Cedar Rapids, IA, USA  
Digital Edition Digital Edition
Log in Log In My Account My Account
Subscribe Today
The Gazette The Gazette
The Gazette The Gazette
  • COVID-19
  • News
  • Sports
  • Opinion
  • Food and Drink
  • Business
Digital Edition Digital Edition
Log in Log In My Account My Account
Subscribe
CLOSE
The Gazette
Subscribe
My Account
  • News
    • All News
    • Election 2020
    • Coronavirus
    • Business News
    • Community
    • Crime and Courts
    • Education
    • Government
    • Health
    • Nation and World
    • Time Machine
    • Search Archive

    Our Journalists

    • Rod Boshart
    • Lee Hermiston
    • Erin Jordan
    • James Q. Lynch
    • Trish Mehaffey
    • Vanessa Miller
    • Kat Russell
    • Grace King
    • John Steppe
    • Gage Miskimen
    • Marissa Payne
  • Sports
    • All Sports
    • Iowa Hawkeyes
    • Hawkeye Football
    • Hawkeye Basketball
    • Prep Sports
    • Prep Volleyball
    • Prep Football
    • Prep Basketball
    • Prep Wrestling
    • Iowa State Cyclones
    • UNI Panthers
    • Small College Sports
    • Minor League Sports
    • Outdoors

    Sports Desk

    • Mike Hlas
    • Jeff Johnson
    • Jeff Linder
    • J.R. Ogden
    • K.J. Pilcher
    • Leah Vann
  • Opinion
    • All Opinion
    • Fact Checker
    • Editorial Mission
    • Guest Columnists
    • Letters to the Editor
    • Political Cartoons
    • Staff Columnists
    • Staff Editorials
    • Submit a Letter or Column

    Our Columnists

    • Todd Dorman
    • Adam Sullivan
  • Food and Drink
    • All Food and Drink
    • Chew on This
    • Recipes
    • Restaurants
  • Business
    • All Business
    • Agriculture
    • Business Notes
    • Companies
    • Personal Finance
    • Economy
    • Employment
    • Energy
    • Manufacturing
    • Openings & Closures
    • Real Estate
    • Retail
    • Small Business
    • Transportation

    Our Journalists

    • Rod Boshart
    • Erin Jordan
    • John Steppe
  • Obituaries
    • All Obituaries
    • In Memory Of
    • Submit an Obituary
  • Podcasts
    • All Podcasts
    • Daily News Podcast
    • Fact Checker
    • Hlastradamus Odds
    • Iowa Prep Sports
    • On Iowa
    • On Iowa Politics
    • On UNI
    • Pinning Combination
  • Entertainment
    • All Entertainment
    • Art
    • Books
    • Museums & Galleries
    • Music
    • Theater
    • Things To Do
  • Living
    • All Living
    • Health & Wellness
    • Home & Garden
    • Milestones
    • People & Places
    • Pets & Animals
    • Recreation
    • Religion & Belief
    • Travel

    Our Writers

    • Diana Nollen
    • Elijah Decious
  • Kids Gazette
    • See All
    • Kids Cooking Series
    • Kids Galleries
    • Printables
    • Activities
    • Articles
    • Submissions
    • Resources
  • Photos
    • All Photos and Videos
    • The Iowa Photo
    • Photo Store

    Our Photojournalists

    • Andy Abeyta
    • Liz Martin
    • Rebecca Miller
    • Jim Slosiarek
    • Gazette Visuals
  • Milestones
    • All Milestones
    • Anniversaries
    • Days To Remember
    • Engagements
    • Holidays
    • In Remembrance
    • New Arrivals
    • Thank Yous
    • Weddings
    • Submit a Milestone
  • Data
    • Arrests
    • Building Permits
    • Interactive Maps & Charts
    • Salaries
  • Gazette Sites
    • Classifieds
    • Corridor Careers
    • Garage Sales
    • Gazette Gives Back
    • Gazette Rewards
    • Gazette Store
    • Green Gazette
    • HER
    • Iowa Wedding Experience
    • Holiday Light Finder
    • Hoopla
    • Iowa Ideas
    • Photo Store
  • Special Events
  • Special Sections
  • Other
    • About The Gazette
    • Archives
    • Article Removal
    • Business Directory
    • CR Arrest Database
    • Mobile Apps
    • Customer Care
    • Order Back Issues
    • Privacy Policies
    • Puzzle Answers
    • Sponsorship Requests
    • Submit a Letter
    • Weather
  • Digital Edition
Daily News PodcastDaily News Podcast
Daily NewslettersDaily Newsletters
Log out

