Iowa Down Ballot

About Iowa Down Ballot

Professional political analysts discuss Iowa politics with refreshing, in-depth conversations. iowawriterscollaborative.substack.com (https://iowawriterscollaborative.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast)

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Iowa Writers Collaborative Members

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news · news

Language

en

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No

First episode

10 Jul 2024

Latest episode

17 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

73 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   17 Oct 2026

   Iowa Down Ballot 10/17/26

   With less than three weeks until Election Day and early voting already underway, we dug into a busy debate week. We started with President Trump’s two planned Iowa visits, Sioux City on October 22nd and again on November 1st, and why the 4th District matters for turnout. We also talked about the risks for Ashley Hinson of sharing a stage with him. Then we broke down the second governor’s debate between Rob Sand and Zach Lane, the Hinson and Josh Turek Senate debate, and the 4th District matchup. We covered the fight over Turek’s missed votes, Hinson’s explanation of her family’s stock holdings, and Turek’s immigration tightrope. We closed with a look at the newly scheduled 3rd District debate between Zach Nunn and Sarah Trone Garriott on October 27th on KCCI, and why late debates may be less risky than they seem. Thanks to you all for helping support us whether it’s subscribing, liking, sharing, it all helps us grow! You can become a paid subscriber by clicking the button above, or make a one-time donation of any amount by clicking the button below. Auto-generated transcript below: Kathie: Hello, and thanks for joining us on the Iowa Down Ballot podcast. I’m Kathie Obradovich, your temporary host again this week while our stalwart leader, Dave Price, is on assignment. Thanks to those of you who reached out after my TB-worthy performance on last week’s show. Rest assured, I’m still alive, if not entirely well, but maybe I can get through this week without hacking up a lung. With me to help are Laura Belin of Bleeding Heartland and longtime political consultant, advisor and man about town, Eric Woolson. Eric: Great to be here. Laura: Good to be here with you. Trump returns to Iowa Kathie: It’s now less than three weeks before Election Day. We’re recording on Friday afternoon, and Iowans are already voting. One development this week is the announcement that President Trump is coming back to Iowa, not once but twice before the election. The first visit is next week, October 22nd, in Sioux City, and then he’ll be back on November 1st. Eric, Sioux City is in the 4th District, which is already red. Why go there? Eric: Obviously, Chris McGowan, the congressional candidate up there, doesn’t need him, but it really helps with turnout. Remember the governor’s race between Kim Reynolds and Fred Hubbell. Hubbell led much of the night until we got to western Iowa, and that’s where the Republicans began to run up the total. Midterms are as much decided by which voters participate as by moving undecideds. Trump has made the point that he’s not on the ballot and his support tends to fall off, so he needs to motivate those voters to turn out. There are an awful lot of them in the 4th District. Kathie: His approval rating is underwater in Iowa, as in other states. Talk about the risk as well as the reward for Republicans, Laura. Laura: If he’s coming at all, it has to be the 4th District. That’s where he can do the most good. The statewide polls show his approval is underwater, but it’s very likely still positive in that district, so I think it can only help Republicans overall. It could be risky for Ashley Hinson to campaign with him, though. If you’re on a statewide ballot and there are lots of places where Trump isn’t popular, she may not want those visuals. And you never know what he’ll say at one of these rallies. He doesn’t stay on script, and she could be standing right there when he says something that makes national news in a negative way. For Zach Nunn and Mariannette Miller-Meeks, it’s easier to have an excuse not to go all the way to Sioux City. They’re busy campaigning in their own districts, and I’d say that’s a wise move. Joe Mitchell, I don’t really know. He has campaigned using the Trump name more than some other Republicans, so he might go even though it’s far from the 2nd District. Kathie: Do you think Hinson will be on stage with Trump next week? Laura: I think she will. She hasn’t broken with the president on the Iran war, and she said this week that she’d welcome Trump coming to campaign, so she’s not pushing him away with both hands. She didn’t go to J.D. Vance’s event in Council Bluffs a few weeks ago, but she doesn’t have a good excuse this time. I also think Zach Lane, the candidate for governor, needs to be there. He needs that sky-high turnout in the 4th District, as Eric said. That’s what saved Kim Reynolds in 2018. Governor’s race: second debate Kathie: We have several debates to hash over. First, we want to send our condolences to Rob Sand and his family after the death of his brother-in-law, Walter Lauridsen. That’s a terrible, sad event for any family, and our hearts go out to them. The candidates for governor met in their second debate, this one on KTIV in Sioux City. Laura, did you notice any changes from the first debate, any change in temperature? Laura: Definitely. The moderators helped guide it early by asking a viewer question: are you going to stop with the personal attacks? That got both of them on the record. Eric, what did you see? Eric: I’d like to see every debate start with that question. It was a compelling way to begin and it put the candidates on notice. I’d also extend my condolences to Rob Sand and the family. It underscores something people don’t realize, just how dangerous and demanding campaigning can be. You’re on the road late at night and early in the morning, you’re tired from campaign events, and you’re often out late in areas that aren’t well traveled. Frankly, it’s surprising at times that we don’t see this happen more. Kathie: Do you think the debate moved the needle for Zach Lane? Eric: It’s so hard to tell with debates. You have a small audience. Some air statewide, some don’t, and even when they do, I don’t think the audience is tremendously large. A lot of people tune in just so they can say, my guy won, or my woman won. So I don’t think it moves the needle much. But it’s important for Lane because more voters got to see him beyond the campaign commercials. It’s really an introduction. The same is true for Sand. If you asked people on the street who the state auditor is, I’m not sure what the numbers would be. So this was a debate the voters won, but it was probably a wash in terms of which candidate can claim victory. Laura: Both sides got social media clips they could pull, but there were no game-changing moments and no big gaffes. Lane is the one most in need of something that changes the dynamic, because he’s still trailing in the polls. He didn’t make any mistakes, but I don’t know if he did enough, and Sand didn’t make a mistake that would help him in any significant way. I thought it was a substantive discussion on the state budget: how do you fund your priorities, given that the revenue estimating conference met this morning to talk about where the state budget is headed? There was also a good exchange on how to fund education, given decisions already made about the size of incoming revenues. These debates typically live online afterward, too. This one aired at 9 p.m., which is after my bedtime. Eric: I’m a night owl. I’m just getting started at night. Kathie: It also aired at the same time as another debate, the 4th District one or the Senate one, I lose track. Two debates were broadcast simultaneously this week, so I had to split my time. On education, Rob Sand is proposing a 5% increase in state aid, while Zach Lane is proposing to eliminate property taxes on primary residences. Both will need to explain how they’d pay for those proposals, and perhaps we’ll hear more in the next two weeks. Laura: Interestingly, Sand said he could only promise the 5% increase in the first year, and after that it depends on the state budget. He’s talked about legalizing and taxing marijuana to raise money, but he can’t do that on his own. He’s also talked about restructuring special education, which could be really expensive. Senate race: Hinson vs. Turek Kathie: The second debate I want to talk about is Ashley Hinson and Josh Turek, also their second of the cycle. This race has been close all along, regardless of which poll you believe. Laura, did you see anything that could change its trajectory? Laura: I think both could be pretty happy with how it went. Both made the points they wanted to make, neither made a major mistake, and there was plenty for supporters to get excited about. To me it seemed like a wash. Eric: I concur. Congresswoman Hinson showed her TV background. She’s a former anchor, polished and comfortable on TV, able to keep returning to her points. But Representative Turek did a nice job of holding his own and showed he can compete in that setting. He’s gotten better with each debate. His first debate was a lot better than he was in the primary, and the second was better than the first. Two things stood out on the negative campaigning. First, Hinson, I think for the first time, really explained the difference between the publicly traded stock she says she divested and the private stock her family still owns from the sale of her husband’s business. She finally got into the weeds. I’m no Warren Buffett, but if you hold private stock, I think you could still potentially trade on insider information. It’s still illegal, but you could take advantage of it. I think Turek has gotten some traction with his talking points on that. Laura: