What to Know About Tonight’s GOP Gubernatorial Primary Debate
DES MOINES – Tonight, Iowa’s “unsettled,” “chaotic and competitive” gubernatorial primary will come to a head as Adam Steen, Brad Sherman, and Eddie Andrews square off in Iowa PBS’ Republican primary debate — with two notable absences from No-Show Randy Feenstra and longtime political insider Zach Lahn.
Here’s what to know ahead of tonight’s GOP primary debate:
Iowa’s Republican primary is a wide-open mess.
- Feenstra has been “unable to clear the primary field” after he failed to get Donald Trump’s endorsement and was snubbed by Bob Vander Plaats. Feenstra’s “difficulty connecting” with voters in his own party has even become a “persistent theme” of the primary race.
- While Feenstra hides from the campaign trail, GOP activists are planning for the “very, very real possibility” of the wide-open primary going to a “contested” convention.
This isn’t the first time Feenstra broke his promise to debate his opponents.
- Feenstra promised it was “time to debate” after the filing deadline on March 13 passed and the primary field became official. Since then, he’s continued to skip events with his opponents and has yet to commit to a single primary debate.
Expect more mudslinging and nasty attacks.
- Feenstra’s fellow candidates and members of his own party have spent months attacking his no-show campaign. Steen has harshly criticized Feenstra’s absences, calling him “Runaway Randy” and questioning Feenstra’s ability to unite his base in a general election, while his ally Vander Plaats has warned that Feenstra’s “nomination places all [Republican] gains at risk.”
- While Lahn ironically uses Feenstra’s absence as an excuse to skip tonight’s debate, it’s all but certain that Steen, Sherman, and Andrews will attack their absence from the only televised GOP primary debate of the cycle.
All of the Republican candidates are running to continue Kim Reynolds’ failed agenda.
- The field has praised Reynolds’ career failures, including her unaccountable private school voucher program that rips taxpayer dollars away from public schools and her mismanagement of Iowa’s privatized Medicaid program, which has resulted in thousands of Iowans being denied care.
- The field has refused to speak out against Reynolds ballooning the budget deficit to fund tax breaks for powerful insiders, making Iowa the worst state in the country for economic growth, and using a $4.7 million secret state-owned plane to attend multiple political events on the taxpayer’s dime.
- The field wants to go even further than Reynolds’ six-week abortion ban, which is already one of the most restrictive bans in the country. They agree on banning abortion from the moment of conception without exceptions for rape, incest, and life of the mother and have pushed policies that put access to IVF and birth control in jeopardy.
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