FOLLOW US

The Gazette
  • News
  • Sports
  • Opinion
  • Food and Drink
  • Business
  • Obituaries
  • Podcasts
  • Entertainment
  • Living
  • Kids Gazette
  • Photos
  • Milestones
  • Data
  • Gazette Sites
  • Special Events
  • Special Sections
  • Other
  • Digital Edition
  • All News
  • Election 2020
  • Coronavirus
  • Business News
  • Community
  • Crime and Courts
  • Education
  • Government
  • Health
  • Nation and World
  • Time Machine
  • Search Archive

Our Journalists

  • Rod Boshart
  • Lee Hermiston
  • Erin Jordan
  • James Q. Lynch
  • Trish Mehaffey
  • Vanessa Miller
  • Kat Russell
  • Grace King
  • John Steppe
  • Gage Miskimen
  • Marissa Payne
  • All Sports
  • Iowa Hawkeyes
  • Hawkeye Football
  • Hawkeye Basketball
  • Prep Sports
  • Prep Volleyball
  • Prep Football
  • Prep Basketball
  • Prep Wrestling
  • Iowa State Cyclones
  • UNI Panthers
  • Small College Sports
  • Minor League Sports
  • Outdoors

Sports Desk

  • Mike Hlas
  • Jeff Johnson
  • Jeff Linder
  • J.R. Ogden
  • K.J. Pilcher
  • Leah Vann
  • All Opinion
  • Fact Checker
  • Editorial Mission
  • Guest Columnists
  • Letters to the Editor
  • Political Cartoons
  • Staff Columnists
  • Staff Editorials
  • Submit a Letter or Column

Our Columnists

  • Todd Dorman
  • Adam Sullivan
  • All Food and Drink
  • Chew on This
  • Recipes
  • Restaurants
  • All Business
  • Agriculture
  • Business Notes
  • Companies
  • Personal Finance
  • Economy
  • Employment
  • Energy
  • Manufacturing
  • Openings & Closures
  • Real Estate
  • Retail
  • Small Business
  • Transportation

Our Journalists

  • Rod Boshart
  • Erin Jordan
  • John Steppe
  • All Obituaries
  • In Memory Of
  • Submit an Obituary
  • All Podcasts
  • Daily News Podcast
  • Fact Checker
  • Hlastradamus Odds
  • Iowa Prep Sports
  • On Iowa
  • On Iowa Politics
  • On UNI
  • Pinning Combination
  • All Entertainment
  • Art
  • Books
  • Museums & Galleries
  • Music
  • Theater
  • Things To Do
  • All Living
  • Health & Wellness
  • Home & Garden
  • Milestones
  • People & Places
  • Pets & Animals
  • Recreation
  • Religion & Belief
  • Travel

Our Writers

  • Diana Nollen
  • Elijah Decious
  • See All
  • Kids Cooking Series
  • Kids Galleries
  • Printables
  • Activities
  • Articles
  • Submissions
  • Resources
  • All Photos and Videos
  • The Iowa Photo
  • Photo Store

Our Photojournalists

  • Andy Abeyta
  • Liz Martin
  • Rebecca Miller
  • Jim Slosiarek
  • Gazette Visuals
  • All Milestones
  • Anniversaries
  • Days To Remember
  • Engagements
  • Holidays
  • In Remembrance
  • New Arrivals
  • Thank Yous
  • Weddings
  • Submit a Milestone
  • Arrests
  • Building Permits
  • Interactive Maps & Charts
  • Salaries
  • Classifieds
  • Corridor Careers
  • Garage Sales
  • Gazette Gives Back
  • Gazette Rewards
  • Gazette Store
  • Green Gazette
  • HER
  • Iowa Wedding Experience
  • Holiday Light Finder
  • Hoopla
  • Iowa Ideas
  • Photo Store
  • About The Gazette
  • Archives
  • Article Removal
  • Business Directory
  • CR Arrest Database
  • Mobile Apps
  • Customer Care
  • Order Back Issues
  • Privacy Policies
  • Puzzle Answers
  • Sponsorship Requests
  • Submit a Letter
  • Weather
Daily News PodcastDaily News Podcast Daily NewslettersDaily Newsletters
LOG OUT

FOLLOW US

More Stories

Lawsuit: Medicaid exemption for gender-affirming surgeries is unconstitutional

Former pro boxer says he knew his longtime friend killed…

PHOTOS: Drake Relays - Thursday

Proven scorer Filip Rebraca transferring to Iowa from North Dakota

Iowa officials say 77 prisoners got coronavirus vaccine overdoses

Thistle’s Summit B&B closes in Mount Vernon

’Do it,’ Iowa National Guard leader tells people reluctant to…

Iowa woman pleads guilty to hate crimes for running down…

Home / Opinion / Staff Columnists

The reality of post-Steve King Iowa

By: Lyz Lenz Jun. 10, 2020 9:19 am, Updated: Jun. 10, 2020 12:56 pm
The reality of post-Steve King Iowa

On June 2, voters in Northwest Iowa finally purged themselves of the scourge of Steve King - the Republican congressman known for his greatest hits such as, where would Western society be without rape? And how did White nationalism become offensive?

