule. Well, Zach Lane is going to present himself as very different from what Iowa’s had up to now. So that’s part of what Rob Sand is trying to do now, is going to be to convince people that he’s really going to bring more change, because he would bring divided government and

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Laura Belin: and all of the other things, rather than Zach Lane. But I do think it’s trickier. But Rob Sand is already making fun of all the time that Zach Lane spends in Kansas. There was Des Moines Register reporting about his many trips in Kansas where some of his children live, and that he made a comment to the Register, Zach Lane did, something like that he’s already had this conversation with his family, that if he’s elected governor, he’ll have

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Laura Belin: to spend as much time in Iowa as humanly possible. And Rob Sand quoted this in a video, and he said, most of us just live here.

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Laura Belin: Instead of saying, I’m gonna spend as much time in Iowa as humanly possible. So, that’ll be a theme we hear quite a bit about during the general election campaign.

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Dave Price: I do wonder how people are going to look at that. I mean, he’s… this is not a… this is not a summer home he has in Wichita. He has a home there because he has children there.

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Dave Price: And so, he goes back and forth. I’m gonna be curious how willing he is to be open about this, because you start talking about this, then this gets into your tricky first marriage and all of that stuff.

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Dave Price: But it’s probably… he’s going to have to…

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Dave Price: Probably speak at length about this, to explain how this is going to work, and how is he going to navigate this if he’s the governor.

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Dave Price: When I was… when you were talking about the ads that went against him, can we just get these dual ads out of the way, where…

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Dave Price: Lane invested in a company that later produced sex toys. Rob Sand used to be an underwear model. Can we just do a split-screen

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Dave Price: joint ad, get it over with, so we can then start talking about issues. They’re gonna find… Rob’s saying they already have the video of him, like, on a skateboard, or whatever that stuff is. They’re gonna make…

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Dave Price: The idea’s gonna be maybe make the other guy look like a weirdo.

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Dave Price: But I also think we can get rid of…

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Dave Price: the nature of these two candidates, it’s gonna be tough for Republicans to rip sand for being…

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Dave Price: The rich guy.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, I think.

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Dave Price: I think Lahn has probably made money on his own, too, but he married into money, so you’re gonna have to deal with that. Then you’ve got two guys who are really kind of pushing for change, so that kind of…

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Dave Price: balances each other out. I need to ask you both about… I don’t even know if you had time to read this. Kathie, you… you were knee-deep in a conference while you were doing everything else this week, covering the election, but have you read the release from the SAN campaign about the debate proposals?

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Laura Belin: Yes.

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Dave Price: So, he is… He’s basically trying to take charge…

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Dave Price: of the debate system, rather than having the media outlets, like we usually do, propose it, and then we negotiate with the candidates. He is saying he wants 4 of these, and this is…

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Dave Price: Part of this is similar to what Lahn did when he challenged Feenstra. He wants four regional debates, so spread across the state, and he picked the four bigger media markets.

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Dave Price: And…

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Dave Price: essentially, if I’m reading this right, the media outlets sort of apply to be able to do debates. I don’t know if SAN’s campaign thinks they’re the ones who are gonna make the decision on this, and put it all together, and then it’s up to Lahn to agree or not agree, but it’s gonna be four regional ones.

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Dave Price: And, if it doesn’t happen, then I think he’s got a challenge in there that Lahn needs to do a bunch of town halls or something like that. Clearly, it’s different. I like the idea about having four of them. I know, selfishly, as we put the one together that we did statewide with my company and with KCCI in Des Moines.

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Dave Price: that it’s hard. We had 90 minutes with 4 candidates, and so much that you want to ask about, you can’t.

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Dave Price: And you don’t get in-depth enough on stuff, you know? I mean, with 4 of them, you could get into a lot of things if, they would actually agree. It does sort of feel kind of an old-school way to do this, but I’m not sure what the media outlets are gonna think about SAN, if it looks like sand’s kind of in charge.

