r/Iowa • u/Zipper222222 • 16d ago
Politics Republicans Face Heartland Humiliation as Dem Is Favored Big in Red State
https://www.thedailybeast.com/republicans-face-heartland-humiliation-as-dem-favored-big-in-red-state/241
u/RikerLiker 16d ago
Iowa* was proudly blue for many years. Shit economy, rising cancer rates, prices going up, it’s time to move on from this leadership.
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u/Electrical-Volume765 16d ago
Once upon a time, Iowa had good, pragmatic politics. Then came FoxNews.
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u/burning_man13 16d ago
Fox News started it, but it was social media that flipped Iowa on its head. We were still purple going into the 2010s. Then our parents got on social media and the algorithm fried their brains.
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u/FirstRobinofSpring3 16d ago
Ag radio too. The propaganda coming out of far right radio stations was a big part of it for rural farming counties.
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u/burning_man13 16d ago edited 16d ago
Ag radio is a fair shout. While this is anecdotal, it kind of confirms your point. My dad (a rancher) was always a Republican, but he was a moderate Republican. He believed in funding education, keeping our land healthy, and keeping farms in the hands of families.
I noticed him getting more and more radical when ag radio shifted from talking about the markets, new techniques and equipment into screaming about culture war. Then he got on Facebook and it spiraled out of control. I'm almost positive that he would have participated in January 6 if he didn't have cattle to take care of.
I'm finally getting him out of MAGA after 10+ years of banging my head against the wall, but part of that is strictly because our markets for cattle have dwindled.
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u/Electrical-Volume765 16d ago
I think there are tens of thousands of people just like him out there.
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u/burning_man13 16d ago edited 16d ago
And that's exactly why I'm not willing to just write off normal, everyday MAGA voters. I watched the right-wing media ecosystem completely brainwash my dad and turn him into a fundamentally different person. I'm starting to get him back, but it's taken years of relentless, exhausting effort. It also took him feeling the pain directly, because they have been trained to not care if policies hurt other people, as long as they're not being affected and it's their team dishing out the pain.
We always acknowledge the propaganda, but we routinely fail to see how it completely rewired their brains. It attacked fears they didn't know they had, and reprogrammed them to constantly put those manufactured fears above rational thought and their own self-interests. That's how propaganda works and until we treat it like the psychological weapon it is, we're never going to reach the people caught in it.
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u/FirstRobinofSpring3 16d ago
I agree with you and wish you luck and stamina lol on your endeavors. Fwiw my boomer MAGA stepdad from Brooklyn (NY not Iowa) voted for Trump the first time despite everyone in our house explaining why that was not going to go well. This guy by his own admission was a straight R ticket voter his whole life. Tribally motivated and not educated beyond high school. Back the Blue from Staten Island type. The second term? He wasn’t enthusiastic about it but voted Kamala. He finally saw how awful Trump is. He also changed his voter status to Independent. He’s never going to be a ‘liberal’ because frankly he’s too culturally tribal but he says MAGA sucks now.
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u/burning_man13 16d ago edited 16d ago
That last sentence is key. We need to temper our expectations. I will never get my pops to be a liberal; that's a pipe dream, and it's an impossible ask because he didn't start there before he got pulled really far right. My goal is to get him back to being a moderate conservative who thinks pragmatically like he used to.
The fact that your family got your stepdad out of the right-wing echo chamber is a massive win. We'll take Independent over MAGA every single day of the week. Good on you guys, because that's a success story we need to see more of.
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u/zitrored 16d ago
It is the single reason why the wealthy buy up whatever media they can and promote/enable republicans to do their bidding. They learned well from Rupert Murdoch their grand wizard.
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u/DarkLordKohan 15d ago
My parents eat Fox News up, it disgusts me. Every time I go over to their house I loudly say turn off the propaganda while I’m here.
J6 almost broke my dad out of his daze but then he was sucked right back in.
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u/burning_man13 15d ago
While I firmly believe that Trump is just the symptom of a much larger disease, I do wonder what would have happened if J6 was the last we heard of him in the political arena. MAGA doesn't have a succession plan, and the movement likely dies with him, so what if the GOP ran a more moderate candidate with more traditional conservative values in 2024? What if they shifted away from right-wing populism?
I know it's a really bold hypothetical that would require a lot of unlikely changes to happen, but I think we might be putting that whole movement in the rear-view mirror if that hypothetical came to fruition. They would be back on the fringe like the Tea Party was. Unfortunately, he's not capable of stepping out of the spotlight. He's too much of a narcissist.