MSNOW did a focus group of Trump voters that I saw yesterday. They couldn’t have explained all the details, but they had heard that Hinson owned some stock and her family got wealthier while she was in Congress, and they saw that as a negative. As they say in politics, if you’re explaining, you’re losing. Eric: That’s exactly true, Laura. But if you sell stock in a private company, you’re going to get richer. If my family built a business over 20 years and I sold it during the campaign, you could argue I got richer while my spouse was in Congress, but it was the result of years of work, in this case by Hinson’s husband. If I own a heating and plumbing company, say, and venture capital comes in and buys it, which we’re seeing these days, I may hold that private stock. That doesn’t mean I did anything with insider trading, or that anyone wrote laws to benefit me. So it’s a complicated issue. If you’re explaining, you’re losing, but there are times you have to explain, and I think Congresswoman Hinson has begun to do a good job of that. Kathie: Hinson also kept emphasizing the main theme of her ads against Turek: that he missed a significant number of votes in the Iowa legislature, 58% here. The moderators finally had Turek admit that when he was gone, he was campaigning for the job he’s currently running for. I think we all knew that, and it’s not a big revelation, but he said it on camera, and Republicans picked it up on social media. Does that make a difference, Laura? Laura: I don’t know. I think Turek made a mistake. The first time they asked, he immediately said he’s proud of his work in the legislature and the bipartisan things he accomplished. If you’re going to pivot like that, first briefly answer the question, then pivot. Instead the moderators came back, which put more emphasis on it: but when you missed the votes, were you campaigning? We did know. I remember the last marathon weekend of the legislative session. There were votes supposedly coming, but the caucus went on endlessly, and there was a campaign event on his schedule, so he eventually left for it. But with millions of dollars already spent on this, I’m not sure how much more they get out of it. They clearly think it’s their strongest point. Eric: It’s not my job to defend the Democrat on this podcast. Kathie: I know my job. I’m so sweet. Eric: But I covered the legislature for nine years as a journalist, and there’s a difference between missing votes in a 51-49 legislature, where legislation can fail because you missed a vote, and being in the minority when the other party has a supermajority or close to it. Your presence doesn’t make a lot of difference. You can make floor speeches about how terrible the majority is and why a bill shouldn’t pass, but we used to watch three or four hours of debate, and at the end they’d open the voting machine and it would go 37, 38, 39. The minority still has 39 votes, and the vote was 61 to 39. Turek is in that situation. Even if he cast votes 100% of the time, it wouldn’t make a difference. Kathie: I’ve been waiting for him to say that. They’ve run a clip of him in some other setting saying he’s not sure how much Iowans care about it, which was poorly phrased. He probably should have said it wasn’t going to make a difference to the outcome, and I don’t think he’s said that clearly in some of these settings. Laura: I don’t think he has. And Lindsay James had the same thing used against her by Joe Mitchell’s campaign. She was in a three-way Democratic primary this year and missed a lot more votes than in the past, close to 50%, I think. I watched both of their debates, and she never came out and said, look, nothing was riding on my vote, we have 33 seats out of 100. They clearly made a strategic decision not to say it that way, but maybe it would have been better if they had. Eric: There’s the truth and there’s the whole truth. The truth is, we always say every vote counts. The whole truth is, when you’re in a 33-member minority, it doesn’t count for much. Kathie: It counts at the ballot box, not necessarily at the statehouse. Eric: Exactly. Kathie: Before we move on, Turek has also been on a tightrope on immigration. He voted for the bill in the legislature that essentially made it illegal to return to Iowa after being deported. He took a lot of flak for that in the primary, and now he’s using it to defend himself against attacks that he wants to open the borders. Laura, some of the more progressive Democrats didn’t love that about him. Is he in danger of turning off that base by pushing to the middle? Laura: I hear a lot of negatives from people on the left. I don’t know how many will go so far as to withhold their vote, but it’s probably cost him some volunteers. He’s run at least three different TV ads that emphasize immigration in one way or another, and they’re not well received on the left. But most Democrats understand the bind he’s in. Republican groups are outspending Democratic groups on the Senate race, and a lot of their ads, if they’re not about missed votes, are about immigration. So most Democrats are cutting him some slack, but every time he comes out with a new ad centered on this issue, I see negative comments on social media. Kathie: Anything to add, Eric? Eric: You mentioned the middle, and that’s exactly what this is about. The candidates are saying, I’m bipartisan. Hinson’s ads stress that she’ll work with people, and that was some of the focus of the Senate debate: who will work with the other side? Of all the issues for Turek to pick to talk about working with Trump, I know that surprises a lot of people. But in such a close race, you have to figure out how to move independents your direction or, in Turek’s case, maybe pick off some Republicans who aren’t very happy right now. Clearly that resonates with that group. 4th District debate Kathie: Let’s quickly acknowledge that there was also a 4th District debate this week. I watched the whole thing. I may have been the only one. Laura: I went down to the Iowa PBS studio and watched from the Maytag Theater, because I was hoping the candidates would take questions in the lobby afterward, but only Dave Dawson did. I was the only reporter there. Kudos to both candidates. They’ve had some civil debates, and Kathie, you could talk about that, but the civility in that race has been most impressive to me. Kathie: Very much so. I thought both did a really good job with their conversational ability, discussing the issues and getting into depth. I was a little surprised that McGowan didn’t hedge at all in saying Trump was wrong on making a deal with Russia on buying diesel. He has nothing to gain or lose in that district by criticizing or praising Trump, but I was a little surprised. Laura: I was very surprised as well. He also didn’t seem to agree with removing temporary protected status for Ukrainian immigrants. I felt Dave Dawson was very effective in both debates, especially this one. Whatever your politics, other candidates could learn from what he did. He kept bringing the conversation back to the war in Iran and how important it is to end it. It could be any issue you want to emphasize, but he kept redirecting toward his issue without robotically repeating the same phrasing. More debates ahead Kathie: We’re not done with debates. Next week there’s one in the 1st District and the last gubernatorial debate. And in the 3rd District, where we didn’t think there’d be a debate, now there is. Just Thursday, Sarah Trone Garriott, the Democrat, and Zach Nunn, the Republican, who have been beating each other up over not being able to schedule a debate, announced one for exactly one week before the general election: October 27th on KCCI. Eric, risky, no? Eric: Not as risky as you’d think. Some candidates want debates very early so they have time to recover from a mistake. Some want them very late so a mistake doesn’t make much difference. Early voting has started, so a lot of ballots will already be in the box before that debate. Again, it’s a question of how many people will see it. You have two experienced candidates, so a major misstep is unlikely. They can check the box: yes, I debated, I’m not afraid to debate my opponent. Close to the election, it’s hard to cut ads if somebody makes a major faux pas, like Jerry Ford giving Poland away to the Russians. The ad consultants move fast, but getting ads up in that last week would be difficult. So I’d be less worried about a debate that close to the election than one three or four weeks out. Laura: Zach Nunn has been pushing for an earlier debate, and Sarah Trone Garriott’s campaign said a week or so ago that they’d agreed to October 27th but Nunn hadn’t. I’m not sure what got his campaign to agree. I understand why Nunn would want it earlier. Most candidates who feel they’re in trouble want the debate as early as possible, before people start voting. Kathie: I was happy to see the pressure on them to schedule a debate. It would have been easy to say, we couldn’t agree, and leave it at that. Both campaigns felt pressure, and they would have been the only congressional candidates who didn’t debate. Even if it doesn’t move the numbers, those debates help establish some accountability. Voters get to hear on TV exactly what candidates say they’re going to do. Wrap-up Kathie: That’s all we have time for. Thanks to Laura and Eric, and thanks to everyone for tuning in. We appreciate those of you who have become new or continuing financial supporters. You’re helping us cover our production costs and keep the lights on. We also appreciate everyone who likes, shares and subscribes, which helps us grow our audience. Thanks to our producer, Spencer Dirks, and to musician extraordinaire D’Artagnan Brown for composing our snappy theme song. Have a great week ahead, and we’ll talk to you next week. Get full access to Iowa Down Ballot at iowawriterscollaborative.substack.com/subscribe (https://iowawriterscollaborative.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

