Breaking the Red Wall
‘We’re not taking it anymore,’ say Iowa Teamsters who are picking a fight with union-bashing Republicans, sensing a rebound.
Illustration by Dolores Cullen
It feels like Iowa hit bottom on a deep dive down a red rabbit hole and could come back on a rebound.
The big rigs circling the Capitol Feb. 21, blaring their horns, sounded the revolt, as a leader of Iowa’s Teamsters declared that the brotherhood has had enough and will fight back every way they know how.
They were reacting to a bill put up by Senate Republicans that would kill public employee collective bargaining, said Jesse Case of Teamsters Local 238, and native of Storm Lake, who led the convoy and the charge against wiping out labor rights.
It’s been a dreadful decade for progressives in The Tall Corn State. The congressional delegation used to be split between the parties. It’s entirely GOP now. Likewise the legislature and the governor’s office. Just one Democrat holds elected statewide office — Auditor Rob Sand, whose probative authority has been emasculated by Republicans afraid that Sand might see and say something.
Reining in labor rights is a central goal of the right-wing agenda, but that’s just one of the lurches, overreaches and absurdities foisted on otherwise self-effacing folks who would rather not pick a fight or hear about lurid hang-ups.
They ban books by Mark Twain and Nikole Hannah-Jones, two of Iowa’s most celebrated writers. (Twain of Keokuk and Muscatine, and Hannah-Jones of Waterloo.)
They bash gays and trans people, and spend innumerable hours debating bathroom use and such.
They pass an abortion ban at the heartbeat.
They give vouchers to private-schools and home schoolers, taking it out of the hide of K-12 public schools.
They cut breaks to commercial and industrial property owners, and shift the burden to residential.
They eliminate the statewide water quality monitoring program because it keeps sounding alarms about nitrate and phosphorus pollution from row crops and hog manure washing into the state’s rivers. They eliminate the livestock confinement coordinator. They zero out funding for the Leopold Center for Sustainable Ag at Iowa State University. While poll after poll shows that water quality is near the top of Iowans’ worries.
They try to deny immigrant students higher education. They warn private colleges that if they don’t straighten out their woke politics the Iowa Tuition Grant will be in danger.
That’s a small sampling. Too much to keep track of, frankly. Makes a fella’s head hurt.
The Democrats are in disarray. They could caucus in the Capitol broom closet. Former Sen. Tom Harkin is retired to D.C., and former Gov. Tom Vilsack moved there. If the Democratic literati showed up on Ruraltown Mainstreet, you could probably draw a baker’s dozen if you serve free pork burgers and let in the guy in the beard who’s packing heat.
Something funny happened along the way to democracy’s implosion.
Small-town library supporters didn’t like that move to strip them of budget or book authority, and neither do the patrons who like books by both neanderthal fascists and screaming lefties without a sense of humor.
Special-ed moms are tenacious. Talk about shutting out the Area Education Agencies with their speech pathologists and hearing specialists and psychologists and you invite a war for life. The mere mention by Gov. Kim Reynolds set off parents, school board members, staff and agency host communities like Pocahontas, pop. 1,867, a Republican hotbed.
Folks get nervous about gay bashing, especially the ones who just realized their nephew is gay. It may not be their central political issue, but nobody thinks Byron Stuart, the owner of the World Famous Byron’s Bar in Pomeroy, is a threat to world order. He just keeps the music playing and we appreciate that. Having spent the better part of two days with mostly burly truck dudes, I noticed none of them were talking down “queers.” Not once. When asked, they generally reply that they haven’t quite wrapped their heads around all that, but it is none of anybody’s business. They would rather attention be spent on making Hwy. 175 a safe, smooth Iowa road, which it is not.
So in November, the book banners and queer bashers got their comeuppance in municipal and school elections. The Moms for Liberty got their butts kicked statewide.
