Support for social issues waning since 2010

DES MOINES - Fresh off an election that sent a wave of new conservative state lawmakers to the Iowa Capitol, dozens of Republicans in 2011 signed their names to resolutions supporting the core conservative values of recognizing life at conception and marriage between one man and one woman.

Four years later, many of those same Republicans remain in the Iowa Legislature. But the number who have signed similar resolutions is a fraction of what it once was.

In 2011, 83 legislators sponsored one of those conservative efforts. This year, 28 sponsored similar resolutions.

It's a signal of state lawmakers' waning ambition to tackle those issues through legislation and a realization of the political realities surrounding them.

'It is not what it was in 2010, I can say that,” said Sen. David Johnson, R-Ocheyedan, who signed both resolutions in 2011 and this year.

Before the 2010 election, Iowa had a Democratic governor and Democrats controlled both chambers of the Legislature. With that wave election, Republicans gained control of the governor's office and the House, and they nearly picked off the Senate as well.

Storming the Capitol with the conservative values on which they campaigned, Republicans promptly introduced resolutions that began the process of amending the Iowa Constitution. One of the bills would state marriage only can be between one man and one woman, and another stated that life begins at conception.

The measures pushed back at the growing support for same-sex marriage and laws that regulate abortions.

The bills were a clear and strong statement from dozens of conservative state lawmakers, but they did not advance far in the legislative process. Amending the state Constitution requires legislative approval from consecutive General Assemblies, and the measures were discarded by Democrats in control of the Senate.

Four years after that Republican wave, the drop in sponsors for those resolutions is striking.

In 2011, 56 Republicans in the House and 24 in the Senate signed the so-called traditional marriage resolution. This year, 12 House Republicans and 11 Republican senators have signed a similar resolution.

In 2011, 35 House Republicans signed the so-called personhood or right-to-life resolution. This year, 11 have.

Records were not available for the 2011 Senate personhood resolution.

Rep. Walt Rogers, R-Cedar Falls, was first elected to the Iowa House in 2010. He signed both resolutions in 2011 - but neither this year.

'In 2010, we all got elected, kind of came off a great, interesting year, kind of Tea Party-ish. I think that group, we were fired up to do some things,” he said. 'I think just the reality of passing something here, it dying in the Senate, I wouldn't say has squelched anybody's desire for change but has tempered strategically how we go about it.”

Recent state and federal court rulings have taken some of the steam out of conservatives' social legislation efforts, in particular on marriage. Courts have ruled many states' same-sex marriage bans unconstitutional, and the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear the issue this year.

'When they're overturning constitutional amendments, you have to have a bigger strategy,” said Bob Vander Plaats, chief executive officer of the conservative group the Family Leader, based in Pleasant Hill. 'You need to, in our belief, educate and transform the culture back to what is right, versus what is en vogue, hip or just flat-out wrong.”

Johnson said he thinks the libertarian movement among Iowa Republicans - particularly in the Senate - has stunted Statehouse support for the marriage issue. Libertarians mostly hold conservative beliefs similar to traditional Republicans, but the two groups sometimes split on some social issues, such as marriage, where Libertarians think the government need not mettle.

To Johnson's point, only five Iowa senators this year signed both the personhood and marriage resolutions.