2. 

   10 Oct 2026

   Iowa Down Ballot 10/10/26

   In the governor’s debate, Rob Sand and Zach Lahn shared a stage for the first time. With no time limits, we felt the moderators lost control early, and Lahn ended up talking roughly seven minutes longer. Republicans loved his aggressive style, while Democrats thought the interrupting came across badly. We don’t see a clear winner, and three more debates are still ahead. In the U.S. Senate race, Josh Turek held his own against the more TV-seasoned Ashley Hinson. She kept hitting him on missed votes, and we explained why a missed vote doesn’t always mean a missed day at work. Turek got her on the record about Iran and Medicaid cuts, and her comments about millennials and savings drew plenty of social media reaction. In the 2nd District, Joe Mitchell and Lindsay James had a more orderly second debate. We also talked through the steel plant incentives and whether tariffs are really behind the project. On the horse race, Cook moved the 1st and 3rd Districts from toss-up to lean Democrat, and the 2nd District from lean Republican to toss-up. The polls disagree. Suffolk had Sand up 55 to 43 and Turek up 48 to 44, while Emerson had Sand up just 49 to 45 and Hinson ahead 47 to 45. We caution against trusting any single poll, since each makes different assumptions about who will turn out in a midterm. Dave Price is quite busy with his day jobs. We hope to have him back at some point, but we are committed to continuing informing our listeners, viewers, and readers. Kathie and Laura are two of the best political reporters in the state (if not the country). If you would like to support our work financially please become a paid subscriber by clicking the button above. To make a one-time donation of any size please click the button below. Thanks for listening, and if you can, please like and share. Auto-generated transcript below: Kathie: Hello and welcome to the Iowa Down Ballot podcast. It’s debate season and we have a lot to talk about, with candidates for governor, U.S. Senate, Congress, and more sharing the stage, some for the first time. There’s also new polling in the top races and some shifts in the political forecast for Iowa’s races. I’m Kathie Obradovich, and with me today is Laura Belin. Hi, Laura. Laura: Good to see you, Kathie. Kathie: We’re a smaller crew today. Dave is working on other projects and our conservative friends were otherwise engaged, but we can carry it, right? Laura: Yeah, absolutely. Kathie: I still sort of have the crud. If you heard me last week, you’ll know I’m a lot better, but I’ll apologize right now for any Marco Rubio-esque water swigging or cough drop crunching as we go. And I know you’ve been a little under the weather too, Laura. Laura: I’m feeling a lot better. Kathie: Just the walking wounded here. The governor’s debate: Rob Sand vs. Zach Lahn Kathie: Let’s start with the governor’s debate, which was all the way back on Monday. We’re recording this on Friday. It was in Davenport, hosted by KWQC-TV on the campus of St. Ambrose University. It was the first time on the debate stage for Rob Sand and Zach Lahn. What do you think? Laura: They didn’t have time limits, and honestly I feel like that debate was a case for having them. I didn’t total up the minutes myself, but I saw some analysis that Zach Lahn ended up speaking about seven minutes longer than Rob Sand. That seems pretty out of balance. I felt the moderators lost control of the debate early and never really got it back. Kathie: I’ve done both kinds of debates, timed and super formal, and the untimed kind that’s supposed to be more of a conversation. I agree with you, they probably should have timed the answers for this one. If you’re not going to time the answers, the moderators need to step in really early and make it very clear that they won’t let one candidate talk over another, and that they’ll cut in if you abuse the time. They really didn’t start trying to do that until way too late. It was interesting how Rob Sand responded. You could tell he was kind of annoyed, but he did not reciprocate. You didn’t see him heat up to match Zach Lahn and start talking over him, which not all candidates would do. And I think there was a risk for Lahn in talking over Sand like that. Laura: The Republican comments I saw online said Lahn absolutely dominated the discussion and got in a lot of zingers. On the Democratic side, people felt it came across very badly, all the interrupting and going on for a long time. It was interesting to me that near the end, when the moderator was trying to get things back on track, Zach Lahn said something like, “I can go if it’s four on one, I can take on...” He was almost implying the moderators were on Rob Sand’s side, when I felt they had been kind of lenient toward the Republicans. We’ll see. They have three more debates coming up, and that may be partly why Rob Sand was able to just hang back and wait. I’m curious to see whether the moderators are a little more active in next week’s clash. Kathie: A couple of things about the content. This is the first time we’ve seen these candidates together, so we saw some rehash of the attack ads we’re seeing incessantly on TV. One that stood out for me was Zach Lahn claiming that Sand’s campaign rhetoric about his time in Kansas was an attack on his kids. That’s the claim that he didn’t move to Iowa until two years before he ran for governor, and that he frequently returns to Kansas. Lahn portrayed it as an attack on his kids because he’s going to Kansas to visit his kids in a blended family. I think it’s a stretch to call it an attack on his kids, but I’m not sure where else he was going to go in trying to defend that. Laura: Rob Sand said the reason you’re in Kansas doesn’t matter, what matters is that you’re not in Iowa all the time. Lahn’s campaign has never really explained how this is going to work. He said that’s private, they have a blended family, and they’ll work it out like blended families do. But if his kids are being raised and going to school primarily in another state, it does seem like something he’ll need to contend with. Kathie: Lahn also pressed attacks on Rob Sand’s family wealth. He has repeatedly called Sand a billionaire in his ads. I didn’t think Sand engaged with that very much or tried to rebut it. He talked about family and mansions in other states and spending time there, but I didn’t think he rebutted much. Laura: The main thing he pushed back on was the nitrate fertilizer claim. He said his wife’s third-generation family company doesn’t produce nitrate fertilizer, that they produce other things from byproducts. Kathie: Maybe that was the most important thing, considering water quality is a big concern to voters. At the bottom line, unless there are giant gaps or big things that turn into campaign commercials and rhetoric through the rest of the campaign, I usually don’t see debates moving the needle much. They reinforce what people already think about the candidates. But did you think there was a winner here? Laura: I don’t think so. It depends on whether you care a lot about demeanor. But I think it fired up Zach Lahn’s supporters. In that sense he can feel it was successful, because he showed he was being very aggressive. I don’t know who was watching, or whether swing voters are watching these debates. And it’s different since this is the first of four rather than the only debate they’re having, so I want to reserve judgment until after they’re all over. But the Republicans seemed extremely pleased with the performance. Kathie: It’s a good point about who’s watching. A lot of times the effect of a debate isn’t the night of, it’s the media, and especially the social media, that rolls out afterward. We see that over and over. With this debate I didn’t see anything like that, but time will tell. Laura: What I saw from Rob Sand and other Democratic accounts was that they were sharing clips of things Sand said. They weren’t sharing anything Lahn said as a gaffe, but more like Sand’s line that you’re not going to be a stronger advocate for public schools than the guy who lives here and sends his kids to public schools. U.S. Senate debate: Ashley Hinson vs. Josh Turek Kathie: Exactly. This week was also the first time sharing the stage for Ashley Hinson and Josh Turek. That debate was on Iowa Press, so no time limits, but they weren’t at a table, and I thought it was a lot more orderly than the governor’s debate. What were your first impressions? Laura: I thought Turek really held his own. With Hinson having so much more experience on television, as a TV reporter and anchor and then in public life for a long time, I felt this format would really favor her. It struck me as kind of a draw. Turek looked more comfortable than he did in the primary debates against Zach Wahls. Kathie: For sure. He was a lot better than in the primary debates, and more prepared for the attacks he was expecting. Hinson was absolutely polished and on message. She continued to skewer Turek on his missed votes, and I thought mostly successfully. Turek did try to make the case that the work he did behind the scenes at the Capitol was significant, that he worked across the aisle and had an impact on legislation. But he still hasn’t scratched the fallacy the Hinson campaign is perpetuating with this line of criticism, that every vote missed somehow represents a missed day on the Hill. She’s talking about him wasting his per diem, taking money out of taxpayers’ pockets. The reality is that multiple votes happen on a single day, and you can be at the Hill without taking a vote except maybe for adjournment. So every missed vote does not represent a missed day in the Capitol. Maybe Turek doesn’t want to go too far down the road of defending that, but it seems to me he could at least correct that misconception. Laura: Sorry, my dog is weighing in. I actually researched the per diem question in the past, because of Zach Nunn. I think it was 2021, there was a year when he missed the entire session because he was deployed out of state, and I got a tip that he collected his per diem. What I learned is that under the law they just get the per diem. It’s not like the mileage reimbursement where you can claim it or not. It’s paid to them by law even if they’re absent. I also remember some of those days, because some of the missed votes they’re talking about, like the vote on the veterans budget, and a few other things, happened right at the end. There was one day before that long marathon weekend where Josh Turek was there for most of the day, through these long caucuses, and then he left to go to an evening event. They came back on the floor and debated a bunch of bills after he had left. But he had been there expecting to debate that day, and things were delayed. So it goes to your point that a missed vote doesn’t necessarily mean he didn’t show up for work. Kathie: Right. And like I said, he may not want to spend a lot of time on it. He knows it’s a bad look, that he probably should have been there for some of those votes. But on Turek’s side, he did succeed in getting Hinson to say that, despite her recent statements about wrapping up the war in Iran, she still wouldn’t support a resolution forcing the president to come to Congress to keep pursuing it. He also had her defending the One Big Beautiful Bill and its cuts to Medicaid, which have been costly to rural hospitals in Iowa. So I think he did get in some of his shots. Laura: One moment I’ve seen a lot of people commenting on on social media was Hinson’s comment that millennials aren’t saving enough and are the worst group for savings. She also said something about when she was in sixth grade and her dad taught her about compounding and saving for retirement. Not that there’s anything wrong with teaching your kid about compounding, but that’s something that only happens in a well-off family. A family living paycheck to paycheck isn’t teaching their sixth grader about compounding. I think a lot of people, particularly millennials, felt that was very insensitive. I’m Gen X myself. But wages have been stagnant and the costs of everything, housing especially, have gone way up. That’s why they’re not saving as much as earlier generations. Kathie: Turek probably could have done more to exploit that moment on the screen rather than waiting until after the debate. But again, I didn’t really see this debate moving the needle. The fact that Turek held his own against, like you said, a very experienced opponent matters, but if you were leaning toward either Hinson or Turek, you probably didn’t hear anything in that whole debate that changed your opinion. 