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Kathie Obradovich: Well, and if I were… if I were Lahn campaign, I would be really uncomfortable with having my opponent be the one to, you know, organize and bet the debates. I mean, the reason that the media outlets are the ones who organize it is that they’re, you know, at least, you know, expected to be neutral in terms of not, you know, trying to give an advantage to one campaign or another, or, you know, to

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Kathie Obradovich: you know, choose their moderators, you know, based on, you know, whether we think they’re going to ask tougher questions of the opponent. So I am uncomfortable with the… I love the idea for debates, regional debates. It’s good to get out around the state. Don’t love the idea of the SAN campaign trying to be the one to organize it.

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Laura Belin: Well, I… what I thought was interesting about the proposal is he kept saying, if our opponent does not agree, so it seems like he’s only interested in debating Zach Lahn, whereas

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Laura Belin: I mean, most of the time, Rob Sand is talking about how the two-party private clubs shouldn’t have a monopoly on this or that. I went to watch him vote on Tuesday morning, and he spoke to reporters, and the first thing he said was that this is… a third of the state is disenfranchised because independents have to declare with a party to vote in the primary, and so on, but it looks like a libertarian is going to be on the ballot. They’ve qualified for the ballot, Nicholas Gluba.

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Laura Belin: filed his nominating papers on Tuesday. I haven’t seen whether those will be challenged. He told me on Tuesday he was very comfortable that he was way above the threshold and wouldn’t be knocked off the ballot, but I didn’t see anything in Rob Sands’ proposal that indicated that he’s willing to debate anyone other than his Republican opponent, so that’s something I’m gonna try to find out next time I get a chance to ask him a question.

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Dave Price: Laura, you… I wanted to, do a little PS on what you just said there. I’ve heard the criticism

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Dave Price: from some Republicans about sand, and that he’s basically trying to run away from being a Democrat. The one thing listening to you talk there reminded me that for almost as long as I’ve covered him, he has talked about the weaknesses of a two-party system.

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Dave Price: He is not talking about ranked choice voting, but I know he’s done… I think he’s read books on this, and he’s looked into how this would work and all of that. I mean, he’s got his own…

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Dave Price: his own, ideas that he’s put out there, but there are certain things for those who have talked to him for quite a while, he has been consistent about

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Dave Price: some of the things he’s talking about out there on the campaign trail as governor. This isn’t just…

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Dave Price: that the Democratic Party brand stinks, or something like that, and he’s trying to get away from it. He has… he has been talked… he has talked about the traps of a two-party system for quite some time.

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Laura Belin: Oh, yeah, years ago, I remember hearing him talk about it, and this primary, sort of a jungle primary.

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Dave Price: system.

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Laura Belin: That he wants to have.

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Laura Belin: That’s a newer proposal, but I think that he’s been open to that. I forgot to say, to pick up on something that you were talking about earlier, that the Zach Lahn wealth maybe makes it difficult for Republicans to campaign against Rob San. Zach Lahn, in his victory speech on Tuesday, tried to thread that needle by saying, kind of a Trumpian line of, I’m my own biggest donor, and therefore, I can’t be bought.

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Laura Belin: But Rob Sand is putting Iowa on the auction block because he’s taken money from these billionaires and also his wife’s family, so kind of… and glossing over the fact that Rob Sand has raised millions of dollars from thousands of donors, and

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Laura Belin: Zach Lahn has very few small grassroots donors by comparison, but in any case, they’re going to try to differentiate it that way, but I do think that it makes it complicated, that message is complicated, by Zach Lahn.

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Dave Price: All right, well, we will have much to discuss in the months ahead, and we are going to continue

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Dave Price: our weekly podcast. We may take a break, late summer, for everybody to get a little time off, but we’re gonna keep this sucker going.