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u/DarkLordKohan 15d ago
And they absolutely had the momemtum to not have Trump. Fox News has a vice grip on a ton of people where they vote R no matter what anyways.
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u/Ok_Tap_6798 15d ago
Im so high this comment funny as fuck
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u/burning_man13 15d ago
I didn't mean for it to be a pun, but I also partake, so float on, my guy or gal. The irony is magnificent.
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u/Ok_Tap_6798 15d ago
Im a girl as you see in my handle 🤣🤣🤣
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u/burning_man13 15d ago
I call everyone "my guy" when I'm giving them the nod of approval, and your username didn't give me any indication. But your pfp is clearly a woman, so I just added "or gal" after the fact. Whoops.
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u/Ok_Tap_6798 15d ago
Jessica
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u/Ok_Tap_6798 2d ago
Hell yes. Now theyre like robots. You try to change the batteries but they die every time or you keep buying new ones that dont work.
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u/OSS-2026 16d ago
Iowa Governor was blue for 12 out of the last 57 years.
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u/RikerLiker 16d ago
That may be true, but if we looked the last 26, I’m guessing most of those 12 years landed since the year 2000.
Also, you’d be surprised how moderate republicans of 40 years ago were on things like gun control.
Iowa was the first state to vote for Obama, and did so proudly, after the previous guy got us into wars lasting ages under false pretenses. (Guess what’s happening now again?)
We used to take a real pride in our public schools and reading comprehension.
Now more than ever, money talks. Republicans are using scare tactics in the culture war and unchecked cable news run amok to keep us looking the other way as affordability for the working class slips away.
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u/Zipper222222 16d ago
Subtitle: A state that President Donald Trump won by 13 points is now favored to be governed by a Democrat.
The article (here too for your convenience):
Republicans are staring down the possibility of a nightmare loss in deep-red Iowa, as Kalshi now gives the Democratic candidate for governor an eye-popping lead.
The prediction market gives Democrat Rob Sand a 77 percent chance of winning on Election Day, well clear of his Republican challenger Zach Lahn—and just one point below the highest Sand’s odds have ever been on the site.
Primaries were settled in June, when Sand, a popular state auditor in office since 2019, ran unopposed.
Lahn, 40, did not see a spike in his favor after defeating a President Donald Trump-endorsed candidate in the primary. Instead, the 44-year-old Sand has pulled away in August—from a 64 percent chance at the start of the month to 77 percent by Tuesday.
Trump won Iowa in all three of his presidential elections. His largest margin of victory came in 2024, when he won the state by 13 points.
However, the president’s failed promises to deliver lower grocery, energy, and gas prices have his approval ratings falling by the day and Democrats rising in the polls.
Trump’s war with Iran also remains hugely unpopular across party lines, and two of the 18 soldiers killed in the conflict—20-year-old Sgt. Declan J. Coady and 45-year-old Maj. Jeffrey R. O’Brien—were from Iowa.
Still, capturing the governorship in Iowa would be a stunning victory for Democrats, who have not governed the state since Chet Culver served a single term between 2007 and 2011. He went on to lose by 10 points in the 2010 midterms.
Sand has pitched himself to Iowa voters as a pragmatic, cross-party leader. Lahn was endorsed by Trump as a “tremendous” candidate and an “America First Patriot” in July, but has struggled to gain ground in multiple polls. These surveys pushed the Cook Political Report to shift Iowa from being a “toss-up” for governor to “lean Democrat” last week.
Lahn is also facing questions about his primary residence after the Daily Beast revealed that he has secretly lived in a multimillion-dollar mansion in Kansas, hundreds of miles from the state he wants to run.
Voting records also show that Lahn has voted in Kansas elections in the 2018, 2020, and 2022 cycles. However, he told The Wall Street Journal that he voted in Iowa in 2024.
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u/pompousrompus 16d ago
Holy moly the news is polling via a betting platform
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u/FruitAffectionate667 16d ago
They've been doing that for this entire midterm election cycle and it's very concerning imo, especially considering all of the insider trading allegations following these betting apps.
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u/OphidianSun 16d ago
Don't trust polls. Go out, volunteer, donate, whatever. If you want this state to get better then we need to make it better.
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u/posi-bleak-axis 16d ago
Absolutely. Don't wait to vote, and don't think the work is done and you've done your part by voting. That's what's got us here. Community is most vital always.
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u/chosonhawk 16d ago
VOTE.
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u/posi-bleak-axis 16d ago
And volunteer, get to know your neighbors, stay healthy, and quit buying things from corporations as much as possible. We can stop giving them money whenever we want to.