Steven Arnold King did not just suddenly turn racist in 2018. He has a history of racist comments. In 2002, he tried to make English the official language of Iowa. In 2005, he tried to sue the Iowa Secretary of State for posting voting information on an official website in multiple languages including, Laotian, Bosnian, Spanish and Vietnamese.

Despite this, it was only in 2018 that King received censure from the Republican Party after he nearly lost his reelection campaign to Democratic challenger JD Scholten. In 2018, Jewish groups and the Anti-Defamation League called for King's removal from his committee assignments after he met with a far-right Austrian group with neo-Nazi ties. Yet, it was only in November, threat Gov. Reynolds passive aggressively warned King, who served on her reelection committee, 'I think that Steve King needs to make a decision if he wants to represent the people and the values of the 4th District or do something else, and I think he needs to take a look at that.”

Ousting the nine-term incumbent was no easy task. It took a lot of conservative PAC money and the full weight of the Republican establishment to shoehorn him from Iowa's congressional delegation. And in response, Republicans have been lauding the move as an act of ridding the party of racism. In a tweet on June 2, GOP Party Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel stated, 'Steve King's white supremacist rhetoric is totally inconsistent with the Republican Party, and I'm glad Iowa Republicans rejected him at the ballot box.”

But while King may be gone, the reality is that racism is endemic among elected leaders in Iowa, it just hides behind a nicer veneer. In December of 2019, Republican candidate for congress in Iowa's 2nd District, Mariannette Miller-Meeks, appeared alongside neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes at an anti-immigration event in Bettendorft. Miller Meeks later condemned Fuentes, but not his ideas.

As anti-racist protests have spread throughout Iowa, the party of anti-abortion and family values has done it's best to let us know how they feel about the issue of race. On June 7, State house Rep. Bobby Kaufmann, a real hero for brick walls everywhere, broke his silence on the protests to call out via Tweet the fact that Kinnick Stadium got spray painted. Kauffman, who authored the 'Suck it up, Buttercup” bill which was designed to cut mental health services to schools and universities and increase fines for protesters who block highways, was outraged, not on behalf of the lives lost to racism in this country, but for a building which gets routinely puked on by drunken college students during the football season.

Just in case you thought this was a one-sided issue, Kauffman's Democratic challenger, Sheriff Lonny Pulkrabeck, who initially condemned the muder of Floyd, but has spoken out more about the the vandalisim than the loss of Black lives.

Rep. Jeff Shipley from Fairfield has been doing his best to act like if Alex Jones and Ben Shapiro had a dumb baby. He has falsely argued that no one has died from COVID-19. And in a Twitter thread he argued it was weak for men to cry at George Floyd's memorial service, tweeting, 'Did MLK Jr cry publicly after the assasination [sic] of Medgar Evers?”

When one person wrote to Shipley to complain about comments, Shipley replied, 'Are you black?” Eager to fill the vacuous hole of inanity left in the wake of King, Shipley, in a now deleted Facebook post, praised the Congressman and expressed his desire to follow in his footsteps. But it's not just racism, these issues are intersectional. Shipley has also creepily tweeted, 'Funny thing ... I can really appreciate a woman in a cloth face covering when worn with elegance and sophistication. Can't be giving away smiles for free, make ‘em work for it!”

Warren Wethington, the Cedar County Sheriff who was accused of sexism, wrote, in a now deleted Facebook post advising people on how to shoot and kill home invaders. Posted at any other time, it would have been an aggressive call to violence. But during the protests where black people are exercising their constitutional right to advocate for more just forms of policing, the call is a dog whistle to racists who see Black people as criminals

Randy Feenstra, King's replacement, supports President Donald Trump's border policies and was backed by Bob Vander Plaats, head of the Family Leader, which argued in 2011 black children were better off under slavery because 'sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA's first African-American President.”

It's good that Iowans rejected the loud and vocal racism of Steve King, but what remains underneath is the quieter violence of sexism and racism endemic in our system. We knocked down one Steve King to find that others are rushing to fill his place. And like the mythical Hydra, we cannot just keep knocking down racist heads when we see them, we have to attack the problem at its base.

lyz.lenz@thegazette.com; 319-368-8513

From left, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, Iowa Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds, and Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad appear at a Trump rally Sunday at the Sioux City Convention Center. It was Trump's final scheduled Iowa stop before Election Day. Photo credit: Justin Wan, Sioux City Journal

Lyz Lenz

Grassley is lying again

We have another health crisis: STIs going undetected

It’s time to hold our leaders accountable

Theresa Greenfield will not make you squeal

Back to school in a pandemic

All articles by Lyz

Give us feedback

We work hard to provide fair, accurate coverage because we value your trust. If you find an error or omission in our reporting, please tell us here.

