After the red wave, continue to make your voice heard

Iowa voters have spoken, and the message was loud and clear that they want Republican governance.

Unlike most of the country, where predictions for a massive red wave, including victories for Trump-backed election deniers, didn’t materialize, Iowa saw a red wave up and down the ballot. Trump-backed candidate won easily, including Gov. Kim Reynolds and U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley. Republicans defeated longtime Attorney General Tom Miller and State Treasurer Michael Fitzgerald. Democratic State Auditor Rob Sand is clinging to a narrow lead, pending final results.

So the first concern that comes to our mind is the future of checks and balances and executive branch oversight at the Capitol. With “her” attorney general now in office, as Reynolds describes it, we now have one less voice at the Statehouse who might question actions done under single party rule. We’ve already seen the Legislature, still under Republican control, abdicate its oversight role when it comes to actions by the Reynolds administration. Team red protects its own, to the detriment of responsible governing.

We see the next two years as a difficult time for cities to get a fair hearing for their issues at the Statehouse. Tuesday’s results cemented the steep rural divide, with counties such as Linn, Johnson, Polk and Black Hawk `once again appearing as blue islands in a sea of red. A redder Legislature will not doubt continue the GOP’s drive in recent years to curtail local control by more progressive local governments.

Republicans ran on a desire to greatly reduce access to an abortion in Iowa, targeted transgender Iowans and the school districts that support transgender students and argued that public schools are failing and ideologically unacceptable, creating the need for publicly funded private school scholarships. We expect them to argue they now have a mandate to pursue these misguided policies. Reynolds talks often of attracting young professionals to Iowa. But curtailing civil rights, opening the door to discrimination and making abortion effectively illegal for most women will hamper those efforts.

In a less turbulent and partisan era, we might have used this editorial to argue that the campaign has ended, and now it’s time to come together to address the needs of all Iowans. But those days are long gone, and we know that governing Republicans have shown little interest in coming together to seek the common good.

So, instead, we urge Iowans to be vigilant, get involved and use your voice in any way you can and push back against overreach. Hold state leaders to account. Losing an election doesn’t mean losing your right to demand better government.

(319) 398-8262; editorial@thegazette.com