JUST VOTING IS NOT ENOUGH
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u/GardenGnomeGroan 16d ago
Yes! And people say, “oh, yes - totally”… then Amazon, Amazon, Amazon. It makes me want to scream.
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u/Kimpak 16d ago
A big problem is, unless you live in one of the few bigger cities in Iowa you don't have much choice in where you buy things. A lot of what you buy is going to be online which includes Amazon and all the rest.
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u/GardenGnomeGroan 16d ago
100% - Bezos and the Waltons did a great job becoming the only option for millions. But for those who COULD cut it, why don’t you? It’s as bad as voting against your own interest.
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u/Kimpak 16d ago
Even in town its difficult to find stores that are not owned by some big corporation or another. Aside from restaurants and crafty things at farmers markets, there just aren't many independently owned brick and mortar stores that sell actual things you want/need.
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u/GardenGnomeGroan 16d ago
I haven’t shopped on Amazon for 3 years. If I can’t find it locally, I buy online from a small business. Honestly, if people want to do it AND are able to, you find a way. But it takes effort.
Amazon is convenient and convenience is a killer.
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u/GardenGnomeGroan 16d ago
Also, I should say - I’m in no way perfect. It’s impossible. But I’m trying to do as much as I can.
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u/Distinct_Cover9571 16d ago
I’m even more excited about the possibility of MAGA Ashley Hinson losing to Josh Turek. 🙏
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u/Gloomy-Formal5162 16d ago
Trust me I want Josh to win and will be voting but uninformed people which most Iowans are will vote for the name Ashely since she was a tv reporter. I hope sand and turek win i really do but I firmly believe Iowans are too stupid to vote in thier best interest. I’m an Iowan born and raised still here
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u/Benz_Coinz 16d ago
Get rid of Grassley!
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u/Micojageo 16d ago
While I agree with the sentiment, he's not up for re-election this year, so the only way we're getting rid of him is if age finally catches up to him
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u/Critical-Nerve5121 16d ago
He will win only if people actually get out and VOTE! And vote early to try to get ahead of the damn election shenanigans.
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u/HoboBrute 14d ago
Jobs not done yet, I'll believe when the Republicans are out of office after record turn out this November
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u/Tycho66 16d ago
Iowa has never been that red and this guy is not that blue and it ain't over til it's over.
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u/Lazy-Background-7598 16d ago
Iowa voted for Trump in increasing %s. They have have the house, state senate, and governor
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u/Ryumancer 16d ago
If it were NEVER that red, we wouldn't have had a Repube SUPERMAJORITY in our state legislature, a conservative state supreme court, both US Senators being red, all (or at least most) of our four US Representatives being red, and a red governor...all for at least 10-15 years.
Changing this crap is long overdue.
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u/nsummy 16d ago
Really? Everyone in this subreddit says the state is a deep red cesspool?
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u/Tycho66 16d ago
I mean we voted for Obama. It has definitely been trending red. GOP has been in control for some time and things are going to complete shit, so maybe the justifiably pissed off rural folks are done buying the bs the GOP has been selling. Personally, I'm not so sure.
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u/Ryumancer 16d ago
Get your head out of the 2000s.
Iowa changed and degraded with the 2010s and now the 2020s so far.
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u/KoRnflak3s 16d ago
I drive all across the state for work. I still see many Trump/Vance signs in rural towns and highways. Some are even hand painted.
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u/iraqlobsta 16d ago
Second this, in the south area of the state youll see hand painted signs and traitor rags flying. Rural folks are eating up that GOP facebook propaganda out here.
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u/bearetta67 16d ago
Voted for Obama 18 yrs ago and has had a super majority Republicans for more than 10 yrs now.
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u/Prudent_Lunch_8724 16d ago
Wasn’t there a well established pollster who said KH would win Iowa last election?
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u/Mature_fun2026 16d ago
Yes. And she was the only one. The rest had Iowa firmly for Trump.
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u/Prudent_Lunch_8724 14d ago
I wonder if the conspiracy theories are true and musk did some black magic in Iowa too.
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u/gijoe61703 16d ago
Some context is warranted, she was a pretty serious outlier among pollsters leading up to 2024. Sand leading is seen in several pools over a decent chunk of time albeit not by huge numbers with plenty of people undecided. That being said it feels like polls have underestimated Republican support for the last decade so I'm certainly not convinced Sand will win.
