Kathie Obradovich, Iowa Capital Dispatch

Iowa GOP chairman says winter weather could prevent record caucus turnout

Republican Party of Iowa Chairman Jeff Kaufmann said Monday he expects a “robust” turnout at the 2024 Iowa Caucuses, despite the first blast of winter bearing down on the state a week before the event.

However, Kaufmann said the weather could get in the way of breaking the 2016 record of 186,000 caucus participants. “Weather could prevent a record-breaking turnout …” but Iowa could still have a “great turnout,” he said.

Kaufmann spoke to reporters after the Republican Party of Iowa’s legislative breakfast at the Hilton hotel in Des Moines.

The Jan. 15 Iowa Republican caucuses are the nation’s first presidential nominating event for the 2024 election. Eligible voters must attend in person to participate.

In 2016, Kaufmann said, he began to suspect a record turnout was likely on the morning of the caucuses, when the party received a huge volume of calls from first-time caucusgoers asking for instructions on how to participate. “This feels, I mean, the passion, the anecdotal emotion, it feels a little bit like 2016,” he said.

Caucusgoers must be registered as Republicans to participate but they can register to vote at their caucus and Democrats and independents can change their registration on caucus night in order to qualify. The Iowa Democratic Party will also hold caucuses on Jan. 15, but presidential preference will be registered only by mail-in ballot.

Usually, both parties hold their caucuses on the same night. That changed this year when the Democratic National Committee stripped Iowa of its first-in-the-nation status.

Kaufmann threatened Democrats with prosecution if they attempt to vote in both the Republican and Democratic caucuses. He noted that Iowa now has a Republican attorney general, Brenna Bird.

“It is against the law, and she will prosecute, I believe,” if someone participates in the GOP caucus and also mails in a Democratic ballot, he said. “… If a Democrat attempts to do that, and participate in both, that’s against the law, and we’re going to be monitoring that very, very carefully.”

He said there has been talk in the past about Democrats attempting to influence the GOP caucus, but he has not heard of any significant, organized effort to do that this cycle.

“I don’t see anything — and I think I would — any effort that has dollars behind it has massive people calling that,” he said.

Iowa Capital Dispatch is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Iowa Capital Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Kathie Obradovich for questions: info@iowacapitaldispatch.com. Follow Iowa Capital Dispatch on Facebook and Twitter.

Iowa GOP lawmakers have adopted a new power-tripping mantra

“Because I said so,” has to be one of the most infuriating responses someone can give to a reasonable question.

Republicans in the Iowa Legislature have come up with a similar default answer to any question they can’t – or don’t want to – answer: “Because we won.”

We heard it just last week during Iowa Senate debate of legislation providing a 3% increase in per-pupil state aid to K-12 public schools. Democrats asked why the majority Republicans were hoarding nearly $2 billion in reserve funds while schools are struggling to hire teachers, keep class sizes manageable and cope with inflation.

Sen. Ken Rozenboom, R-Oskaloosa, pointed out that Iowans keep reelecting them, so why not?

“We have conservative budgeting practices, and Iowans in increasing numbers send us back to the House and to the Senate. So yes, this reflects our fiscal policies and our conservatism,” he said.

We heard it frequently during the debate over Gov. Kim Reynolds’ scheme to siphon nearly $1 billion of taxpayer dollars into private schools over the next four years.

Democrats repeatedly raised evidence of the proposal’s unpopularity with Iowans, including public opinion polls and the overwhelming opposition by Iowans who had contacted lawmakers as the bill was being debated.

Rep. John Wills, R-Spirit Lake, the bill’s floor manager, pointed to the results of the 2022 election: “If Iowans are really opposed to school choice, then why are we winning seats?”

Good question.

Reynolds clearly made “school choice” a central campaign issue. She barely spoke about anything else during the campaign, except to make vague promises about continuing to cut taxes. She gave Iowans no warning that she planned to balloon the program into the most extensive in the country.

Why would she? Her original proposal, which would have affected only 10,000 lower-income students, was so unpopular that she couldn’t get it through the Republican-controlled House the past two years. She took the chilling step of backing primary challengers against a half-dozen Republican incumbents who refused to support the bill. Most of those challengers won.

Reynolds never mentioned that she wanted to hand out taxpayer dollars to even the wealthiest Iowans or that all but 1% of the students expected to benefit are already attending private schools. There’s no way Republican legislative candidates could have disclosed those details to voters – most of them had no idea until Reynolds’ bill was introduced.

And once that happened, GOP leadership gave most Iowans no time to think about the plan, let alone talk to each other or to lawmakers. The bill was introduced Jan. 18. It passed the House and Senate five days later. Reynolds signed it into law the next day, Jan. 24.

Republicans increased their majority by four seats in the Iowa House, and two in the Senate during last year’s elections. A dozen Republicans – three in the Senate and nine in the House, voted no on the private-school bill. Apparently, they didn’t think the voters in their districts – many of whom likely voted for Reynolds – did so because they supported sending their tax dollars to private schools.