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Dave Price: Can you seriously imagine what this year is going to be? We didn’t even really deep dive into the U.S. Senate race, which we will do in the weeks ahead, but the Hinson-Turek matchup is gonna be so fascinating, Sand and Lahn fascinating. We’re gonna have…

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Dave Price: 2, maybe 3?

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Laura Belin: 3…

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Dave Price: competitive congressional races, plus, I mean, you know, they’re always… I feel like the legislative races are always interesting on their own, you know, maybe they’re more hyper-local, I suppose, but seriously, though, for a non-presidential year, this is gonna be something else, right?

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, oh, I think so.

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Kathie Obradovich: I’ve referred to this before as it’s basically a generational opportunity for change in Iowa. You know, considering that it’s the first time we’ve had both an open governor and simultaneously U.S. Senate… open U.S. Senate race in 58 years, that is longer than almost everyone has even been able to vote.

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Kathie Obradovich: Let alone, you know, a lot of voters weren’t alive the last time that, that we had this wide open of a race. So, so yeah, and, you know, of course, it trickles all the way down the ballot. So, so this is a really big opportunity for change. Somebody also asked me, you know, could Iowa go back into the purple state category?

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Kathie Obradovich: And it’s like, well, if it can, this is the year, you know?

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Kathie Obradovich: It’s gonna be the year.

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Laura Belin: And, yeah, absolutely. I’m a believer in that second congressional district in Northeast Iowa. That is in play, definitely, in addition to the first and third, and we haven’t even talked about the Attorney General, Secretary of Agriculture race. Those are both going to be very interesting. So, I think it’s the most exciting Iowa election cycle I’ve ever covered.

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Dave Price: This… our Writers Collaborative features a lot of…

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Dave Price: different perspectives on things. For my personal standpoint, I don’t, I don’t go partisan either way, I’m neutral, I don’t take part in primaries. But may I just say, the most unsettling part of 2026? Do you know what that is for me personally?

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Dave Price: Regardless of which candidate

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Dave Price: becomes our next governor, regardless of which candidate becomes our next United States senator, I am guaranteed that I will be older than both of those winners.

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Dave Price: And I don’t know how to come to terms with this.

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Kathie Obradovich: This would be a first time for me, as well, so I… I would, yeah, you start to feel old when your, when your doctors, your priests, and your, you know, your governor are… are actually younger than you, so…

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Dave Price: I noticed that this was the first cycle where, like, especially talking to friends, I more frequently found myself referring to people, by their first names.

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Dave Price: And I don’t think that it was a sign of disrespect for anybody, I think it was the fact that some of these people are well younger than I am.

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Dave Price: It’s just what came out, so I…

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Dave Price: This is how it’s always going to be now, and I need to…

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Dave Price: Sit down in a quiet place and come to terms with this.

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Dave Price: Oh, that’s definitely a good place to wrap this sucker. Thank you to all of you who have joined us for all of our conversations about the Iowa legislative session. Let’s see if there’s going to be a special session, by the way.

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Dave Price: just… I’m just gonna throw that one out there.

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Kathie Obradovich: Probably not, but…

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Dave Price: You know, that’s still gonna… we’re gonna… those rumors will percolate occasionally. Anyway, for sticking with us on the long legislative session, getting through the primary election, now that we look ahead to the general election, we very much appreciate your support. We don’t do ads on this. We very much appreciate all of you who have made contributions to keep this going week after week after week, and we are committed to continue doing these throughout the general

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Dave Price: election, and the more support we can get from the community, the more

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Dave Price: that allows us to keep this going. So we very much appreciate all of you who have helped us do that, and if you’re thinking about doing it and haven’t yet.

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Dave Price: This would be a great time to get on there and do it. I’m gonna sound like those, fundraising drives on Iowa Public TV or Iowa Public Radio, but if you’re able to do it, we’d very much appreciate it. Thank you to Kathie and Laura. Ladies, have a great weekend, and we’ll talk to you next week. We will talk to everybody next week.

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