Welcome back to The Status Quo Squad — your weekly newsletter from the Iowa Democratic Party, bringing you the latest updates on the chaotic, messy, and wide-open Republican gubernatorial primary where all the candidates promise one thing: a continuation of the status quo that has failed Iowa for the last decade.
This week, Randy Feenstra and Zach Lahn’s campaigns launched attack ads against each other just days before the primary, a major newspaper declined to endorse any of the Republicans running for governor, and Feenstra’s constituent called him out for voting to gut Medicaid and close rural hospitals.
Let’s get into it.
Messy primary alert: Ad wars get nasty and expensive just days before June primary
In a last-minute attempt to prevent the race from going to a messy nominating convention, No-Show Randy Feenstra and career political operative and Kansas carpetbagger Zach Lahn launched dueling attack ads this week. It comes as Feenstra was hit by an eleventh-hour bailout today from D.C. The Republican Governors Association has already been forced to step in to paper over their nasty primary.
Here’s what you need to know:
- Dueling attack ads: This week, a consultant connected to Zach Lahn’s campaign launched an ad attacking Randy Feenstra for giving “taxpayer-funded benefits to illegal immigrants” as head of an immigrant outreach group in Hull. Feenstra’s campaign quickly retaliated, releasing a new ad slamming Lahn for “invest[ing] a million dollars in a sex toy company,” saying that “Zach Lahn’s phony values end where his profits begin.” Lahn responded by saying he’s “now investing more to Retire Randy and defeat the establishment machine … from taking yet another race.”
- Lahn breaking his promise not to go negative: Lahn had previously said “I don’t say bad things about my opponents, and I’m not planning to say bad things about my opponents.” Now, FCC records show Lahn is coordinating through a shady independent expenditure group, Right America Inc., to attack Feenstra. Lahn and Right America Inc. both share the same consultant — Sage Advisory Group — which none of the other Republicans are linked to.
- Republican Governors Association’s desperate bailout: The GOP gubernatorial primary “has become a particular headache for Republicans,” forcing the Republican Governors Association to spend thousands of dollars to rescue their flailing candidates. In a failed attempt to paper over the “unsettled,” “chaotic,” and “competitive” Republican primary, the RGA launched a false and misleading attack ad that KCCI fact-checkers debunked. Iowa is the only governor’s race in the country where the RGA is spending money in a primary before voters have made their voices heard.
Five-alarm fire: Des Moines Register editorial board declines to endorse a Republican gubernatorial candidate
The Des Moines Register released a scathing editorial last weekend declining to make 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 paper blasted the “flawed field” and cited “significant” reservations about each candidate, saying the field has “fail[ed] to show they’d lead all of Iowa.”
- 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’s editorial board here.
GOP candidates agree: Supporting private school vouchers and policies that hurt Iowa farmers
In the final days leading up to Iowa’s June gubernatorial primary, the IDP is reminding Iowans all the ways that Randy Feenstra, Adam Steen, Zach Lahn, Brad Sherman, and Eddie Andrews are wrong for Iowa.
Supporting unaccountable private school vouchers:
- The field supports Kim Reynolds’ unaccountable private school voucher scheme that rips tax dollars away from public schools, drives up costs, and strains the state budget to foot the bill for wealthy families.
- According to the Des Moines Register, 99% of Iowa’s private schools are now funded by taxpayer dollars, with unaccountable vouchers projected to cost Iowa taxpayers $350 million in the next year alone.
Supporting policies hurting Iowa farmers and agriculture economy:
- The field supports policies hurting Iowa farmers, like chaotic tariffs, the war in Iran that’s sent fertilizer and fuel prices skyrocketing, and selling Iowa farmland to China.
- Tariffs have pushed Iowa’s agriculture industry to the brink of another farm crisis, as farmers are already struggling under the weight of a four-year downturn and filing for bankruptcy at the highest rate in the nation.
Feenstra fail of the week: Called out for voting to gut Medicaid in his hometown paper
This week, one of Randy Feenstra’s constituents called him out in a letter to the editor in his hometown paper for his vote to pass the largest cut to Medicaid in history and threatening access to rural health care.
In addition to ripping health care away from 110,000 Iowans and doing nothing to stop health care premiums for 117,890 Iowans from skyrocketing, Feenstra also voted to pass Terry Branstad’s disastrous Medicaid privatization scheme in the state legislature.
- Privatized Medicaid has been a disaster for Iowa, driving up costs, ripping away health care, hurting Iowans with disabilities, and closing rural hospitals.
Bottom line: No matter who emerges from this underwhelming and extreme crop of candidates, they are all running to continue Kim Reynolds’ failed policies that have put Iowa dead last in economic growth, set kids and public school teachers up for failure, and ripped away access to health care.
That’s a wrap for this edition of The Status Quo Squad. Thanks for reading, we’ll see you next week.