2nd District debate: Joe Mitchell vs. Lindsay James Kathie: Next, the Joe Mitchell and Lindsay James debate in Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District. That was Thursday night on Iowa Press. Again, no time limits on answers. This was the second debate for these candidates. Did you see significant differences between the two? Laura: I did. The previous week’s debate, on KGAN, I felt the moderators lost control, or you could say the candidates kind of walked all over the moderators. The candidates weren’t always answering the question or doing what the moderators wanted. This one was a little more orderly in the Iowa PBS studio. Maybe the format lends itself to that. Kathie: I don’t know. If I was a candidate, would I want to cross Kay Henderson? I don’t think so. She has control of the venue there. There was an interesting contrast in demeanor, since we’ve been talking about that. Lindsay James comes off as very warm. She smiled and seemed to project caring. I lost count of how many times she said she was a mom. At one point she even said she was a mom to children, in case we thought she was talking about being a pet mom. And Mitchell I thought might have been a little tense. He was a lot more serious and didn’t smile as much. They did get into it toward the end. They started calling each other liars, especially when Mitchell accused James of never seeing a tax increase she didn’t like, and of not supporting tax cuts. Her argument, I think, was that she supported tax cuts, just not the ones the Republicans were proposing. For people who haven’t seen these candidates, at a time when the political forecasters are suggesting this race is tightening, you could get a pretty good sense of where they stand. Laura: In the first debate there was much more of them calling each other liars. I felt they were both pretty on message, with a lot of repetition. I don’t know who is watching, but anyone who has been following these races probably didn’t hear any surprises, because it was very consistent with what I’ve heard them say before. James had Mitchell defending the war and defending the tariffs, and he was able to explain why he supports those things. I didn’t think she was entirely prepared to discuss AI. That question came up and she was a little fuzzy about her own plan, let alone a broader statement about AI. Mitchell pretty smoothly defused the attacks on his family wealth. Kathie: One thing, though. The first debate happened right before the special session on the steel plant and up to $1.4 billion in incentives for it, which Lindsay James voted for. I thought it was interesting that Mitchell accused her of... [transcript is garbled here] ...when you talk about a steel plant that’s not going to be operational until 2030, you have to question whether a project that size would really depend on something that could be so easily changed as a tariff scheme. And he didn’t really explain why he thinks this project wouldn’t even be happening if it weren’t for Trump’s tariffs on steel. Laura: I don’t know about the tariffs, but doesn’t the project depend on support from the U.S. Export-Import Bank? A lot of people have asked me why they would build this plant in Iowa instead of Minnesota, next to where they’re mining the ore. I think part of the answer is that the Trump administration would never give federal support to a project like this in a Democratic-controlled state. At the White House event the previous week, they were saying things like, if there weren’t a Republican governor or Republicans running the state of Iowa... So I do think it’s possible it wouldn’t be happening without some kind of Trump policies. But I’m not sure it’s the tariffs specifically that it depends on. Kathie: Good points. Anything else you want to mention about the debates before we go on to some pure horse race? Laura: Yeah, we can go on. Horse race: Cook Political Report shifts Kathie: All right, horse race. This week the Cook Political Report moved Iowa’s 1st Congressional District, Mariannette Miller-Meeks versus Christina Bohannon, from toss-up to lean Democrat. It also moved the 3rd District, Zach Nunn versus Sarah Trone Garriott, from toss-up to lean Democrat. And the Joe Mitchell and Lindsay James race in the 2nd District moved from lean Republican to toss-up. It’s pretty shocking in Iowa to see congressional races anywhere in the state rated as lean Democrat. What did you think? Laura: I’ve been saying, particularly about the 3rd District, that it’s been leaning Democratic. I was saying that six months ago. I’m sorry, my dog is weighing in here. Kathie: We always welcome pets. My dog is joining the podcast now. Laura: One thing to remember about the 1st District is that Miller-Meeks is one of the worst-performing House Republicans in the country relative to how Donald Trump did in her district. Trump carried her district by about eight and a half points, and she won by 0.2. So in any kind of more favorable environment for Democrats, and with the turnout operation they have, it makes sense to see Miller-Meeks as slightly favored to lose. There’s also an independent candidate, Michael Bridgeford, and it’s not clear what impact he’ll have. His campaign released an internal poll by a pollster I’ve never heard of, so I can’t vouch for it, but it showed Christina Bohannon with a fairly significant lead. I think Zach Nunn’s problem is that Trump only carried the 3rd District by four points, about the same as Nunn’s margin of victory. Trump has to be very unpopular right now in that district, where 75% of the vote is going to be Polk County and Dallas County. I think the Democrats have a stronger turnout operation than they did two years ago. And for a Republican in a district like this to survive a year like this, they would need a history of over-performing the top of the ticket. Ashley Hinson was an over-performer in her district, but Zach Nunn is not. So I agree with those ratings. As for the 2nd District, it’s an open seat. Joe Mitchell is fairly new to Northeast Iowa, so he’s not deeply rooted there. It’s a district Ashley Hinson won comfortably, but now it’s open, and Trump’s approval is probably underwater in Northeast Iowa even though the district voted for him by a 10-point margin. So I think it’s very reasonable to look at it as a toss-up. I think Republican internal polling even suggests that. Kathie: Thank you for talking while I’m having a coffee. Laura: Sorry, I’ve been there. New polls Kathie: In addition to the shifts in the forecasting, we’ve seen some new polling this week in the governor’s race and the U.S. Senate race. What have you seen? Laura: There were a couple of new polls this week. Suffolk had very favorable numbers for Democrats: Turek ahead by four points, 48 to 44, and Rob Sand ahead by 12, 55 to 43. Then just today, as we’re recording on Friday, there was an Emerson poll with a more Republican-favorable sample. It had Ashley Hinson ahead 47 to 45, with 2% for Thomas Lahn, the Libertarian, and Rob Sand leading, but only by four points, 49 to 45. That’s giving Republicans a lot of encouragement, because it’s the smallest lead for Rob Sand we’ve seen in an Iowa poll against Zach Lahn. We still haven’t seen Zach Lahn leading in any poll since the primary, though. Kathie: These polls have been going back and forth. You’re right that we haven’t seen Lahn leading, but the margins have shifted. To me it underscores, especially this close to the election, that the polls can’t tell you who will win. Terry Branstad always liked to say the only poll that counts is the one taken on Election Day. We worry sometimes about people jumping on the bandwagon and wanting to vote for whoever is ahead. In this case I don’t think you can really trust the polls to tell you who’s going to win. All of these races are very close, and it’s about who goes out and votes. Laura: I flat out don’t believe that Rob Sand is leading by 10 or 12 points. That seems highly implausible to me. I think he is leading, since all the polls show him leading, but we don’t know what the electorate is going to look like. All of these polls make different assumptions about how many Democrats, independents, and Republicans there will be. The Emerson poll, I noticed, weighted its results to what the Iowa registered voter list looks like. I would argue they probably have too many independents in the sample and not enough Democrats, because we know that in midterm elections turnout for Republicans and Democrats is a lot higher than turnout for no-party voters. There are hundreds of thousands of no-party voters who participate in a presidential year and not in a midterm. There are Democrats and Republicans like that too, but the relative turnout rate is just not going to look like the registration list. We also know some of these polls weight to recall of the 2024 presidential vote. Emerson has Trump plus 10 over Kamala Harris. You could say Trump carried Iowa by 13, so it should be Trump plus 13. But there’s no guarantee that this November’s electorate will be Trump plus 10 or plus 13. It could be, but we don’t know. The 2014 electorate was very different from the electorate that had Barack Obama defeating Mitt Romney two years earlier. Kathie: And you just don’t know what the electorate is going to look like. I know we all like to know who’s ahead, and that’s part of the news. I don’t criticize news organizations for publishing polls. Mine does it on occasion. But when that becomes the sole focus, I think you’ve lost track. Sign-off Kathie: Well, we’ve made it to the end of our time here. I just barely made it, but I’m surviving. Thanks to everyone tuning in, and thanks to those who like, share, and subscribe. That’s how we keep growing week after week. And to those who have become new or continuing financial supporters, you’re the ones helping to cover our production costs, so thank you. If you’ve been thinking about supporting the show, that’s how you keep us coming back week after week. Have a great week ahead, and we’ll talk to you next week. Laura: Good to see you. Get full access to Iowa Down Ballot at iowawriterscollaborative.substack.com/subscribe (https://iowawriterscollaborative.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