Just because voters support a candidate doesn’t mean they agree with every proposal. Just ask the anti-abortion activists who were turning up their noses last week at part of Reynolds’ health care omnibus, which includes a provision for over-the-counter birth control.

Elections matter, of course. But “because we won” is not a justification for public policy. It’s certainly not an excuse for circumventing the legislative process to keep Iowans in the dark about the fine print and the bottom line. It leads to costly errors, like the one lawmakers are working to correct this year that would have cost Iowans an extra $133 million or so in property taxes.

It’s a power trip. Reynolds and the GOP majority are rushing through poorly drafted, wholly ideological bills that benefit the special-interest minority because they can. Every time they resort to “because we won” as an answer, they are admitting they don’t really know or care how the bill will affect most people in our state. Is this really what Iowans voted for?

GOP says unemployment benefits hurt Iowa -- except when they’re for the unvaccinated

Remember way back in June, when unemployment benefits were killing Iowa's economy?

Gov. Kim Reynolds couldn't wait until extended federal benefits expired in September, so she ended them three months early. She blamed unemployment benefits for the fact that employers were having trouble filling open positions.

“Federal pandemic-related unemployment benefit programs initially provided displaced Iowans with crucial assistance when the pandemic began," Reynolds said in a press release announcing the change in May. “But now that our businesses and schools have reopened, these payments are discouraging people from returning to work."

Two weeks ago, Reynolds announced new requirements for people to collect unemployment benefits, including increased job-search requirements and weekly meetings with Iowa Workforce Development staff designed to match them with available jobs. She cited a shortage of workers.

“The workforce shortage is the primary obstacle standing in the way of really turning that encouraging, short-term trajectory into long-term, broad-based progress," Reynolds said at a news conference Oct. 20.

Last week, Reynolds signed a bill, approved during a special legislative session, that creates wide-open waivers to prevent the unvaccinated from losing their jobs. The bill also guarantees unemployment benefits for people who choose to lose their jobs rather than get vaccinated against COVID-19.

What about all those open jobs?

Wait, what? Surely, freedom-loving Iowans who would rather walk off the job than get a safe, effective shot would have no problem snapping up one of the thousands of available jobs in the state. What employer wouldn't want to hire someone who's willing to risk spreading an easily preventable but potentially fatal disease to their customers and coworkers?

It's hard to imagine why these independent and self-sufficient Americans who don't trust the government would need a handout just because they refuse to protect themselves and their families. After all, the people they infect who lose their jobs because they're too sick to work have been regularly denied unemployment benefits.

That's not the only contradiction in the bill. It was supposedly intended to protect the jobs of people who don't want to get vaccinated, for whatever reason. It specifies that employers must grant waivers to anyone who says they object to a vaccine because they think it may harm their health or because it's against their religion.

Waivers are entirely appropriate if there's an actual mandate. People with a genuine health condition that precludes a vaccine or who have a religious prohibition against them should not lose their jobs. This bill doesn't bother separating out people with actual excuses. No need for a doctor's note or letter from a pastor; anyone who says they have an issue can have a waiver.

And yet, it offers unemployment benefits in an obvious admission that the bill doesn't prevent employers with vaccine mandates from firing workers who refuse a jab. There are no penalties for employers who fire unvaccinated workers.

Waiver for vaccines but not COVID testing

Even the unemployment benefit promise is a fig leaf. Under new federal vaccine regulations that President Biden announced (but are not yet implemented) for large employers, regular COVID-19 testing can be imposed for workers who refuse a vaccine. There is no waiver or unemployment guarantee in Iowa's new law for unvaccinated workers who are fired because they refuse testing.

Reynolds has continued to encourage Iowans to get vaccinated, acknowledging it's the only way the state will get past the pandemic. And yet she and fellow Republicans won't stop trying to pander to those who spread misinformation and lies about the safety and efficacy of these vaccines. The problem is, they also want to cater to large employers who don't want the state to meddle in their workplaces.

Anti-vaxx activists who swarmed the Statehouse during the Oct. 28 special session recognized the legislation was a sham. Chants of “kill the bill" arose as soon as they saw the text and realized it was far short of a ban on vaccine mandates. The same thing happened last spring, after GOP lawmakers rushed through a bill banning “vaccine passports" that stopped short of telling employers they could not require vaccines for their workers.

Democrats, most of whom voted for the bill last week, cited the lack of any real effect of the legislation, as well as their support for unemployment insurance. They seemed to enjoy the fact that the GOP majority was angering the very group this legislation was presumably trying to appease.

So why bother? Sen. Jason Schultz, R-Schleswig, floor manager of the vaccine waiver bill, made it clear the bill was about political messaging. He went on and on about the “authoritarianism" of the Biden administration, even after he had been admonished to keep his remarks to the bill.

This certainly isn't the first time we've seen Iowa lawmakers pass bills for no other reason than to send a political message. It's been happening regularly the last few years. But if Republicans were trying to send a message with this bill, they should have made sure it didn't contradict all their previous messages about how easy it is to find a great job in Iowa and how unemployment benefits are holding the state back.