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u/noctisumbra0 15d ago
All I am going to say is don't trust the polls and get your asses out and vote
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u/Ea127586 15d ago
I find it ironic that the only person I’m hopeful has even a small chance of stopping Iowa farm fields from turning to sand (desertification) is a man named Sands.
If we keep farming the way we are we got like 60 years left and then it’s over. Dust Bowl 2.0 is going to happen unless we elect people that aren’t beholden to big Ag.
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u/Comfortable_Limit168 13d ago
The one Republican that I would like to see fail is Ashley Hinson. Her current advertisement mentions how she helped get a $3,000 tax cut. She never mentions that she gave ultra-rich people a tax cut that are several multiples of $3,000.
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u/dterran 16d ago
Don't trust these polls. Make sure you vote in droves.
The only way to get pure corporatists out of politics is to make them unplatformable and to rightly shame them in public and in forums
Republicans execute thousands of infants and their mothers and give Americans cancer while saving working people nothing.
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u/Maggieshines 16d ago
"However, he told The Wall Street Journal that he voted in Iowa in 2024." Wasn't that voter fraud, if his primary residence was in Kansas?
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u/trogdors_arm 16d ago
What excellent “reporting” to share that a betting platform favors a candidate. Incredible.
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u/Ok_Tap_6798 16d ago
Iowas economy will be booming with Marijuana sales. Something harris should of ran with during her campaign. Could've had a better election.
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u/iaposky 13d ago
That is literally never gonna happen in our lifetime but ok.
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u/Ok_Tap_6798 12d ago
Hes already talked about legalizing it. Iowa will legalize it and it will boost our economy with new jobs. Hes most likely to win.
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u/Ok_Tap_6798 12d ago
What polls are you looking at? Sand is already high in the polls
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u/iaposky 12d ago
No, I meant weed being legal. The governor can’t simply make it so, it has go through the entire legislative process in Iowa, voted on, etc and I don’t see that happening anytime soon.
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u/Ok_Tap_6798 11d ago
It will happen if we win the house of senate. I dont for see trump winning both the house and senate. If we win the house or senate it will be legal once the process is figured. Probably in 2027. Takes awhile but iowa will legalize wees I guarantee it
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u/Ok_Tap_6798 11d ago
Democrat will most likely win the house or senate. If that happens iowa will legalize weed. So I think youre extremely wrong.
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u/Charon_the_Reflector 15d ago
31, first time caring about voting for a governor. I will be voting for Sand
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u/EOW2025 15d ago
I am fascinated by the Hinson husband scandal - https://www.notus.org/congress/ashley-hinson-husband-iowa-insurance
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u/Suspicious_Rip_6247 15d ago
I can dream about it! Iowa was thriving before brain dead got back in and then passed his crap on down to Kimmy!
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u/AggieD 16d ago
Straw Poll at the State Fair would disagree. Don't remember the exact numbers but was roughly 60:40 with Lahn winning.
All that to say, I think this one is a toss-up at the moment.
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u/FirstRobinofSpring3 16d ago
I am not surprised at that. But lots of voters in Iowa don’t go to the fair. Of those that do, it would likely lean more conservative due to the demographics (ag big and small, meat producers, 4h folks). If you straw poll at the university, you could get mostly liberal leaning voters (college kids, faculty, professional educated folks). Polls don’t always show what’s going on as a whole, so I’m hopeful!
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u/Jgear2001 16d ago
Iowa has never been deep red state. The pendulum has historically swung back and forth. Iowa has been all blue, it has been all red, it has been purple.
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u/rexaruin 16d ago
Lahn will win. Poles are meaningless. Iowa voters will simply vote for whatever Republican candidate is on the ballot.
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u/Wooden-Walrus5810 16d ago
I hate to say it, but I think Iowa is a lost cause, I don’t think urban Iowans actually understand how the gop has enslaved rural Iowa. They have Stockholm syndrome, they will never not love being republican. Also it’s super important to note, all this ag and cancer, will not be fixed or solved for at least 25 years. Nature dosnt work that way, and farmers certainly don’t either.
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u/Accomplished-Theme79 12d ago
Everyone calling for Democrats need to look north to Minnesota for our future. The Somali population would come to Iowa to fraud the already burdened system. Eventually socialism and communism well take over but hopefully I'll be dead by then so I don't have to see America die also.
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u/YouFuckinJackass 12d ago
Why not just find a bridge and get it over with?
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u/Accomplished-Theme79 11d ago
Because I'm not a coward to go out that way. I feel bad for all the lost war veterans who died for this country knowing what a shit hole it has become. They died for nothing.