3. 

   4 Oct 2026

   Iowa Down Ballot with Dave Price 10/4/26

   This week we recorded on Saturday, a day late, to cover Friday’s special legislative session on the proposed $15 billion steel plant in Lee County. Lawmakers approved roughly $1.5 billion in incentives, about 10% of the project’s estimated cost and the largest commitment Iowa taxpayers have ever made. Here’s what we dug into: * A done deal that wasn’t. Monday’s Oval Office announcement was billed as finished, with talk of no state incentives needed. We heard from Economic Development Authority director Debi Durham that the contract, utility work, and board approval are all still ahead. There’s also been no land purchase yet. * The Senate was the hard part. Republican Senator Dan Dawson, who chairs Ways and Means, voted against the bill and used his floor speech to question the rushed process and the governor’s negotiating. The bill still passed 28 to 19, and we talked about how those cushion votes get lined up. * Democrats were split. About half of House Democrats voted yes, with labor ties and union jobs pulling some members toward support, and we wondered whether the party made the most of the moment. * Politics over policy? We floated the theory that the rush was driven by the election calendar, and whether a presidential visit might follow. We also talked about the 4th District debate in Sioux City, where Chris McGowan walked a careful line on tariffs and Dave Dawson kept pressing on the war in Iran. We closed with the news that the 3rd District debate between Zach Nunn and Sarah Trone Garriott appears to be dead, and why TV debates are getting harder to schedule. If you are a free subscriber and are able to become a paid subscriber to help us cover costs of production you can click the link above. To make a one-time donation please click the link below. Any donation is welcome and we appreciate all of you that do. Thanks for listening we’ll see ya next week! Auto-generated transcript below: Dave Price: Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the Iowa Down Ballot podcast coming to you on Saturday. Usually we record on Friday. This week we have to go on Saturday because of that special legislative session that took place Friday. So much to talk about. From that, I want to bring in our panel this week. Eric Woolson, longtime journalist, longtime Republican strategist, catnip farmer. Welcome. Eric Woolson: Great to be here as always. This is sunset on Lucky Badger Farms, but it looks like sunrise. Dave Price: Yes. For those of you watching on video, you can see Eric’s incredible background. And then the two true stars of this week’s conversation who are rallying. Bad hamstrings. Shoulder cramps, whatever it is, they are out here. They’re both fighting through some stuff this week. Laura Belin and Kathy Obradovich, thank you both for powering through. We’ll see if your voices hold out. Laura Belin: It’s good to be here. Dave Price: In game time, the whistle goes and these two are right there. And Kathy, for those of you watching on video, proudly showing off her Iowa State shirt. Kathie Obradovich: Where are you, Ed Taylor, when I’m wearing my cyclone outfit? Laura Belin: Exactly. Dave Price: All right, everybody. So let’s turn back the clock, shall we? On Monday, there’s this press conference in the Oval Office with President Donald Trump, some of his administration. Attorney General Brennenburg, still not sure why she was there. She was right on his left side, I think. Standing there about this huge economic development deal, we had Ashley Hinson, we had Governor Reynolds, we had Senator Ernst, I think that’s all the Iowa folks, right? Marianne Miller-Meeks, sorry, Congresswoman, she was there as well. All right, so there… for the first time, releasing some of the details of this proposed $15 billion steel plant that would go somewhere in Lee County. We still actually don’t know exactly where this would be. So they lay this thing out. This would be the biggest, potentially, in our country, one of the biggest in the world. 6,000 construction jobs, 1,750 or so permanent jobs. In this location, and it partners, essentially, with the Esser Group. This would be the big company here. They have a Minnesota operation, so they have the iron ore there. Mine it there, bring it down through rail down to Lee County. You make the steel, and then you send it on down the Mississippi River, or so. Alright, so that comes out on Monday. On Friday, Governor Reynolds had called everybody back for this special legislative session. There are so many developments, it’s difficult to know where to start with this. How about we jump ball this at the beginning about the thing that stood out to you most about how this week… and for those of you who haven’t followed what happened this weekend, the legislature, to no surprise. Past incentives on this, it’s about a billion and a half. Which is roughly 10% of the… of the estimated price of this project. So the biggest commitment by the state of Iowa taxpayers that they have ever made before, there was a lot of ins and outs and drama and… meetings and all kinds of stuff that we’re going to get through this week, but Laura, the headline… what’s, like, the thing that stands out from you? Because there’s so much to dig into this, I couldn’t actually wait until we all assembled to talk about this, but what sticks out to you most about what happened? Laura Belin: The biggest thing for me yesterday is we had this role reversal for the last maybe five, six years. The Iowa Senate Republicans are usually lockstep in with the governor. And if she has trouble getting anything through the legislature, her problem is with the House Republicans. And yesterday, it was the Senate Republicans who almost… I mean, they had to make changes at the last minute to the Ways and Means Committee members to even get this bill through the committee. You had the Ways and Means chair vote against it in committee, speak against it on the floor, and so they barely had the votes to get this through the Iowa Senate. I did not expect that. Dave Price: Okay, I’m not trying to make fun of you, but speak against it on the Senate floor is not nearly a strong enough way to describe what happened. But let’s put a pin in that part. We’ll get to, we’ll come back to that. Don’t let me forget. Kathie, what, like, what’s the thing that stuck out more to most of you about what we just went through? Kathie Obradovich: What else is we? Yeah, I mean, what Laura said, for sure. But, earlier in the day, I mean, we’re going into the special session, after the… at this presidential news conference, it was called a done deal. No local, my gosh, I’m sounding really bad, sorry. No local or state incentives required. And so, it’s like, what are we talking about? Why are we doing… and it was Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary, who said that. So what are we doing here? You know, why are we, you know, apparently throwing these… massive incentives at a deal that’s already done. And, Debbie Durham was questioned about that during the Ways and Means subcommittee meeting. And she basically said, yeah, I don’t know what he was talking about, it’s not a done deal. Even after the legislative session goes, there’s gonna be more process. The Economic Development Board has to do a contract. There’s gotta be, you know, even more process here with all of the utilities, all of that kind of stuff. So, far from being a done deal. And it did turn out to be, you know, they were portraying Iowa as still being in competition with Arkansas, which is one of the balloons that Dan Dawson poked on the Senate floor. I’m going to keep my remarks even shorter than this in the future. Sorry about this. I thought I sounded… Dave Price: Oh, not at all. Thanks for trying to power through here. Eric, what stood out to you about the way this week played out? Eric Woolson: You know, I’m gonna come at it from the perspective I think you guys have me on for anyway, which is a historical perspective, and in that sense, I’m gonna put on my former reporter hat rather than my consultant hat. And that is that deals like this don’t come together in a week. This, the whole thing seems so, so odd to me, and I think back years ago when Iowa was in competition for a Saturn plant, the Saturn carmaker. I don’t even know if they make Saturns anymore. Dave Price: I don’t believe they do. I had one back in the day. Eric Woolson: But, but the fact was when, when somebody wants something, when there’s competition for it, and I mean all of the states, Tennessee, Alabama, Iowa, Illinois, all these states were going after this Saturn plant, and now out of the sky like manna falls this massive steel plant that, as, as Kathie noted, it was either us or Arkansas, and I, I think Senator Dawson had… he had a terrific point about, you know, questioning why this thing was coming together so quickly, and what the rush was, but, you know, another thing I would always say as a business owner myself, I can tell you that every forward projection of revenues is, is overly optimistic. Dave Price: Yeah. Eric Woolson: And, and so I know we have this, the, the governor’s office was saying this is a set up where, you know, they’re not going to get the incentives until they actually comes forward with, with, finish the work. But, I’m just telling you that, I think there are a lot of reasons to look at this deal and say, why so fast? And is it going to live up to expectations? Dave Price: I think just hearing Eric, for… if we have anybody listening or watching, and you don’t really know a lot about Eric’s background, the reason it’s easier for us as journalists to work with Eric in the past, regardless of whether it’s his clients with the firm or on the political side is because he was a reporter. So you understand what we’re thinking. Now, of course, that could mean that you know how to outsmart us, too, but… Eric Woolson: I… Dave Price: That’s a whole show for… Eric Woolson: I never thought about that. I need to be more cunning, I guess. Dave Price: Yeah. To Kathy’s point. That was one of the weirdest things to me. There were so many moments Monday. Where, and I made this joke a bunch of times yesterday, that I wish I had, as I was watching that news conference on Monday with everybody in the room, and for a variety of reasons, I wish I had a live thought bubble. You know, that, like, pot, like, you know, those old cartoons that, like, popped up next to the people in the room as the president, as Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary, was talking? Because it was just so weird. For them to say the deal was done, and my company’s TV affiliate, KWQC, in Davenport, did a story a couple of days ago on this premise of the deal’s done, which I believe those were Lutnick’s words, rather than the president, but the president said something about they were already building there in Lee County. Laura Belin: Right. Dave Price: And so, as you may guess, you know, for folks in Lee County, they’re like, what the… Laura Belin: What? Dave Price: And so, our… our affiliate there in Davenport did a story on this, that there’s been no land purchase, so of course there’s… there have been no shovels in the ground digging dirt and stuff, so that part was weird. When Howard Lutnick responded to the reporter about whether state incentives were necessary for this, he said no, which I would love to know what Governor Reynolds thought, who’s standing, you know, 10 feet or whatever the heck away from him, going, dude, what are you doing? I’m calling all these people back, you know, in the special session, and the urgency at which this whole thing goes down. I talked… I don’t know how many legislators I talked to on Friday. And I said, I don’t envy anything you’re trying to figure out here. How on earth, and you just got the bill. Most of them had no concept of this before this past week, and they have to rush in on a day on Friday, or maybe they came in Thursday night, depending on where they live in the state. You have to go through… they want to go start to finish through this project on Friday. Voted through, and then you have to go back home and explain to people why you either supported it or turned it down based on less than 24 hours of knowledge, basically, right? Like, how on earth… I don’t understand how a person can… it’s a leap of faith that this is all put together, and on top of all of this, sorry to monopolize the floor here, the governor’s office is… was… the negotiating team, at least early on here, and this has been in the works since last year, apparently, but… rather than Debbie Durham’s team at the Economic Development Authority to do the entire process, you had the governor’s office put this together. Obviously, Debbie Durham’s team became part of it, and she was the one who did… at the Ways and Means Subcommittee on both sides on the House and Senate, she sat there and asked ques… and answered questions and everything from the legislators, but that was… that was also unusual, and I had numerous people stop me to talk about the process was just so… unusual. Kathie Obradovich: So, Dave, can I just take your seat for a second and throw out another question? Dave Price: Sure. Kathie Obradovich: I’m curious what people think about whether Democrats made their point during this. I expected that one of the reasons I thought it might be risky for Republicans to come back into session before the legislative session, I mean, right before the election, would be that this would give Democrats a chance to really make all of their points again about affordability, etc., and extract a bunch of pain before this thing