Messy Infighting and Cheap Personal Attacks Turbocharge Chaotic GOP Gov Primary

DES MOINES – After no-show and “100% establishment” Randy Feenstra stumbled into election year facing ridicule from local Republicans for running a “milquetoast” campaign and taking heat from his opponents for failing to show up at multi-candidate events, Iowa’s chaotic and messy GOP gubernatorial primary is in full swing. 

Feenstra has bragged about his role as a “key author” of his party’s deeply unpopular budget law that jacks up costs, threatens health care for 106,700 Iowans, and puts at least 20 rural hospitals on the brink of closure. Feenstra is also a vocal supporter of the costly and chaotic tariffs that have bankrupted Iowa farmers.

Between Feenstra, Adam Steen, Zach Lahn, Brad Sherman, and Eddie Andrews, Iowa Republicans are stuck with an underwhelming and extreme crop of candidates who are all running to continue Kim Reynolds’ failed policies that have put Iowa dead last in economic growth, set kids and teachers up for failure, and threatened access to health care.

Here’s what you need to know about the crowded and chaotic GOP gubernatorial primary:

• No-show Randy Feenstra is not building the coalition he needs to win. Feenstra is getting hit with nasty personal attacks from his opponents and his base for hiding from the campaign trail. Feenstra “has definitely not endeared himself to the Republican grassroots,” and is losing support from county parties after skipping every single candidate forum for the governor’s race, despite promising to appear at events with his opponents — which he only did after being torched for running a no-show campaign.

• Kim Reynolds’ copycat Adam Steen led the charge to make government even more dysfunctional and corrupt, putting out-of-touch special interests ahead of hardworking Iowans and praising Reynolds by saying “I support everything that Governor Reynolds is doing.”

• Montana political insider Zach Lahn has spent his career supporting the destructive tariffs that are causing Iowa farmers “extreme financial distress” and opposing Medicaid expansion — a position even more extreme than Reynolds’ disastrous privatization scheme that ripped care away from working families and cost taxpayers more money than it claimed to save.

• Brad Sherman and Eddie Andrews are two peas in a pod when it comes to raising taxes on hardworking Iowans. Sherman said he would “do a sales tax. And the other would be an income tax,” while Andrews vowed to propose “simply increasing the sales tax” as governor.

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