Voters get what they asked for

You could see it coming down the tracks, that GOP freight train high-balling right into the past. They campaigned on it, the governor and her legislative allies: the gay bashing, the book banning, the $2 billion tax cut and the private school vouchers taken out of the hide of public school budgets, plus more, like loosening up child labor laws and making it harder for poor folks to get food stamps, and trying to fix our Byzantine property tax system on the fly.

At least they didn’t bring back the death penalty. Yet. There was that.

They stripped the auditor of subpoena power and held the governor above his review. They overhauled state government to give the governor more power.

None of it was a surprise. It was an agenda approved by a strong majority of Iowa voters with the re-election of Gov. Kim Reynolds that reaffirmed complete GOP control of state government.

In polls, Iowans said they didn’t like vouchers for private schools, Reynolds’s signature bill. But they did like the $2 billion in tax cuts. Plus, in the final days the legislature promised to cut property taxes by $100 million by capping local rates without knowing how that will play out.

In Kansas under Gov. Sam Brownback, the results from much the same program were disastrous and vaulted a Democrat into the governorship. With test scores falling, it is hard to imagine how starving public schools will help with the three Rs or get students to read history. The K-12 budget growth rate is half that of the inflation rate.

Iowans like the tax cuts, and they say they want better schools. Those choices do not agree. These days, a student rides a bus 56 miles from Nemaha to Holstein and back every day, and they’re not sure how to keep the school open in Early. We are getting what we asked for, and eventually we might not like it. Voters are fickle that way.

Iowans also say they want clean water. The legislature eliminated funding for water quality monitoring, and did nothing to improve what is the worst surface water in America. When you see they can’t even paint the faded sign at the marina, you can start to wonder whether the government is taking care of business. We knew that going into the polling booth, too.

Iowans did not necessarily ask for a debate over Don’t Say Gay in the classroom, or gender-affirming medical care for teens who identify as the opposite sex. They did not ask to ban books or suppress instruction on Black or Native history that the governor considers “divisive concepts.” But that’s what they got. For now, most of us are uncomfortable with the idea of teaching about transsexual issues. Opinions change, and you look back and cringe. Kicking around vulnerable people is not the Iowa style, and voters will come to regret it. But it works politically in the moment.

For now, the hard-right tack situates Reynolds squarely on the national stage with Republican presidential candidates trouping through and sharing the spotlight with her. She used the national campaign playbook in Iowa that appeals strongly to the GOP base.

In the absence of meaningful Democratic opposition, we can expect more of the same in the next session. The death penalty is a live bullet. A bill that would force insurers to cover schools that arm staff with guns will get a re-hearing. Depending on how the Iowa Supreme Court rules soon, abortion could come to the legislative fore again, perhaps in a special session that would gain nationwide TV exposure. Reynolds wants to abolish the progressive income tax, and can get that done next session.

It will take a few years for the tax cuts and voucher bill to be fully felt (already, some parochial schools are hiking tuition). A few more rural schools will close, and there will be layoffs in bigger districts. Do parents just shrug? It seems not to bother people much that so many rural nursing homes are going belly-up because of our miserly Medicaid program. People vote pro-life in the abstract, but what happens when abortion is banned at the detection of a heartbeat?

Shoving Iowa so hard to the right seems like the thing to do when that’s what voters elected you to do, until they don’t. The pendulum can swing unexpectedly and hit Reynolds right in the forehead. She is enjoying the best of times, which don’t always last.

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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