ultimately passed. I personally didn’t see that. And I don’t know, Laura, what you thought or Eric, what you thought, but I don’t think Democrats, yeah, I mean, some of them voted for it, sure. Dave Price: In the House. Kathie Obradovich: Expected. I would have expected that. But I would have expected them to make a stronger point ahead of the election. Because you talk about the timing. I mean… what was the rush with this? I think the rush was to get it out of there before the election. Dave Price: Oh, without it, it had to have been right, because they have 60 days from what Debbie Durham was saying to get this through, so they clearly have a number of weeks ahead. And there’s skepticism, and we keep teasing Dan Dawson, and we’ll get… we’ll talk a little more at length here coming up, but as he was skeptical that Arkansas was really a true player for this, and that’s really hard to know for us from the outside, but there did not seem to be any necessary reason that this had to get through Friday. May I throw out one conspiracy theory to this? I am curious if we are going to see President Trump in Iowa in the coming week. So that they can have this thing done already. And the governor did the bill signing, like, right afterwards, Friday night. The president’s going to be in Nebraska anyway, I think he’s doing Oklahoma and Alabama, if I remember my… Eric Woolson: Alabama was Friday night. Yes. Dave Price: Yeah. And then Nebraska… I think Nebraska’s Lincoln, although I’m… I can’t remember where in Nebraska it is, but I am wondering if we’re going to see him in the state on Tuesday. Eric Woolson: So is your… is your conspiracy theory that the rush wasn’t legislative, but political? Because that would be a conspiracy theory that I would buy into. Dave Price: That would be 100%, and I’m sorry to yammer so much here. Laura, you were trying to say something. Laura Belin: I kind of shared Kathy’s surprise that I felt like Democrats would maybe do more to seize the moment. I did think in the Senate Democrats, I thought were much more effective in the committee at making a lot of points about problems with this. Most of the Senate Democrats voted against it, and then during the Senate floor debate, the Democrats offered a couple of pro-labor amendments, so they got Republicans on the record voting those down. I don’t know why, I was told that there was some procedural reason that the House Democrats couldn’t offer amendments, so that… that may be the case, but I felt like during the House debate, J.D. Scholten was able to get the floor manager on the record, kind of trying to… he was trying to make the point that a foreign-owned company is probably going to be incentivized to buy farmland in Lee County for this, which Carter Nordman didn’t concede, but I thought he was able to make that point. J.D. Scholten, who ended up voting… Jennifer Confers was able to get the Republican nominee for Lieutenant Governor Derek Wolf on the record trying to get him to say, so you support tax incentives for out of state and foreign companies as a matter of policy because of course Zach Lane has said, and his campaign website says that he wants to end tax incentives for out of state and foreign corporations. But on the whole, it was kind of a muddled message from the governor. The Democrats, about half of the House Democrats voted for it, half voted against it. In the House, you had Josh Turek and Lindsey James voting for it. Then in the Senate, you had Sarah Trone-Garriott voting against it. So, the Democrats were definitely not on the same page on how to handle this yesterday. Dave Price: There was no question that Turek and James were gonna physically be there in person after they both have been beat up again and again for missing so many votes. That was a foregone conclusion. I’m with you on this. I thought… now, Representative Zabner tried to… do something in the House. I looked at it. Now, full disclosure, I went over to Senate, so I wasn’t in the House when that went down. But it was sort of a… it was kind of more of an affordability resolution that he was behind, I thought that they would maybe, like, push the gas tax suspension or something, something very tangible, even if it all got thrown out for not being germane. I thought they would probably lean into their moment, maybe not as much during the committee and subcommittee work, which would be… to me, I would think you’d want as much kind of publicity and attention as you could, and maybe you don’t want to drag out the debate or whatever, but I thought we’d see more in both, both full debates from their caucus, using this as a moment to hammer Republicans on how many people are suffering, and even if you don’t really… I mean, this project is hard to come after, right? It’s a ton of money, so you can come after it like that, but it would be a lot of jobs, potentially a lot of union jobs, maybe, in that part of the state, so they’re kind of torn on maybe, but maybe don’t focus on the steel plant, but more… bigger picture on this kind of late play to get some kind of good news out there for Republicans and how people are struggling? Laura Belin: Thank you for mentioning the unions. Yeah, that might be the several unions were on board for this project. Dave Price: Mmm. Eric Woolson: Yeah. And that was a point I was thinking about, too, Laura, that, you know, times change, obviously, in 45 years. I was the editor at the Keokuk newspaper 45 years ago, and, you know, it was obviously a strong manufacturing county. But it’s also a strong union county. And I was wondering whether we’re actually talking about union jobs here or whether a company from India is gonna say, well, we don’t want a union here. What the perspective is from the governor, and, you know, it sounds like they, the governor’s office would have had to have brought the unions in early, but I think had that happened, we’d have heard about this story weeks ago, months ago. So, curious about the role that you see the unions playing in this, and you said they’re supportive of it, but do you know any more about that? Dave Price: No, I know some of them were there in support during the committee meetings. Kathy, I know you’re trying to… you’re trying to get a word in here if your voice cooperates. Kathie Obradovich: No, I don’t… well, let’s play out the union thing. I was just gonna throw in about the management of the state budget. You know, this is a billion and a half dollars. The state has been running deficits of over a billion dollars the last two years, and again, that point was made a couple times, but, you know, where… where is the money coming from this? The long story about economic development projects is, you know, that once they get going, that the state will be repaid for all of its money. That almost never works and never materializes. You never see that. Yeah, the spinoff money. And they had people there from Lee County who are developers, who are real estate folks, who are salivating at the idea of being able to build houses for all of these workers, etc. And, you know, I hope that happens for Lee County, I really do. But that doesn’t… that’s not the way it usually works, so… Dave Price: And the… and I know Debbie Durham, when she… when she was talking on the Senate side at Ways and Means Committee, was talking about how they’ve worked these benchmarks and thresholds in there, and it’s not… it sounds like the… the interest by Arkansas, and Kentucky had also been a player in this, apparently, but Arkansas was looking at putting a bunch of money up front to help this company finance the deal, might have been, like, a billion dollars or so, that they would use by bonding through their teacher’s pension or something, I don’t understand how the math worked there, but Debbie Durham was making the case that we’re not throwing a bunch of money at this company up front so that it can help finance this. This will be 10 payments, and they have to reach these different thresholds to actually get it, and there will be, like, a 5 to 1, 5.5 to 1 return on this once this kind of ripples through, and all the additional tax revenue that comes through. Okay, can we… can we get to Dan Dawson? So he’s the Republican senator. As Laura already pointed out, I believe, he’s the chair of the Senate Ways and Means Committee, which… makes this, at least to me, makes it even more interesting, right? So he’s leading the committee of a bill that he wants to set on fire, because he does not like this. And a couple more specifics with this. This is that mega legislation that they passed. Was that 2 years ago, or 1 year? Laura Belin: It was, I checked, it was 2024. Dave Price: Okay, and they talked about it for two years, right? 23, they talked… Laura Belin: Yes. Initially, they talked about it in 23. Yep. Dave Price: I love your memory. Laura Belin: No, I looked it up yesterday. Dave Price: Oh, nice. I love it. Okay, so originally when they passed this thing, so this is supposed to be so the state can go after big companies, right? And part of it would be the state taxpayers would be in for about 5% of the cost of a project and you could do two of these things. So they had to go in and change how this all works. This was the, this is why they needed the special session. So this one, you’re just going to have one project instead of two, and it’s going to be 10%. I’ve glossed over a bunch of the specifics on this, but that’s sort of the headline part of this. So, you’re basically, as Dan Dawson would say, kind of putting all your eggs in one basket here with this ginormous project in Lee County. Okay, so this all goes back and forth throughout the day. I was told numerous times during the day, the Senate’s the chamber to watch. And there may or may not be enough votes there. And people were laying out, isn’t this going to be interesting? It gets through the House, and then they’ve put it out on the Senate floor, and you get to the 25 votes. And then what? You know, and do Democrats just sit there and… you know, watch the whole show play out and be like, hey, we’re not jumping on this until we see 26 go up on the board, right? And it sounded like there was one senator, at least, who was kind of waving back… wavering back and forth about which way to go on this. Now, in the end, I believe it ended up 28? So they had enough of a cushion here, but that, you know, definitely went back and forth, and as Laura pointed out, you had two members of Ways and Means who went off the committee, one by choice, one not by choice. Okay, so… this all plays out, and it goes through the House with 75 votes, right? As Kathy pointed out, House Democrats, some of them jumped on in support of this. So you get to the Senate, they realize they have enough votes. Dan Dawson decides to just let it all out. So the stuff people had been hearing and whispering about and talking in the halls throughout the day, he’s like, screw it. I’m ripping the Band-Aid off. I’m gonna let everybody know what’s going on. So he lays out that how weird this was, that the governor’s office is the one that put this thing together, and I believe LS2 is the firm that was part of this whole thing, and he’s like, you’ve got this firm working with this foreign company, going around economic development, going right to the governor’s office. They work on this whole deal, and it’s gotta be done right now. This is not the way this is gonna work. He said he reached out on his own to folks in Arkansas to try to see a… hey, is this were they legit competitors? Blah, blah, blah. He’s very skeptical. And so he’s standing there on the floor during his remarks saying that Governor Reynolds, in the end, was negotiating against herself. And in the end, did not negotiate a good deal for Iowa taxpayers. Laura Belin: And the lobbying firm LS2 as one of the lead partners is Jeff Boyk, who’s a former chief of staff to Governor Terry Branstad. When Kim Reynolds in the early years when she was lieutenant governor, he was the chief of staff in the office. So he is a very influential lobbyist. And I thought that was interesting. I was not there because I’ve been unwell this week. I was not at the Capitol, so I wasn’t hearing all those hallway conversations, I was hearing about some of them thirdhand, but it was great to see Senator Dawson lay it out. It did put some things in context for me. Dave Price: Kathy, if you think you can do it, and I’m not trying to put you on the spot, if your voice will work with you here, you’ve got a, as I like to say on this show, you’ve got a few years of experience with you. Can you think of a moment? I don’t want to overplay what Dawson did, but it’s like, it seemed pretty unique for my time working here. Did it strike you as a… as a unique moment, or am I delirious after a long week? Kathie Obradovich: It’s not unique, but it’s unusual. I mean, we’ve seen times in the past when legislators have gotten up and stood up against their own party, and voted against a bill that their leadership and etc. that wanted. But I will point out that as chairman of the committee, of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, first of all, Dan Dawson is one of the most powerful senators in Iowa. Secondly, he could have stopped that bill. You know, he could have stopped the bill from going through subcommittee. He could have stopped it from going through committee. He would have made… he could have made Senator Klimish replace him as committee chair, if he wanted to, in order to make a point about this bill. He didn’t do any of that. Didn’t speak against it in committee, just voted against it. So… so, clearly… he was, of the mind that he was gonna let this bill go