Here’s one failed message from Iowa Democrats

I wish I could say that President-elect Donald Trump’s decisive victory in the Nov. 5 election came as a surprise to me.

It wasn’t. I had had a gut feeling for those final weeks of the election cycle that Orange Man Bad was going to bring home the W.

There were, however, several things about the 2024 election that came as a surprise to your friendly neighborhood opinion columnist.

I was surprised that Republicans held onto control of the U.S. House of Representatives. I had believed it was likely Democrats would reclaim the chamber only two years after the red wave that Republicans had predicted in 2022 ended up being more of a red spritz, one that took over a week to confirm.

I believed that Democrats would retake the House in part because I had begun to think that the re-election efforts of both Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Zach Nunn, Republican incumbents in the 1st and 3rd Congressional Districts, respectively, would fall just short. Polling in both races had showed the momentum turning toward the Democrat candidates in those districts, with both races’ predicted outcomes changing from “Lean Republican” to “Toss-Up” in October.

Miller-Meeks was not particularly favored by otherwise reliable GOP voters. Nunn’s opponent was perceived as arguably moderate. But in the end, both Republicans pulled it out.

I was under no illusions that majority control of either chamber of the Iowa Legislature would flip to Democrats. Iowa’s legislative Republicans headed into the 2024 election with a strong 64-36 majority in the state House and a 34-16 supermajority in the state Senate.

Gains larger than what Democrats needed to flip both chambers have been achieved in the past, but Iowa — and the U.S. — are long removed from the days of Gov. Harold Hughes and President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Still, given the June ruling from the Iowa Supreme Court that lifted the injunction from the 2018 bill prohibiting abortions after around six weeks along with other pieces of legislation that passed amid strong opposition last year in Des Moines, I believed it possible that Republicans could lose a small handful of seats in districts that were arguably more purple than red.

I was wrong. While one Republican incumbent, Sen. Brad Zaun of Urbandale, fell to his Democrat challenger, Republicans also ousted two Democrat incumbents in the Senate and three in the House.

They also flipped a fourth seat vacated by Rep. Sharon Steckman of Mason City, a longtime Democrat who retired at the end of 2024.

Only one Republican-held House seat fell to Democrats after the party did not field a candidate to succeed Republican Rep. Luana Stoltenberg, who did not seek re-election.

To the victors go the spoils. When the Iowa Legislature gavels in tomorrow morning, Republicans will boast a supermajority in both chambers plus control of the governorship. They haven’t started a legislative session with such an embarrassment of riches since the 56th General Assembly convened on Jan. 10, 1955 — over 70 years ago.

The matter of why or how Republicans expanded their grip on state government is up for debate, and likely rests on multiple factors.

One takeaway, however, is indisputable: The message put forth by Iowa Democrats in the 2024 election had no net effect on voters.

Already in rough shape after their national party ripped the coveted first-in-the-nation presidential nominating spot, Iowa Democrats now have to rebuild their party from shambles after bruising state and federal losses in 2024. While they begin to do that, they also have to survive another legislative session outnumbered two-to-one by Republicans.

Republicans’ power is so strong that should the party not be united on any given issue, their caucus could lose as many as 20% of its members’ support on any particular bill and still manage to send it to the governor.

If Democrats want to maintain any relevance in the legislative process, it might be a good time for them to reconsider the message they’ve put forth, realize where it falls short, and change things up.

Will they do that? Or will they stick with the same tired talking points?

From time to time during the state legislative session, I will review a few of the repetitive Iowa Democrat talking points — some more recent, some not, that illustrate how they’ve failed to take the hint — and discuss why those talking points miss the mark.

This week, I’m starting with a classic: “If Iowa Republicans cared about workers, they’d restore collective bargaining rights.”

In 2017, the legislature made reforms to Chapter 20 of Iowa Code, which was created in 1974 to outline collective bargaining rights for public sector workers.

One big change to Chapter 20 involved the prohibition of certain items from the bargaining table, including evaluation procedures, paid leave for political activity and dues checkoff — i.e. requiring an employer to automatically deduct and remit union dues from an employee’s paycheck.

Prior to the 2017 reforms, those items and others were mandatory bargaining items between local public sector unions and public employers such as school districts, cities, counties and state government entities — all of which fund positions of employment with taxpayer dollars.

If a public employer reaches an impasse with the local union on any of those items, the next step involves binding arbitration through the Public Employment Relations Board (PERB,) which might impose a decision that strains a public employer’s budgeting capabilities. Given many public employers’ desire to avoid arbitration, the pre-2017 collective bargaining law arguably placed disproportionate power in the hands of unions, at the expense of public employers — and taxpayers.

Here's how that looked in practice: In 2016 and 2017, workers represented by the state’s largest public-sector union paid only $20 monthly for the least expensive health insurance premiums — for either single or family coverage.

That’s a shockingly low contribution toward the total premium. Actual monthly premiums in for state workers in 2017 were $682 for single coverage and $1,598 for a family plan. The Iowa taxpayer — that’s you — paid the remaining 97-99% of the monthly total while Chapter 20 of Iowa code required the state to bargain with the union on insurance premiums, arguably keeping them much lower for public-sector workers than their private-sector counterparts.

Thanks in part to the 2017 reforms, state employees in Iowa pay slightly more appropriate portions for health coverage.

The state still pays the lion’s share of a state employee’s premium, of course, just like most private sector employers. March 2023 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the average private-sector employer contributed between 78% and 80% of their employees’ monthly premiums.

In 2025, Iowa taxpayers will handle between 82% to 93% of a state employee’s monthly premium.

To a sensible citizen, that change is perfectly reasonable. But any change that reduces the power of labor unions — especially public-sector labor unions — will infuriate Democrats, who have historically counted organized labor as both a massive voting bloc, a built-in political activism wing and rich source of financial support.

Since the beginning of the decade, the Iowa State Education Association, the statewide teacher’s union, has poured over $1.5 million directly into the coffers of the Iowa Democratic Party. That doesn’t include the direct donations to Democrat candidates or legislative caucus leaders, the latter of which act as their own fundraising arm of the party.

Of course they’re going to be mad at having to work harder to achieve a majority for recertification from the whole bargaining unit. And at no longer getting to make school districts automatically deduct union dues from staff paychecks.

And yes, they’re probably mad that their member educators can no longer take a leave of absence amounting to as much as one-fourth of the entire school year for the purpose of conducting union business — while collecting regular pay from their school district. (When I first read that in the Cedar Rapids Education Association’s 2017 collective bargaining agreement, I was appalled.)

The sweeping changes to Iowa public-sector collective bargaining were passed on Feb. 16, 2017. Since then, Iowans have gone back to the polls four times, with Democrats repeating the same gripe about Iowa Republicans “taking away workers’ collective bargaining rights. And voters have returned a sizable majority for Republicans each time.

Clearly, Democrats’ collective bargaining message has not resonated. Perhaps because it portrays sensible changes as those of calamity and chaos.

But calamity and chaos belong to Iowa Democrats at the moment, not to Iowa workers, and not Iowa citizens as a whole. Maybe Iowa Democrats will figure that out and move on. Or maybe they’ll keep at their failed messaging on collective bargaining — and other topics. But I’ll visit those later. We’ve got time — the 2025 session of the 90th Iowa General Assembly is only just starting.

Comments: 319-398-8266; althea.cole@thegazette.com