116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
Some Iowa cities lack enough candidates to fill city council seats in November elections
Engagement with residents, leadership development may help reverse trend, state officials say
SWISHER — Chairs scraped the floor as citizens trickled out of the Swisher City Council meeting on a recent Monday, leaving the library community room with notes scribbled onto their copies of the meeting agenda and stepping into the chill of a fall night.
It was one of only a few meetings of the Eastern Iowa city’s elected body that remains for Christopher Taylor, the outgoing mayor, and for several council members whose terms expire at the end of the year.
“Tell them to write in Chris Taylor for mayor,” joked council member Mike Stagg, the only incumbent who’s seeking another term in the Nov. 7 city and school elections.
Hearing his name, Taylor turned his head and said his 10 years at the helm of the city has been sufficient for him.
“We've gotten a lot of things done,” Taylor said. “I'm very proud of the way that we've handled things the last decade, and now it's time to let someone else do it.”
Who could be Swisher’s next mayor? It’s anyone’s guess. When voters cast their ballots Nov. 7, there’ll be no candidate on the line for mayor.
“I’m not really sure why we're not having anyone run for mayor,” said Stagg, who added that the time commitment of serving on council makes some people pause. “I think there are some people who think the city should be going in a different direction,” in part driven by differing philosophies on how rapidly the community should grow.
As Nov. 7 city and school elections approach, Swisher is one of many Iowa cities with more seats on the ballot than there are council candidates who’ve filed papers to run for the seat.
This information is only tracked at the county level, so there is no comprehensive statewide data on this trend, as council candidates file with their county auditor’s office, said Ashley Hunt, spokesperson for the Iowa Secretary of State’s office.
Recent local election cycles in Iowa seem to have seen an uptick in open council seats on the ballot, said Mickey Shields, director of membership services for the Iowa League of Cities. He said the main drivers of fewer people stepping up to run for local office seem to be a mix: Longtime council members are looking to fully retire, political polarization is fueling heightened negativity toward city officeholders, and population loss is creating a smaller base of potential candidates.
In the Corridor, publicly available candidate listings with the county auditors’ offices show there are five city councils in Linn County and three in Johnson County without enough candidates running to fill open seats, despite being Iowa’s second and fourth most populous counties, respectively.
Corridor communities lacking candidates
Linn County
Alburnett (1, council)
Bertram (2, mayor and council)
Palo (1, council)
Walford (2, mayor and council)
Walker (1, council)
Johnson County
Lone Tree (1, council)
Shueyville (1, council)
Swisher (1, mayor)
Some Iowa communities don’t have anyone filed to run for office. Clayton County, for example, shows at least three communities — Elkport, Osterdock and Saint Olaf — have entirely blank ballots, and several more don’t have enough candidates.
“You need council members to do the job,” Shields said. “You need a quorum to hold a council meeting, to approve the budget, approve bills and run the town … In the bigger picture and more of the long-term view, any healthy democracy needs citizen engagement and citizen involvement.”
Why this is happening
As they prepare to leave office, several outgoing area council members said it seems that people are disinterested in getting involved in politics, either because of an increasingly divisive political culture or citizens are simply too occupied with other things.
“Somebody's got to step up and run, not just the mayor but the council,” said outgoing Walford Mayor Bill Voss, who is not seeking re-election. The community of nearly 1,400 lacks both a candidate for mayor and is short one council hopeful. “Somebody's got to do the job, and it's more than just once a month to come to a meeting and argue … You’ve got to come in with an open mind. You can't run with an agenda like, ‘I'm going to change the world.’”
Steve Carpenter, the outgoing mayor of Bertram — where the city is short a candidate for mayor and council — is stepping aside to spend more time with family. Though people might complain about the condition of a road or a nuisance property, he said, it’s been a challenge to identify someone willing to hold local office.
“I heard from several people, ‘I don't want to get involved in politics at all,’” Carpenter said. “Really? It's a town of 270 people. It's not like you'll be on CNN every night.”
Shields said more than 600 of Iowa’s 940 cities lost population in the last decennial census in 2020, so in some communities, it’s a math problem where fewer people are eligible to serve on city council.
More recently, Shields said League members have shared there’s more negativity circulating public service that goes beyond the scrutiny that working as a public official entails, worsened by social media or a disputed set of facts on a community issue.
“I always go back to talk to folks, especially people who stopped being a council member, it's kind of like, ‘Why volunteer to get yelled at?’” Shields said.
Mary Gudenkauf, a Swisher council member who isn’t seeking re-election after serving for 16 years on the council, pointed to the city’s failed vote in March on developing a public water system. The measure needed 50 percent of votes to pass, and failed with 401 voters — or 84.2 percent — voting “no.”
“I am of the opinion that water was going to help Swisher maintain the great community that we have and allow us to plan strategically,” Gudenkauf said. “Unfortunately we missed that opportunity in ‘99 to pass water for $1 million, so now we find ourselves in a situation where our residents are asking what Swisher City Council is doing regarding wells that are testing positive for certain chemicals and those are private wells … We’re handcuffed when it comes to water.”
While residents were strong in opposing such a water system, she said it’s difficult to provide facts and information amid negativity and fear. She said it’s a mathematical fact that it’s expensive for a city to stay small.
“Part of serving on a council is to prepare for a community’s future,” Gudenkauf said. “How do we best position Swisher for a viable future? I think accepting that fact, even if you disagree, can often be difficult. We know that the only constant is change … It’s time for others to step up.”