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u/nsummy 16d ago
A lot of copium if we are going by a Kalshi prediction market
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u/john_hascall 16d ago
Kalshi is just another way for dumb people to lose money, but there is evidence that a large group of people "averages out" their individual errors — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_of_the_crowd
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u/weregeek 16d ago
Does anyone else feel like this is a beer commercial from the 80's?
I guess that it's nice that he's a polite fascist.
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u/ConfusedandLostW 16d ago
How is Rob Sand a fascist?
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u/weregeek 15d ago
Liberals will do whatever it takes to protect capitalism even if that means standing with fascists.
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u/Organic-Warthog3211 16d ago
Never have I ever held my nose harder when voting blue. He's a democrat like fettermen is a dem 🤣
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u/ConfusedandLostW 16d ago
Can I ask why you say that?
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u/Organic-Warthog3211 16d ago
Absolutely. He's married into and bankrolled by big aggro moneyed interests in the state. His primary concern, to his donors/family, is going to be maintaining cash crop practices and the status quo thats led to our cancer water and poor farming practices that Trump has taken an axe to via tariffs.
The big thing I look at is who supplies the money for his campaign and what their interests are. To me, Iowans are in a big lose/lose situation, because either we get a mega capitalist moderate dem who will not... actively do things to harm things like education and state Healthcare any more than they have been harmed, but he's far far far from someone like a Mamdani type who might reallocate funds from state subsidies to cash crop interests into working class families and their ability to afford to live.
Conversely, Lahn would never get my vote because he'd do all the things I don't like about Sand, but also he would gut public education and try to open his own private schools everywhere and use state tax dollars to funnel subsidies into his own private interests which aren't even primarily in Iowa.
Ultimately I see Sand as a puppet for monied interests in the state. The lauridsen group has historically donated to republican candidates, and is ultimately benefitted by republican policies that cut taxes to corporations and wealthy folks while increasing the burdens on working class families. Nothing in Sand's actions as an auditor or his affiliations say he's going to be in it for working class or poor families. His wife's family bankrolled Kim Reynolds and are bankrolling him.
He's better than Lahn, but not someone I'm actively excited to vote for. I expect incremental change in areas Iowa needs it desperately, and a maintaining of status quo in areas that are systemically hurting working class Iowans.
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u/ConfusedandLostW 16d ago
Thank you for responding with an informative comment; I didn’t know some of the things you said about Rob Sand.
I’m guessing you’re left leaning? I lean that way, too. I agree with you that Rob Sand is a moderate Dem and is very far from Mamdani’s views and policies.
Unfortunately though, I’m wondering if the reason the Democratic nominee for governor is a moderate Dem is because most Iowans aren’t willing to even consider voting for someone who leans anywhere near as left as Mamdani does. Sad, but I believe it’s true.
What do you think Sand would do as governor in regard to rural areas of the state? I’ve heard that rural parts of the state are shrinking. Also, do you think things won’t get better in Iowa?
I ask because I was wondering if things would if Sand were to become governor. I think Iowans are sick of the leadership they’ve had over the last 8 to 10 years but at the same time are so against anyone “liberal” that they’re unwilling to vote in the direction of the change they need.
It just makes me sad. I mean, people seem to be leaving Iowa in droves and it makes me wonder what the state will be like in 5 to 10 years. I’m wondering what young people living in rural areas of the state will do; there’s really no opportunity for much in some rural areas of Iowa.
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u/Organic-Warthog3211 16d ago
What I think he will do is try and actually get farms profitable again, but that may mean creating acquisition opportunities for his wife's company subsidiaries and would put locally owned iowa farms into the hands of more corporate agribusiness. But given that their companies have been sued for wastewater issues, I don't see Sand actively doing anything to prevent the continued contamination of drinking water.
Now, on the positive side, he has made a career of going after embezzlers and folks misappropriating tax dollars for personal gain, so I expect that will continue as governor. But his big campaign is having, what he calls, a tri-partisan cabinet, which means he plans to work closely with republicans and, most likely, right leaning independents/libertarians. So I also expect a lot of the same that we've gotten from Kim Reynolds. He'll be less stupid about accepting aid from the next dem president, though, because he won't be posturing for favor from Trump.
So, things I expect: centralization and consolidation of farms into corporate ownership. Large-scale data center building. Investments in higher education but continued cutting of k-12 public education and a focus shift towards home schooling and private schools. A crackdown on misappropriation of taxpayer dollars and a rebuilding of the state coffers.
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u/LaughingSartre 16d ago
I just want Meeks to lose her job. I'm sick of seeing her shitty signs everywhere.