through, regardless of his own personal thought about it. So, as I was listening to his remarks on the floor, which were powerful, I was listening to it in that context. Well, it’s like, yeah, Dan, but you could have stopped the bill, or you could have at least delayed it while they had found somebody else to be the Ways and Means Committee Chair. But yeah, I mean, it does mean something when one of the most powerful members of the Senate stands up against a bill that his party wants. Eric Woolson: I suppose. Dave Price: Once you get replaced, you’re replaced. Eric Woolson: Yeah, Dave, I don’t… Dave Price: I want to… Eric Woolson: …play off a little bit of what Kathy said about, you know, what goes on behind the scenes. A lot of times, I don’t think any of us really appreciate the intrigue that happens behind the scenes. I remember a story years back from Lowell Junkins, who was a Senate majority leader. And whenever there are close votes, he says, you don’t know what goes on in the chamber. You have to look around because he said, I’ll go to somebody and say, will you be the 24th vote? And they’ll say, I won’t be the 25th vote, but I’ll be the 24th. And then he’ll go to someone else and say, well, if I get 24, which you don’t think I can get, would you be the 25th? And then it’s like, okay, well, if I get 25, will you be 26? So that cushion of 28, ultimately what happens, you know, if seasoned people will look around the chamber and they’ll see who’s sitting back and waiting to vote. And they’ll be looking to see if that 24th vote comes. And then all of a sudden, when 26 happens, 28, it’s a moot point at that moment. And so, you know, we look at the 28 to 19 vote. And it doesn’t necessarily mean that there were people thrilled about voting for that thing, to Kathy’s point exactly with Dan Dawson. He may not have been thrilled to do it, but he may have given his word. I will make sure this bill moves, sir. Laura Belin: Well, the two Democrats who voted for it, I believe I was watching the board. I believe that they waited until Republicans had 26 Republican votes before they put their votes on the board. That was Mike Zimmer and, sorry, Tom Townsend, both Eastern Mississippi River Democrats with strong labor ties. Dave Price: And Townsend, a union guy himself in his career. And Zimmer in a tough, tough re-election there. I think Kathy brought this up already, if I remember right, but the Economic Development Authority Board still has to approve this. And so, it’s not done yet, and another thing that stood out to me, and this is my… I have not run multi-billion dollar companies, so perhaps this is… I don’t want to overstate whether this is a big deal or not, but in light of Masabi Metallics issues, and it may have been called a different company then, I can’t remember, but whatever it was, when he was in Minnesota, they had a… this entity, in its previous form, had a bunch of financial difficulties there, right? As it was trying to go through there. And supposedly has things figured out as they’re moving forward, but Janet Peterson, the state senator from Des Moines, the Democrat, had questioned the CEO about the finances. And during his presentation, I believe he had said the ownership group was kicking in $2 billion for this 15, and I… 15 is the Iowa share, and the Minnesota plan is, like, $3 billion, too, I think, so you’re looking at 18 plus or whatever. But it’d be $2 billion from the… this family ownership family, and then there’s federal financing that’s part of this, but they were still working on part of this. I don’t know if that’s a thing or not a thing. But there are, like, I think Kathy also mentioned, like, the contract’s not done yet. To my knowledge, at least, as we talk, there’s been no land purchase in Lee County, and Dawson even made… I don’t know if this matters or not, but Dawson had made a comment about it going in Lee County, or wherever it ends up. And I don’t know if he knows something there, but it’s not… it doesn’t feel like the deal’s done there, too, and the financing’s not done, so… just because they raced this through on Friday, it’s… like, there’s still clearly more… a lot, potentially, more work to do. Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, you know, if I had a prime piece of real estate for sale in Lee County right now, I’d be a realtor. Dave Price: Ancestor. Kathie Obradovich: Amen. I’d be raising the price, so it’ll be interesting to see how this goes forward. Dave Price: You just gotta make sure you pick the right part of Lee County. It’s gotta be near the river, right? Like, that’s gotta be a hint for us. It’s gotta be close to that, and the rail line, so I guess I need to just look on Google Maps and figure out the railroad and close enough to the river, and that’s the spot. And it’s got to, I mean, like, how big does this sucker have to be? It’s four different complexes, I think. So that’s got to be a huge chunk of land. I think it’s… I don’t know if this is right, but I wonder if it’s farmland. I was led to believe that with one conversation, it’s a farmland chunk. Laura Belin: That’s what JD Scholten suggested in… Dave Price: Is that right? Laura Belin: During the Iowa House debate, that’s what he suggested. Well, Carter Nordman, the floor manager, did not concede that, but… Kathie Obradovich: That would be cheaper. Laura Belin: Farmland, yeah. Kathie Obradovich: Cheaper than reclaiming industrial property. Dave Price: And eminent domain also came up in discussions. Perhaps not a lot during the legislative discussions that I can recall, at least, but whether that would be a necessary piece of this because of the… the scale of this project, but I… I mean, who knows, right? Like, there are a lot of pieces that still have to be figured out if this thing’s going to be a thing, so if they’re trying to get a political bang out of this, I don’t know that I mean you’re gonna get some headlines out of this. That’s why I keep wondering if we’re gonna see the president in the coming week to come and do sort of a victory lap. Kathie, we know you have to, you are hitting the road. I can’t wait to hear your voice after the Cyclone game today. Kathie Obradovich: I don’t think I’m gonna be yelling much in the game. Dave Price: All right, we’re gonna… how about we say, have a great day to Kathy, and then there are a couple other things I want to talk about. Is that cool? Alright, Kathy, hope you feel better. Eric Woolson: Take care. Dave Price: All right, Eric and Laura, nothing like producing on the fly here, right? And sorry I talked so much this week, but I’m… this guy… I’m, like, fixated on documentaries, I think, and the potential of these things, but this feels like yet another week where you could totally watch, like, an hour documentary on how this week played out, right? There were so many… so many fascinating dynamics. A self-serving point I wanted to bring up, I moderated a 4th Congressional District debate on Wednesday night in Sioux City at my TV-affiliated KTIV there, so you have the Republican Chris McGowan, who has been the Chamber of Commerce president in the Siouxland region, and then… Dan Dawson. Dave Dawson, sorry, I even did that during the day, too, and I… I’m like, gosh dang it, I hope I don’t do that during the debate. I think during the debate, I did not screw up in calling the wrong first name, but you would think I would remember my own first name to call another guy, but… this had to be… so he was a former state representative back in the day, but hour-long live debate. Had to be one of the most civil debates that I’ve done in a long time, the cynic in me would be like, well, it’d be interesting to do a civil debate in a really competitive race, right? No offense to Dave Dawson, but if he… if he wins here, he will really… Eric Woolson: If he wins, it’s because Democrats pick up 200 seats. Laura Belin: Yeah. Dave Price: Yeah, that may be the, it will be more than a blue wave for sure. Eric Woolson: No knock on him, and God bless him for even stepping in and running that race. Somebody, you know, has to do it, and you gotta give the guy respect for doing that, but that’s just one of those districts that’s very, very, very, very difficult for Democrats, and, you know, so it’s great that they were able to have that sort of debate, I think. Dave Price: And we’re not gonna do a super long discussion here. I’m gonna put the link in my column this weekend, although as Laura proved last weekend, you can’t make promises. Because sometimes illness or other things or travel or requirements get in the way. But so I may be confessing up next week like you may have to this weekend. But the one thing that stood out to me, Eric, especially you, because you understand, Laura, you understand this too. Laura understands too. Eric Woolson: Come on. Dave Price: Eric has done this professionally, but the messaging behind this, there was one thing McGowan said during the debate when we were talking to them about tariffs. That seemed like a pretty spot-on way to answer the question, where you can acknowledge the challenge of tariffs and how difficult it is. So his point, you know, obviously Dawson is saying, hey, Congress needs to end the tariffs, right? He’s the Democrat in this race. So McGowan, who did so much work early in the primary to lock up the president, and to basically force the other Republicans out of the primary race, which was kind of this masterstroke of how he pulled all of this off, right? He… he essentially criticized the way the tariffs are working without really pounding the president over the head on this, and is just saying that what he would like to see, because the tariffs are, you know, go back and forth all the time, is that they can’t be retroactive because that’s too hard for businesses. And maybe that’s a little nuanced, or even in the weeds or whatever, and you have to kind of be in the business community to understand it, but I thought it was an interesting way to address how difficult tariffs are without ticking off the president. And Eric, I’d love to know how, as a message guy, what you thought of a response like that. Eric Woolson: Well, she talked about nuance, and a lot of times nuance gets missed in debates. We’ve gotten to this point in political discussion where you have to hit people over the head, it seems like, with a hammer, or at least people think that voters don’t understand nuance, which obviously isn’t true, but, you know, McGowan, and I don’t know him, but he comes from an economic development background, so he, you know, as having headed the Siouxland Chamber up there. And so, you know, as you said, that’s a hard needle to thread because anytime anyone says anything remotely contrasting President Trump’s views, you know, he can turn on them in a moment. That really sounds like a thoughtful sort of answer, but the fact is, you know, we know that tariffs have been hurting sectors of the economy, especially agricultural economy, and I think it’d be, you know, any candidate that I’d be advising, it’d be just foolish to deny that. Now, I know a lot of candidates these days will go out and deny everything, but I mean, if I’m working with a candidate, you’ve got to have some credibility on this issue. And clearly, I think that that raises McGowan’s stock. Again, perhaps it’s one of those things he knows he can say safely, because he’s in that district. Somebody Miller-Meeks or none, in a more competitive district, for instance, might be a little more reluctant to say that. Don’t want to upset the president’s base. But, you know, I guess the cynic in me could say McGowan has that luxury, but I’m not that cynical, and I would give him credit for stepping forward and being able to say, hey, look, this isn’t working out the way that the president says it is. Laura Belin: I thought that Dave Dawson was extremely effective during the debate in repeatedly bringing the conversation back to the war in Iran, even when that wasn’t the direct way the question was asked and talking about the tariffs also. In a debate like this, look, this is a district with more than twice as many Republicans as Democrats, so Dave Dawson is not in a position to win this district, but can he overperform? Can he help discourage Republicans or remind Republicans or Republican-leaning independents that things really aren’t going well, that Donald Trump’s war of choice in Iran, that Donald Trump’s illegal and unconstitutional tariffs are to blame. I think that he did a really good job of doing that, and Chris McGowan, as you say, he has to be a worry a little bit about upsetting the president, but I think he’s trying to walk this line where he needs that very strong Republican turnout, not to win his race, but for Republicans to win any of these statewide races. So he needs the MAGA part of the base to be inspired and I just think that’s a very difficult needle to thread right now. Dave Price: Hey, I already threw out a conspiracy theory about if the president will be coming to Iowa in the coming week. Eric, does it make… so I made a smart-aleck comment about the thought bubbles, right? Because I would love to know, like, deep down, how hard Ashley Hinson is going to work to appear with the president, even though he basically said at this event last Monday that he’s going to appear with Hinson. Congresswoman Miller-Meeks as well, like, is it a help or a hindrance to her to appear with him? Like, is that going to help her in that tough first district race? Does it… the early travels here in these Republican, heavily Republican areas seem to be in pretty safe spots, and it might just be juicing the overall turnout? Eric, am I… I’m all about conspiracy