How election officials handle this
The county auditors charged with running Iowa’s local elections said the lack of candidates seems to stem from two things: Either candidates in a small community don’t want to formally file paperwork to run and are accustomed to winning by write-in votes, or there’s a lack of engagement in politics as national politics has become polarized.
“They’d rather watch sports and be distracted from the Israel-Palestine war,” Linn County Auditor Joel Miller said, referring to the Israel-Hamas war, “the Ukraine-Russia war, the Trump trials, the House speakership.”
Miller said there have always been some cities that have encountered this problem. No one filed paperwork to run for office in Prairieburg two years ago and winners were chosen by write-in votes, he said. Citizens in the town of about 160 didn’t want to travel to Cedar Rapids — a 40-minute drive — to file their paperwork, so for future elections, the auditor’s office delivered paperwork and offered to pick it up.
More cities have uncontested council seats. One such community this election cycle is Marion. The lack of competitions for these seats poses a problem, Miller said, as there’s less — if any — debate and dialogue among candidates about the issues facing a community before they’re elected.
“How does a voter ever figure out who to vote for because they don’t know what anybody stands for because no one’s really been asked to make a statement in public?” Miller said.
In Johnson County, Auditor Travis Weipert is less concerned with uncontested seats such as Coralville’s mayor and two council members, where he said residents “seem to be happy with the candidates running, so that kept a lot of people on the sidelines.”
“You start getting into our smaller communities — Hills, Lone Tree, Swisher, Shueyville — that's where we see a problem,” Weipert said. “And I don't know how you fix that.”
If the top write-in vote-getter declines the job, Weipert said county election officials can’t just go down the line to the second-place finisher. That’s not allowed by Iowa law. Instead, that open seat becomes a vacancy that councils either have to appoint or call for a special election, which the city would be on the hook to pay for. Citizens also could petition to have a special election.
Amanda Waske, president of the Iowa State Association of County Auditors and the auditor of Ringgold County in central Iowa, said communities in her area typically may not bother with paperwork, but she hasn’t seen issues with filling seats. Most of the time, candidates have accepted being elected for a position by write-in vote, she said.
“They just are used to being wrote in,” Waske said. “It's not a matter of nobody wanting to run. They’re just a small community. Everybody knows everybody.”
‘Personal touch’ needed for engagement
To build the bench of future council members, some point to a need to spur volunteerism and civic engagement — to get people involved, especially those who may not traditionally engage with city government.
Maresa Strano, deputy director of the Political Reform program with nonpartisan think tank New America, said research done by political scientists and experts in community organizing have identified several tactics that have shown success in encouraging “a more diverse range of people to take the plunge and run,” especially women and historically underrepresented groups that lack connections to traditional fundraising networks.
Strano said public financing programs can help reduce financial barriers to candidates who’ve rallied some community support. New York City has a small donor match program that uses public funds to match low-dollar contributions from state or local residents to candidates who opt in. Seattle has pioneered property-tax funded democracy vouchers to give residents four vouchers each worth $25 that can be pledged to eligible candidates seeking local offices.
Another possibility Strano mentioned would be to create organizations that recruit, train and support candidates to run or reinvigorate institutions such as local political party organizations that have long held a role in candidate emergence.
“Parties have a bad name these days and many local elections are nonpartisan,” Strano said, but party organizations have historically been stronger in rural areas and were key to supporting candidates. With the hollowing out of local parties, she said, this has impacted the volume and variety of people running for office, especially in rural areas.
Liesl Seabert, rural community revitalization program manager for the Iowa Economic Development Authority, said the Center for Rural Revitalization housed within the agency has focused on leadership programming to address the challenge of filling roles on councils.
Sometimes it’s a matter of building awareness, she said, so that once people participate in leadership programs, they feel better connected to people and organizations within their communities. Or if a community opts not to develop a formal program, they may instead do more direct outreach to residents in strategic planning or other projects.
It typically takes an intentional attempt to bring in the next generation of leaders, Seabert said, where potential new community leaders are eager to step up to the plate once they’re invited to the table.
“Usually, it really takes that personal touch, and the communities where we see the most success, that's how it works, especially in smaller communities,” Seabert said. “Everyone knows everyone, so just find a couple people and have them bring a couple of people and suddenly you'll have a group. It's relying on more than your static approach to trying to identify or engage new people and being really personal about it.”
Oftentimes, Carpenter said it can be simple things such as rallying community spirit that motivates people to get engaged in Bertram. He said a core citizen group has held “Bertram Homecoming” nearly every year with face painting, a cartoon character artist and more.
“That has to come from within each person,” Carpenter said of deciding to pursue public service. “Step up. Be involved. Find out it's not as scary as you might have thought. Things look different from the inside.”
If citizens can be encouraged to join their library boards, planning and zoning commission or other municipal panels, Shields said that can help citizens build connections and motivate them to help change their communities — the desire that’s ultimately at the heart of what propels most city candidates to run for office.
The League’s board is trying to change the narrative of serving in city government, Shields said. One way the League is working to do that is through SimpliCity, a communication campaign to help citizens understand the value city governments provide to residents and businesses to provide clean water, pave roads or put out fires.
The organization contracted with Cedar Rapids-based de Novo to develop four videos to explain the basics of city government — budgets, communication, engagement and services. Members will share those videos on websites and social media or otherwise tailor the content to get the message out to citizens. Shields said the next step is focusing on improving how cities tell their own story.
“If we're successful, we can help hopefully in quite a few communities, and quite a few citizens will change their perception of what their city does for them,” Shields said.
Comments: (319) 398-8494; marissa.payne@thegazette.com
Daily Newsletters