Cedar Rapids voters to Amara Andrews: It’s not us, it’s you

The strategy was bold: Attack the opponents by tying them to politicians people are supposed to hate, even if it means attacking prospective voters in the process.

Althea Cole

Dec. 3, 2021 1:28 pm, Updated: Dec. 3, 2021 2:26 pm

Amara Andrews speaks at her watch party at The Olympic in Cedar Rapids on Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2021. (Rebecca F. Miller/The Gazette)

After an extra-long and sometimes ugly campaign, the race for Cedar Rapids mayor finally concluded this past Tuesday. Amara Andrews didn’t win, and Cedar Rapids is a better city for it.

Some may attribute Andrews’ loss to shady dealings with an outside group called Iowa Voter Info, which I wrote about on Oct. 29. Days after claiming that she did “not know what Iowa Voter Info means,” Andrews filed disclosures revealing that her campaign gave $9,000 to the group, $7,500 of which was then spent on a mailer attacking her opponent, Tiffany O’Donnell, who won Tuesday’s runoff. The controversy sparked an ethics complaint from an O’Donnell supporter, which the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure board is currently investigating.

It’s about character, said the candidate who drives a Tesla with butterfly doors while her wages are garnished to resolve $42,000 of debt.

But the Iowa Voter Info blunder wasn’t the cause of Andrews’ demise. It was merely the crescendo of a series of bad campaign decisions. The strategy was bold: Attack the opponents by tying them to politicians people are supposed to hate, even if it means attacking prospective voters in the process.

Attack she did, often at the worst possible times. “After looking over the mailer in question, it appears to me that my opponent is concerned about voters knowing that one of the candidates she has given money to is a right-wing Trump supporter,” Andrews stated in a news release in which she admitted to coordinating with Iowa Voter Info to have the dubious mailer sent.

Her campaign attacked using the same canned phrases even when the news was good. After an Oct. 28 internal poll put Andrews slightly ahead of the other candidates less than a week before the Nov. 2 election, campaign treasurer Ann Brown said, “Tiffany hasn’t made her party affiliation and associations secret. She’s donated money to Ashley Hinson — a Trump supporter — who supports right-wing policies.”

The attacks went beyond policy positions and escalated to personal virtue. The worst offense occurred when Andrews made a video addressing a report on her flawed financial history, which included tax liens and court judgments for failing to pay an Illinois homebuilder in 2012. In the video, Andrews dismissed the report as “right-wing lies” from “enablers” of former President Donald Trump. “In my view, supporting Donald Trump is a reflection of one’s character,” she insisted, apparently not caring about how that might insult the 26,418 Cedar Rapidians who voted for Trump in 2020.

It’s about character, said the candidate who drives a Tesla with butterfly doors while her wages are garnished to resolve $42,000 of debt.

In a way, I can understand how Andrews and her campaign saw a path to victory through partisan messaging in Cedar Rapids, where the number of registered Democrats outweighs registered Republicans by over 17,000. But Andrews failed to consider how such aggressive partisanship would alienate additional voters beyond just the characterless right-wing Trumpers. Although her partisan approach mellowed in the weeks leading up to the runoff election, by then voters of all ideologies had turned toward the candidate offering a more positive message. On Tuesday, they elected that candidate by more than a 2-to-1 margin.

This time, voters have chosen a person over a party. By doing so, they’ll show that Andrews’ loss is Cedar Rapids’ gain.