Republicans started to disagree about things, like gutting the AEAs or banning former Iowan Tennessee Williams’s steamy plays. Rep. Megan Jones, a Sioux Rapids Republican and mother of a whole passelful of kids, voted against shaming gay children. There comes a point …
Gov. Kim Reynolds took up with the Moms for Liberty and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who would be a nice guy if he weren’t such a jerk. It rubbed off on her. She endorsed DeSantis over the great golden bear, and Donald Trump declared both of them were finished. DeSantis is, for now. Reynolds isn’t looking so good with a Trump target square between her eyes. She lost while hosting the caucuses, bad form. Losers get less love even from the ardent. Auditor Rob Sand perked up and might run for governor in 2026. Rumors swirl that Reynolds might not give it another go.
The Senate Republicans don’t know when to quit. They rewrote the collective bargaining law seven years ago to limit negotiations, and to force union elections every time a contract comes up. They did not anticipate that those hundreds of elections would actually affirm that 98% of members support their local union. So this year they doubled down. Senators Adrian Dickey of Packwood and Jason Schultz of Schleswig want to force public employers to provide a list of employees to the state every time a contract comes up for negotiation. If the city or school district refuses to submit the list, the union must sue to force the issue or else the union automatically gets zapped out of existence. Case’s union alone, Local 238 in Cedar Rapids, would have to sue up to 100 municipalities on a revolving basis to just stay whole.
“We don’t sit around and wait to be killed,” Case told the TV cameras on the steps of the Capitol. “When we push back, we get results from a fight.
“Between now and November, we are going to escalate.”
It will be more than honking horns. The Teamsters are raising funds for strikes and fines. If legislators are determined to stay on course, Case will advise snowplow drivers who are not paid for being on call (which is illegal), to not answer the phone at 3 a.m.
“Tell them to call Sen. Dickey to come plow your street.”
Or don’t answer the unpaid call when the sewer backs up or the water system shuts down.
“We will quit working for free.”
All options are on the table, Case insisted to the press.
“We’re not taking it anymore,” Case said.
More labor rallies are set to pressure legislators.
“Some say we shouldn’t poke the bear,” Case said. “We don’t trust them. We’re not going to wait to see what the House and Senate are going to do. They’re liars, and we’re not going to let them lie to us again.”
Dickey said it was much ado about nothing, just technical changes to the law written seven years ago. He also said the Teamsters were against freedom. A big bloc of the International Brotherhood leans right. Dickey needlessly is alienating working-class people who vote Republican.
You just haven’t heard union leaders talk this way in Iowa, a so-called Right To Work state. Their tails have been tucked since Ronald Reagan abandoned his old union pals. Then the Teamsters got a big contract with UPS, and the United Auto Workers won their strike against the Big Three. Public approval for labor is at its highest point since JFK ran Camelot.
Case believes the time is right for rock and roll.
“I think it’s a turning point for Iowa,” Case said. “People don’t like extreme politics. It’s going to have extreme reactions. Iowans are fighting back.”
Case is casing for candidates for school boards and county boards and, of course, the legislature. He doesn’t care if they’re red, blue or purple, so long as they stand against the absurdity and malice of it all. He wants to put mayhem on his adversaries. They ain’t seen nothin’ yet, he promises. It’s not often that a labor story leads the primetime news in Des Moines, but there was the 18-wheeler rolling and honking in full color on the screen. That’s a start.
Art Cullen is the editor of the Storm Lake Times Pilot in Northwest Iowa, where this column appeared. For more columns and editorials, please consider a subscription to the Times Pilot. Or, if you wish, you can make a tax-deductible gift to the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation to support independent community journalism in rural Iowa. Thanks.
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Great column! Feel free to visit Iowa's only blue county anytime you wish.
Anne Tanner, Iowa City
Thanks for reminding Iowans of the ever increasing list of bills of indictment against our Governor and Republican leaders. I don't think every Iowan will agree with every one of your detailed listing. I believe most Iowans will agree with several or many of your points. I believe Every Iowan needs to hear these indictments and to tell their neighbors that Iowa deserves better than what is coming our of Des Moines. PS I grew up with a wonderful father, who drove a truck and was a Teamster. I was a member of a different union.