Cedar Rapids mayor’s race was boring for the best reasons

For the first time in 12 years, the city of Cedar Rapids will not need a runoff election to decide its next mayor. Incumbent Tiffany O’Donnell coasted to re-election Tuesday with over 77% of the vote, defeating challenger Myra Colby Bradwell by a spread that was more than double Bradwell’s total vote share.

The 2025 campaign was a far cry from the last mayor’s race in 2021, which saw O’Donnell, formerly a TV news anchor and currently the CEO of Women Lead Change, pitted against several opponents, including then-incumbent Mayor Brad Hart and Amara Andrews, who was an executive at True North at the time. Andrews was also a cofounder of Advocates for Social Justice, which formed in the wake of the 2020 George Floyd protests to demand non-enforcement of certain criminal offenses, restrictions on policing and the establishment of a citizen’s review board for oversight.

Bradwell also competed in the 2021 race, rounding out the field as the fourth of what many perceived as three candidates on the ballot.

Previous mayor’s race rife with tumult

The 2021 race was a fierce one. Despite the fact that state law requires that municipal and school board elections be conducted on a nonpartisan basis, candidate Andrews flexed her partisan muscle, billing herself as the only Democrat in a race against registered Republicans. As the electoral vibe shifted toward O’Donnell, Andrews’ strategy was to link the perceived front-runner to presumably evil Republicans in an attempt to discourage left-leaning voters in a city where Democrats have a comfortable registration advantage.

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O’Donnell stuck to the nonpartisan route, pledging to represent the “Party of Cedar Rapids.”

On a scale of one to 10, the ugliness hit a 12 when an anti-O’Donnell mailer sent by a third-party group called Iowa Voter Info landed in voters’ mailboxes — including that of your friendly neighborhood opinion columnist (that’s me!), then a greenhorn editorial fellow.

The verbiage and the images of O’Donnell on the Iowa Voter Info mailer looked suspiciously similar to those used on mailers sent by the Andrews campaign, which could not legally coordinate with an outside group or political party. Andrews told The Gazette she had not heard of the organization.

Three days later, campaign finance documents revealed that Andrews’ campaign had in fact exchanged thousands of dollars with Iowa Voter Info, a group hastily formed by members of the county Democrat Party to support her candidacy. (For their part, the members had earnest intentions but acted too rapidly, butchering their ethics and campaign finance obligations in the process.)

Your friendly greenhorn Gazette editorial fellow (still me!) wrote a column about the ordeal. An O’Donnell supporter filed a complaint with the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board, which later resulted in fines issued to Andrews and the local Democratic Party chair.

Though O’Donnell got the most votes on Election Day, none of the three — er, four candidates earned the outright majority (50% plus one) required in Cedar Rapids municipal races. As the top two vote-getters, O’Donnell and Andrews advanced to a late November runoff.

Incumbent Hart did not advance, bested by Andrews for second place by a mere 40 votes on Election Day. Hart’s own election four years earlier had been won in a runoff, when he defeated former City Council member Monica Vernon in early December 2017 with 54% of the vote despite trailing her by almost 10 points in the initial November election day totals.

Bradwell also did not advance to the 2021 runoff. In fact, he had earned fewer votes on Election Day in 2021 than the number of petition signatures he had gathered to get on the ballot.

(Yes, Myra C. Bradwell is a man. More on that in a moment.)

Anyway, after all the brouhaha, O’Donnell prevailed in the runoff, defeating Andrews by a margin of more than two-to-one. When all was said and done, hundreds of thousands of dollars had been spent in the November 2021 mayor’s race, the most expensive in Cedar Rapids history — and certainly the most bitter in recent memory.

Who is Myra Colby Bradwell?

O’Donnell had one opponent in last week’s election: The same Myra Colby Bradwell who ran as the fourth candidate in the three-person slugfest of 2021.

