Des Moines Register Editorial Board Declines to Endorse a GOP Gov Candidate
DES MOINES – The Des Moines Register released a scathing editorial over the weekend announcing their decision to decline making an endorsement of any of the Republicans running for governor, despite every candidate but Randy Feenstra sitting for an interview in the hopes to earn the paper’s endorsement. The Editorial Board writes that the “flawed field” has “fail[ed] to show they’d lead all of Iowa,” citing “significant” reservations about each candidate.
The Register slammed No-Show Feenstra for being the only candidate to skip an endorsement interview and remaining “absent from almost every significant multi-candidate debate and forum,” adding that Feenstra’s “tenure in Congress has been uninspiring.” They also called out Zach Lahn’s “discouragingly insular views” that “would take Iowa in the wrong direction,” and wrote that Adam Steen calling a large portion of the state “evil” is “not acceptable and it can’t be shrugged off.”
Read more from the Des Moines Register here, or key points below:
- Of the five candidates on the ballot in June 2’s primary, the Register editorial board declines to endorse any of them.
- That isn’t the result we expected when we began observing the campaign and inviting the candidates for interviews. The editorial board has offered endorsements in Republican primaries for decades and has often endorsed Republicans in general elections, too … In each case, at least one reservation was significant enough to stop us from landing on even a “he’s the best of a flawed field” judgment.
- This isn’t a result we reach lightly, either.
- Rallies and forums are scarce on [Randy Feenstra’s] campaign calendar, as compared with smaller and controlled meetings. He has been absent from almost every significant multi-candidate debate and forum, and his campaign was the only one not to make himself available to the editorial board for an interview. His published platform and television ads traffic mostly in platitudes.
- Feenstra is far below any minimum threshold of engagement that Iowans deserve from a potential chief executive.
- It’s especially disappointing that Feenstra has ignored debates, a format that lets people compare ideas and composure side by side. It’s a pattern for the congressman, who declined to debate his Democratic general election opponent in 2022 and 2024 even though Republicans enjoy a huge voter-registration advantage in his 4th Congressional District.
- His tenure in Congress has been uninspiring … his governor-campaign literature has more to say about supporting President Donald Trump’s ideas than about engaging with the serious difficulties confronting Iowa.
- [Zach Lahn’s] expressed some discouragingly insular views … too many of his other stances would take Iowa in the wrong direction.
- The main problem, and it’s a big one, is [Adam] Steen’s decision to paint the governor contest as, in his words, “a battle between good and evil.” That necessarily means identifying some segment of Iowans, possibly a very large segment, as evil. That’s not what Iowa politics should be about. It contradicts what Steen says about listening to other viewpoints. It’s not acceptable and it can’t be shrugged off.
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