Democratic candidate Kimberly Sheets won the Aug. 29, 2023, special election for Warren County auditor in Iowa. Courtesy: Kimberly Sheets for Warren County Auditor
WINDSOR HEIGHTS, Iowa — With hurricanes, mass shootings and endlessTrump-ydrama dominating the news, a county auditor special election in central Iowa probably wasn’t on your radar.
But the results last night in Warren County, Iowa, are worth your attention, because they continued a surprising and hopeful trend for state and local races across the country.
That’s because Republicans just lost this special election in Iowa, one of the few states that actually experienced a much-anticipated "red wave" in the 2022 midterms.
Not only that, but the electorate picked a Democrat by a two-to-one margin in a county that has long been trending toward the GOP.
Democrat Kimberly Sheets proved herself a strong candidate for Warren County auditor and worked hard, along with many volunteers, to mobilize voters for Tuesday’s election. Democrats also got an assist when local Republicans nominated a 2020 election denier, David Whipple, for a job that involves administering elections.
Voters in this conservative-leaning county chose a competent, industrious Democrat over a fear-mongering Republican with an overactive imagination.
Warren County tilted toward the GOP even when Iowa was still a purple state.
But it was "swingy," voting for Democrats such as Bill Clinton, Gov. Tom Vilsack and Sen. Tom Harkin (who grew up in the county) as well as Republican George W. Bush.
Democrat Barack Obama carried the county by a small margin in the 2008 presidential election, but residents preferred Republican Mitt Romney in 2012.
As Iowa has become more solid red, this growing county just south of the Des Moines metro area has moved increasingly out of reach for Democratic candidates.
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Sen. Joni Ernst (R) carried Warren County in the 2014 and 2020 U.S. Senate races by margins twice as large as her statewide victories. Donald Trump won Iowa by about 9 points against Hillary Clinton and 8 points against Joe Biden, and his Warren County margins — about 16 points in 2016 and 17 points four years later — were even more definitive.
GOP candidates have carried Warren County in all of the recent elections for federal and state offices, and Republicans hold most county offices. The party's voter registration advantage over Democrats has steadily grown as well.
So when Auditor Traci VanderLinden, the county's last remaining Democratic official, retired in May, the all-Republican county board of supervisors passed over Sheets, her deputy and preferred successor.
Whipple had never held a political or elective office before the county supervisors named him interim auditor in June. He emphasized his background in construction and his experience hiring, training and managing staff.
But the appointment quickly became controversial, and not only because Whipple had no experience running elections.
Kedron Bardwell, a professor at Simpson College in Indianola, found some disturbing things on the new auditor's Facebook feed. Days after the 2020 presidential election, Whipple had shared a false claim about election fraud in Minnesota, and asserted, "Joe admits MASSIVE VOTER FRAUD during brain fart."
In a different Facebook post from November 2020, Whipple wrote, "Trump has got this.... The left has tried real hard to steal our nation, but no thanks we will remain Patriots and free Americans."
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In late December 2020, Whipple approvingly shared a video of Trump lying about the stolen election, adding, "Get ready for it... He's not leaving despite media reporting.. I'm loving this!"
Four days before the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, Whipple declared, "The line in the sand is near" while sharing a QAnon video on his Facebook feed. He shared a 9/11 truther video on January 6, 2021.
Whipple soon deleted the posts, but not before Bardwell and others grabbed screenshots. Many Iowa news organizations and some national media covered the controversy.
The county supervisors planned for Whipple to serve as interim auditor through the end of 2024.
But area Democrats, outraged that county leaders passed over a highly-qualified candidate for an election denier, began collecting signatures to force a special election to fill the position for the remainder of the term.
After two weeks, they submitted nearly 3,500 signatures.
Whipple put Sheets on administrative leave — although he said the move wasn’t about politics.
Warren County Republicans tried to derail the election by challenging more than 900 signatures on a technicality.
But the county's election commission determined the petitions were valid and scheduled a special election for late August.
The parties held special county conventions to nominate candidates for auditor. Democrats’ consensus choice: Sheets.
The Warren County GOP could have taken the off-ramp. But despite all of the bad publicity, they stuck with Whipple.
It was a strategic error.
Whipple tried to rebrand himself, talking up his management experience in interviews and other public statements. He told BBC reporter Mike Wendling he had shared some "ridiculous" things on Facebook but didn't create that material, adding, "It's unfortunate that a lot of these things ended up being so much misinformation."
He and other Republicans tried to make the campaign about alleged mismanagement in the auditor's office under Sheets and her former boss, VanderLinden. He claimed staff had paid bills late, racking up fees, and let voting machines and election thumb drives go missing. Volunteers, including U.S. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-IA), helped distribute his campaign literature.
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Like many Republicans around the country, Whipple isn't a big fan of voting by groups of Americans unlikely to support him. He complained in an August 27 Facebook post that Sheets was trying to mobilize Simpson College students.
"While it may be legal, it isn't always right," he wrote.
Meanwhile, Sheets outraised her opponent and made thousands of voter contacts with the help of numerous volunteers. She was able to finance direct mail and paid digital advertising, and attended or organized events almost daily — in large part because Whipple had placed her on leave from her day job.
In interviews with local media, she highlighted her professional background, leadership skills and experience gained from working in the auditor's office for seven years.
The Democratic operation turned out hundreds more early voters.
But would an apparent lead for Sheets hold up to a possible Republican surge on election day?
It sure did.
Before this week, the record turnout for a Warren County special election was 2,177 votes on a school bond issue in 2022. The auditor's race more than tripled that number: unofficial results show Sheets received 5,051 votes to 2,538 for Whipple.
The partisan breakdown of voters in this election isn't yet available. But Sheets probably couldn't have won so convincingly without mobilizing the Democratic base and winning over the vast majority of voters affiliated with no party.
Speaking to the media once the results were in, Whipple characterized the outcome as "more of a popularity contest" than a competition about "who can do the job." He complained about the expense of holding the special election and said he was disappointed that "only 7,000 people showed up" to vote.
If he had any election administration experience, Whipple would have realized turnout was high by special election standards (around 19 percent of Warren County's 39,000 registered voters).
Sheets said in a written statement:
This is an historic night for Warren County. When the County Supervisors tried to take away the voice of the people, the people of Warren County stood up for our democracy and said with one voice: we trust competence over conspiracies.
Democrats haven’t had many victories to celebrate lately in this county, or Iowa generally. The landslide win for Sheets should be a warning to Republicans across the country: if they keep putting election deniers on the ballot, they may pay a political price in 2024.
Laura Belin is the publisher, editor and primary reporter for the Iowa political website Bleeding Heartland. She is also the part-time statehouse reporter for KHOI Community Radio and writes the free Substack newsletter Iowa politics with Laura Belin.