Submit a story idea

Do you have a story idea that we should look into? Please tell us here.

Related Stories

Capitol Ideas: Trump looms over GOP hopefuls’ treks to Iowa

Capitol Ideas: Trump looms over GOP hopefuls’ treks to Iowa

Erin Murphy News Mar. 29, 2021 8:30 am

Capitol Ideas column: High demand for COVID-19 vaccine is great…

Capitol Ideas column: High demand for COVID-19 vaccine is great…

Erin Murphy Opinion Feb. 15, 2021 8:30 am

Abolish the undemocratic Iowa caucuses

Abolish the undemocratic Iowa caucuses

Lyz Lenz Staff Columnists Nov. 14, 2019 7:05 pm

Staff Columnists

Iowa Libertarians challenge their ’white dudes who smoke weed’ reputation

Iowa Libertarians challenge their ’white dudes who smoke weed’ reputation

Adam Sullivan

Opinion 4h ago

Dirty water in Iowa? It’s just propaganda

Dirty water in Iowa? It’s just propaganda

Todd Dorman

Staff Columnists Apr. 22, 2021 7:00 am

Gov. Reynolds gets a 4/20 gift: A lawsuit over Iowa’s…

Gov. Reynolds gets a 4/20 gift: A lawsuit over Iowa’s…

Adam Sullivan

Opinion Apr. 19, 2021 4:56 pm

GOP move to freeze university funding isn’t about money

GOP move to freeze university funding isn’t about money

Todd Dorman

Staff Columnists Apr. 18, 2021 7:00 am

Opinion

Justice served, but hard work remains

Justice served, but hard work remains

Staff Editorial

Opinion 4h ago

Challenging Iowans to act on climate change

Challenging Iowans to act on climate change

Kennedy Warner

Opinion Apr. 22, 2021 9:59 am

Not all denial is created equal

Not all denial is created equal

Jonas Magram

Guest Columnists Apr. 21, 2021 10:31 am

Historic women made Biden’s cabinet possible

Historic women made Biden’s cabinet possible

Norman Sherman

Guest Columnists Apr. 21, 2021 2:25 pm

News

Former pro boxer says he knew his longtime friend killed…

Former pro boxer says he knew his longtime friend killed…

Trish Mehaffey

Crime and Courts 4m ago

Cedar Rapids, Linn County look at how to better prepare…

Cedar Rapids, Linn County look at how to better prepare…

Gage Miskimen

News 2h ago

Policy, not dollars, may delay Iowa Republican agreement on human…

Policy, not dollars, may delay Iowa Republican agreement on human…

James Q. Lynch

Government & Politics 3h ago

Lawsuit: Medicaid exemption for gender-affirming surgeries is unconstitutional

Lawsuit: Medicaid exemption for gender-affirming surgeries is unconstitutional

Michaela Ramm

Health Care and Medicine 19m ago

Sports

Photos: Big Ten Field Hockey--Michigan at Iowa

Photos: Big Ten Field Hockey--Michigan at Iowa

Jim Slosiarek

2m ago

Liberty’s Ashlyn Keeney hits overdrive late, wins Drake 1,500

Liberty’s Ashlyn Keeney hits overdrive late, wins Drake 1,500

Jeff Linder

High School Track and Field 45m ago

On his own or with his teammates, Kennedy’s Drew Bartels…

On his own or with his teammates, Kennedy’s Drew Bartels…

Jeff Linder

High School Track and Field 47m ago

PHOTOS: Drake Relays - Thursday

PHOTOS: Drake Relays - Thursday

, Gazette Visuals

17m ago

FOLLOW US

The Gazette is Iowa’s independent, employee-owned source for local, state, and national news coverage.

© 2021 The Gazette

All Rights Reserved.

  • Advertise with us
  • Privacy
  • Web Accessibility

Contact Us

  • 116 3rd St SE
    Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
  • customercare@thegazette.com
  • (319) 398-8333
  • Live Chat

Links

  • Puzzle Answers
  • CR Arrest Database
  • Article Removal Request
  • Gazette Archives
  • Green Gazette
  • Corridor Careers Jobs
  • Work at The Gazette
  • Customer Care

© 2021 The Gazette

All Rights Reserved.

  • Advertise with us
  • Privacy
  • Web Accessibility
Folience A Folience Company