theories today, so I’m gonna throw another one out. Would it make the most sense for him to go in the 4th, if he does end up coming this week, to try to boost turnout there in a safe area? And then that also leaves the possibility that the folks who are in really competitive races may already be booked. You know, like Tuesday, for example, I believe Hinson has a Senate debate. So, it would be virtually impossible for her to be in Northwest Iowa, and I’m really… kind of playing… Eric Woolson: No, I think I know where you’re going. And, you know, Hinson avoided the vice president when he was in Omaha. And so, yeah, the question that, in fact, I think you and I have talked about before is, would Hinson decide to avoid the president? Does it make more sense for him not to come into the state? I mean, it’s a reminder of gas prices. It’s a reminder of grocery prices. You know, I always hate the fact that we talk about inflation minus food and fuel. Dave Price: Yeah. Eric Woolson: What do most of us spend our money on? Food and fuel. And so those inflation numbers, you know, when people hear them, they have a… they don’t believe them anyway, because they know that their lives are… they are paying more. And I think it would, in a lot of respect, make more sense for the president to come into the 4th to boost turnout. He’s still going to have a great reception there, boost turnout, and that’ll help with the governor’s race, that’ll help with the Senate race. Obviously we talked about McGowan not needing that help, but even to Laura’s point earlier, that would even help with some of those legislative races. We know that the Iowa legislature is not going to, you know, flip from R to D, but we also know that it’s likely that the Republicans are going to lose some seats in the Iowa legislature too. And so, you know, it might make more sense and you talked about commitments also. This would… would he… should he go to the 4th District and do Sioux City, and of course, you can make all the logistical arguments that it’s a lot easier to fly into Sioux City than it is to fly into Keokuk. Sure. But, you know, this gives people an opportunity. They don’t have to come up with an excuse for why they don’t want to appear on the same stage with him. Dave Price: Yeah, if since we’re doing all kinds of forecasting here, may I put Laura on the spot to end the show this week. All right, Laura, we have addressed this on the show before, but this sort of played out a little more publicly over the past week in the 3rd Congressional District. So, what strikes me as unusual about this cycle is I just saw this social media video of the Republican Congressman Zach Nunn on his phone, like, calling the Democrat Sarah Trone Garriott, I believe James Talarico in Texas, running in that Senate race against Ken Paxton, I think he did a similar thing. But they have not, as of yet, figured out a debate in this super, super competitive race, right? And so, and maybe they still will. It seems it seems hard to… Laura Belin: No, I think it’s done. I think Wednesday, September 30th was kind of the last day of negotiations and they couldn’t agree on a date. So there will be no debate. Dave Price: And you feel pretty strong about that, that it’s done? Laura Belin: I believe so, that was what I was told. That the final offer, KCCI-TV, offered October 27th, which Sarah Trone Garriott’s campaign says that they accepted, but Zach Nunn’s people wanted the debate to be earlier, because early voting starts on October 14th. Dave Price: And if I may, just for folks who maybe aren’t super familiar with TV, it is a beast for a television station to schedule a debate in the month of October. And obviously you want it in October, higher interest, you know, before a November election. But the networks these days for the most part release their new shows in October. I think it used to be earlier than that back in the day when they produced more new shows every year and remember you used to watch reruns. Before we could record them and all that kind of stuff. They don’t really do reruns anymore. And I remember my folks used to complain when it hit rerun. Oh, there’s nothing on but reruns. But anyway, you know what? Eric Woolson: You had three choices anyway, you only had three channels. Dave Price: That’s right. Eric Woolson: When there were only reruns, there were only reruns. Dave Price: Anybody under 30 right now is like, what are these old people talking about? But it is really hard. So I know KCCI is doing a million different things to try to figure out where in prime time, for example, because you have to get permission from the network to preempt a show. So like when we just did the fourth district debate in Sioux City, so that’s NBC, my station there in Sioux City, we preempted the Major League Playoff game between the Yankees and the Red Sox, and so for an hour, because they also have the CW affiliate, they were able to move the game over to there, so it’s still free broadcast channel, which not everybody has that luxury. You know, it’s an inconvenience, if you will, if you were trying to watch it on the NBC station, but they told people about what was happening, so you moved it over, then when we got done, they moved it back. KCCI doesn’t have another station in the market. You can do on one of your sub-channels or something like that, but it’s pretty limited, so… I know, I’ve heard some people kind of beaten up, like you can’t beat up the media entity, because they are… it’s really, really hard to find a time that’ll work if you’re trying to put it on television where everybody can watch. You can do off-peak time, you can just stream it on your app, you can do it at 2 in the afternoon or something like that, whatever, but if you’re trying to get a time where a bunch of people can watch, it can be tough, but it is hard to believe, right? You would think you could get both teams in a room. And there would have to be a time somewhere, someday, to do it, but if they have different… different priorities about Nunn wants it early, Trone Garriott wants it late. There may be no way to solve it. Eric Woolson: But for a variety of reasons, we’re seeing across the country, there’s a trend across the country where fewer candidates are debating. We saw Congressman Feenstra during the Republican primary avoid all the debates. Now, that was to his detriment, certainly, but I mean, that’s a trend nationally, and as all three of us know, debates on TV are not really debates. I mean, debates kind of hit their peak at Lincoln-Douglas and maybe Kennedy-Nixon, and they have been resting on their laurels for quite a while since then. But, you know, are they informative to the public? Yeah, sure. Does the public tune into them anymore? The public sees so many commercials on each of these candidates, you know, you question how much people want to tune in and actually watch debates these days because they’re just bombarded with news anyway, but I think it’s a trend that has started and I think it’s going to, again, for a variety of reasons, one candidate or the other or both candidates don’t want to do debates. The network or the local affiliates have difficulty getting, you know, getting jumping through all those hoops that you mentioned, or people just don’t want to tune in. Laura Belin: I mean, I would always advise a candidate to debate. Usually, the candidate who’s the head doesn’t want to debate. I, when I put this to Sarah Trone Garriott’s campaign, because Zach Nunn has been out there every day on social media saying, my opponent’s afraid to debate. I want to debate. My opponent’s scared. My opponent’s scared to show up for a debate and defend a record. And I’ve said, you know, what are you, can you tell me anything about this? And they dispute that, but they said that initially, you know, that Zach Nunn was late to agree to KCCI, and by the time he agreed, the initial dates weren’t available. And then Sarah Trone Garriott was booked for the first three weeks of October. And the only date that worked was this October 27th. I mean, I don’t know if I were scheduling a candidate, like I would probably try to rearrange the schedule to make time for a TV debate. But I do think that Zach Nunn is the one who needs the debate more. I believe that he’s probably behind, he’s acting like he’s behind. And I’ve been saying for all year that I think that that’s a race that tilts to the Democrats. So, I think it’s regrettable that there’s no debate, though. I always like watching them. Dave Price: And I’m offended that Eric said that not everyone tunes into debates. Literally everyone was watching Channel 4 in Sioux City on Wednesday night or streaming on the app for our hour-long debate. Eric Woolson: That was the exception. The numbers were through the roof, I’ve heard. Dave Price: It broke the internet. Eric Woolson: People, you know, did not want to… they didn’t want to see that Yankees game. They really wanted to see the debate. Dave Price: More people watch this than the final episode of the RNC convention. I think he said there were like 120 million. Eric Woolson: Yeah. Dave Price: He somehow found, which would be, you know, one out of every three Americans apparently watched the RNC deal in Texas, according to the president. If you look into those numbers, I think we beat that. I really do. I have no idea. Laura Belin: Dave, seriously, though, I think you and Matt Breen, thank you for asking just good, straightforward questions about real issues. I always hate it in debates when people try to ask very complicated questions or two-part questions that are easier to evade. Anyway, you hit on good topics that we needed to hear the candidates on. Dave Price: And I know we’re going really long this week. The other thing that I would… I should put a poll up on the column this week, but we did this thing that I did back when I worked toward the end of my last several years when I worked in Des Moines. I am not personally a huge fan of, like, time limits. And I totally get the idea that you can lose control of the debate, but if it’s, you know, Mr. Woolson, you have 60 seconds, how will you end the war in Iran? You know, and then, so, for 55 seconds, you talk about how much Laura sucks. And then you say Iran, and then the timer goes off, and then it forces me to ask up, okay, dummy, you just talked about your cat, you know, whatever, whatever. This was more open-ended, and I don’t know… I think it worked without having a timer. We did do 60 seconds limits for, like, opening and closing statements or whatever. Now, it was also really, really civil, though. So, I don’t know if, like, you didn’t have them yammering on, and they weren’t going after each other. I like the format. I would be really curious for those who did tune in and watch it, or watched it later, I’d be curious what people thought of it. And I think we are using the same… I shouldn’t even say this out loud, because I’m gonna probably regret this, but I believe when we do our debate, and my company has 3 different gubernatorial debates, I’m only doing… I’m only moderating one of them. Because people… you don’t want too much Dave on TV. I believe we don’t have time limits for our one in Sioux City. So, but when it’s Rob Sand and Zach Lane out there, I’m going to be curious, I’m going to be skeptical that the civility meter will be as high as it was for Chris and Dave. Laura Belin: I agree. But I think that, well, Rob Sand tends to try to keep his answers short though. It might work. Dave Price: Yeah, we’ll find out. Hey, thanks for doing a little extra this week. Wanted to make sure we gave it its due time for what we just witnessed over this past week. And we’ll reassemble in 2030, and see if we’re talking about this new steel plant in Lee County, or if it was a distant memory by then, and everyone has moved on. Let’s hope that… let’s hope that whatever happens by that point benefits the people of Lee County. Our thanks to Kathy and hopefully her voice comes back. Laura didn’t really make a big deal out of this, but you are really fighting through something and I know you’re cheating with a throat lozenge. Seems like it worked your voice. Laura Belin: Which… Dave Price: Your voice powered through. Eric, good to see you as always, and I know you got to see the circus last night, right? Eric Woolson: Got to see the circus last night with our grandchildren. So yeah, I’m the only one not on the injured reserve list here. Dave Price: Yeah, but you had yours a couple weeks ago. Eric Woolson: And that is true. Dave Price: Thank you all for checking us out this week and thanks for sticking with us. I know we went a little long, so if you’re out for a walk when you were listening to us this week, you are going to be in that much better shape because we went twice as long for this week. I also know we have some new subscribers too. We very much appreciate you and thanks to those of you who have recently become paid subscribers. That helps pay for the production costs of this every week. Hey, we’re down to about 4 weeks until this November midterm election, so, the next month or so should be quite fascinating as we watch and try to understand everything that’s happening. Have a great weekend, have a great week ahead, and we’ll talk to you next week. 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2 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 40 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

67

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

32

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Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

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