If the name sounds familiar, you might be thinking of the Myra Colby Bradwell from your history book, a 19th-century newspaper publisher and women’s suffrage activist who was initially denied a license to practice law in Illinois because she was a married woman.

That Myra Colby Bradwell wasn’t on the ballot for Cedar Rapids mayor last week — deceased people are not eligible to run for public office in Iowa. (In Illinois … maybe.)

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The Myra C. Bradwell on the 2025 Cedar Rapids municipal ballot was formerly known as Gregory Hughes, who also ran against then-incumbent Mayor Ron Corbett in 2013, the last time Cedar Rapids voters were spared a runoff election to choose their mayor.

Bradwell legally changed his name in 2018, stating in his legal filing that he felt a “deep kindred spirit” with the deceased suffragette, “so much so, that I want this name and to try to continue this spirit,” he wrote.

In the section of the name change form in which an applicant states their race, Bradwell, who is white, listed several races including Black, explaining that “ … I also have an older Black couple that call me their son. Therefore, I also include myself as BLACK.”

Bradwell told The Gazette in 2021 that he feels “harassed” by the legal system, saying, “when judges want to treat me badly, they can just treat Myra badly again. Every time I make them call me Myra, I think she just laughs in her grave.”

(Or cringes, maybe. Who knows.)

Bradwell’s path to ballot ran through Greene Square

O’Donnell might have been unopposed on the ballot if an objection to her challenger’s nominating papers was raised and sustained. Bradwell’s petition contained 540 signatures, 16 more than the required 524 minimum. At least 69 of those signatures (including one full page) listed the eligible elector’s house number and street simply as “Greene Square” or “Greene Square Park.”

Of course, being homeless does not disqualify a person from being a voter or an “eligible elector.” While 69 people claiming the same city park as their address hardly jives with the spirit of ballot access rules, any potential fix would probably require changing state law.

In a statement provided to The Gazette, O’Donnell said, “I was aware of dozens of questionable signatures on my opponent’s petition, but I chose not to pursue a challenge. I didn’t want to distract from the real issues or divert energy away from the campaign. I was confident in our record and our message. That said, I hope the state takes a closer look at the rules moving forward. Voters deserve candidates who respect the process and a system built on integrity.”

So the 2025 race remained contested, even if just in the technical sense. It was the incumbent versus the oddball.

This year’s race rife with calm

There wasn’t much to spar over. No Herculean get-out-the-vote efforts. A few yard signs, some social media posts, an O’Donnell mailer. The discussion centered on accomplishments and future goals.

Despite having a five-figure balance in her campaign war chest, most of which was raised in the spring and early summer, O’Donnell spent only a fraction of it. Bradwell did not file a fundraising disclosure.

The reduced visibility of the race was a disadvantage to Bradwell more than O’Donnell. At an early voting location one morning, I overheard a gentleman who was examining his sample ballot tell his friend, “Now here, these are the two ladies running for mayor.”

But calm didn’t have to mean an absence of information. Anyone with questions about a candidate could still find out by … well, asking the candidates.

O’Donnell told The Gazette in a Thursday conversation that an elderly voter had been struggling to determine her polling place. The voter’s solution was to find the mayor’s phone number and call. The mayor of Iowa’s second-largest city was happy to answer.

Candidates are part of your community

That’s the nice thing about local elections — the candidates are fairly nearby. They eat at the same restaurants as you and shop at the same grocery stores. They might attend your church or send their kids to the same school as yours.

Peaceful races don’t always make for exciting ones or high turnout — although the nearly 21,000 votes cast for mayor wasn’t exactly a dismal total for a non-general election race.

But after having to narrow down a field of eight candidates in 2017 and deal with misplaced partisan vitriol in 2021, having a nice, quiet mayor’s race in 2025 was … well, nice.

O’Donnell clearly thrived on a low-key campaign. All she has to show for it is another term at the helm of a thriving city.

“I’m really proud of what we’ve accomplished over the last four years,” she said. “And I felt voters would reward us for that and want us to keep working.”

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