Reporters’ Roundtable

Kay Henderson

The governor vetoes an eminent domain bill, and more candidates jump into races for 2026. We'll break it all down with some of our favorite political reporters on this edition of Iowa Press.

 

 

Announcer

Funding for Iowa Press was provided by Friends, the Iowa PBS Foundation.

The Associated General Contractors of Iowa. The public's partner in building Iowa's highway, bridge and municipal utility infrastructure.

Across Iowa, hundreds of neighborhood banks strive to serve their communities, provide jobs and help local businesses. Iowa banks are proud to back the life you build. Learn more at IowaBankers.com.

 

 

Announcer

For decades, Iowa Press has brought you political leaders and newsmakers from across Iowa and beyond. Celebrating more than 50 years on statewide Iowa PBS, this is the Friday, June 13th edition of Iowa Press. Here is Kay Henderson.

 

 

Kay Henderson

About a month ago, debate in the Iowa legislature ended because their role in the legislative session ended. Governor Reynolds’ role in the legislative session to sign or veto all the bills that cleared the legislature ended on Wednesday of this week. And there was some big news. We'll talk about it and other things happening in the Iowa political world with our group of political journalists.

 

 

Kay Henderson

They are Brianne Pfannenstiel. She is the chief politics reporter for The Des Moines Register. Stephen Gruber-Miller covers the Statehouse and other politics for The Register. On this side of the table, we have Dave Price, Iowa political director for Gray Media. And Erin Murphy. He is the Des Moines bureau chief for The Gazette in Cedar Rapids. Okay, folks, first question. The governor vetoed a bill that would have set some restrictions on carbon capture pipelines and other energy infrastructure projects. For example, it would have said a carbon capture pipeline may only operate for 25 years. It had some insurance requirements in it. I could go on and on, but it's not the law. So let's start talking about the veto. Erin, surprise?

 

 

Erin Murphy

No. Not really. There are arguments that Republicans like Governor Reynolds could make on either side of that bill. So there was an open question to some degree about whether she was going to sign it. But if you ask me, was I surprised? No. The arguments were sort of laid out in the Senate debate, especially that that kind of presented a way that she could say, look, I'm absolutely for property rights, landowner rights, but this bill doesn't do that the right way.

 

 

Kay Henderson

Stephen, Senate debate sort of encapsulated it.

 

 

Stephen Gruber-Miller

Not a surprise. And Erin was, yeah, stole what I was going to say. Basically, yeah, the majority of Senate Republicans who opposed the bill really laid out their concerns that they thought it would harm the development of other, you know, Iowa’s economy more broadly and other infrastructure pipeline projects, including pipelines like oil pipelines, not just carbon pipelines, things like that. And some of those things we saw the governor site in her veto message.

 

 

Kay Henderson

Dave.

 

 

Dave Price

I think you already laid this out because as you were summarizing what was in this bill, let's be honest. You could have gone on for ten minutes, right? It's so convoluted, complicated. And despite how it was characterized, sometimes it was not just cut and dried like we're going to ban a pipeline, which is what some wanted to do, or we're going to ban eminent domain. It was far more convoluted than that. And so I think all along we knew there was no way the governor was going to go for this. And Senate Republican leadership knew she wasn't going to go for this.

 

 

Brianne Pfannenstiel

Well, I wasn't surprised when you think about the context that we're in. Where she's at in kind of her election journey. She announced that she's not running for reelection. And so I think that probably made it easier to do this veto. If you look at the backlash that we've seen from a lot of Republicans across the state, Republicans in the legislature who are really part of the base of her support, I think it would have been a lot harder to do if she were running for reelection next year.

 

 

Kay Henderson

Well, let's talk about the backlash. Dave, House Republicans. Swift and fierce.

 

 

Dave Price

And I was trying to, I always try to step back before I do some kind of hot take on these things. I moved here in 2001, so I was trying to think of a situation where it was this fierce -

 

 

Kay Henderson

Internecine warfare.

 

 

Dave Price

Ooh. Nice phrase. Yeah. Exactly. Like, you know, we can come up with topics from over the years where maybe like a legislator sort of privately is like, man, that was crazy or whatever and won't say it publicly. Or maybe somebody in one of the chambers or really go pretty hard against something they disagreed with. But like, not this strong and not Republican versus Republican. I was surprised with how strong the pushback was, like about your interview with Bobby Kaufmann, where he's like, essentially, good luck getting anything through next year governor.

 

 

Kay Henderson

He will personally kill every bill that she proposes.

 

 

Dave Price

I mean, that's like strong, right? Especially for somebody who may have some higher ambitions in the chamber. Like that, I mean, that's fierce.

 

 

Kay Henderson

And the son of the Republican

 

 

Dave Price

The state party chair.

 

 

Kay Henderson

Chair. I mean, this is amazing.

 

 

Stephen Gruber-Miller

Even accounting for, you know, high emotions, right? Reacting immediately after the veto. Even accounting for a little bit of, political exaggeration. It's a really strong reaction. And you do have people like Representative Kaufmann saying things like we won't work with the governor anymore.

 

 

Dave Price

From his own party.

 

 

Stephen Gruber-Miller

Yeah. You have other House Republicans taking the slightly more measured tone of calling it a betrayal of landowners rights, of the Republican Party platform. I mean, they're mad. And I think one of the things that they're really frustrated by, and House Speaker Pat Grassley told me this yesterday. This is not a new issue. And they have been working on this for four years, and they've passed several different iterations of the bill, this type of bill through the House that would do different things kind of towards eminent domain and pipelines. And the Speaker's point, and the Senate has never taken those up, right? And the Speaker's point was, if there were so many problems with this bill, where were you and where were the opinions, and your feedback on our previous proposals we've been trying to do this?

 

 

Dave Price

Yeah. If you really do want to do something for property owners where were your ideas with it.

 

 

Kay Henderson

And that was the point that Representative Steven Holt, who's been the leader of debate in the Iowa House on every bill that they produced in the House and passed, said that, you know, she had three years to help us craft something and nothing happened.

 

 

Brianne Pfannenstiel

And I think it really speaks to how upset everyone is, particularly the House Republican caucus, that Speaker Pat Grassley immediately called for a special session. He said, I'm going to get my troops together and we're going to come back and talk about this. That was his very first reaction very quickly after the governor issued this veto. He did not have to think twice about that.

 

 

Kay Henderson

And the bill passed with 85 votes, if I'm not mistaken.

 

 

Stephen Gruber-Miller

In the House.

 

 

Kay Henderson

In the House, so easily overridden there.

 

 

Erin Murphy

Yeah. The House will definitely have the signatures to…you need two thirds of the lawmakers in each chamber. And that's a key phrase we're going to come back to. So the House is going to have it, clear that bar easily. But you also need two thirds just in the Senate. And that is extremely unlikely to happen given the

 

 

Kay Henderson

Bill passed 27.

 

 

Erin Murphy

Right, right.

 

 

Kay Henderson

So that's not enough.

 

 

Erin Murphy

So there's 21 Senate Republicans who voted against that bill. Were totally fine with the veto. Seems pretty unlikely that any, much less 13 of them, are going to flip that to support a special session.

 

 

Kay Henderson

So let's review maybe this in the context of a continuum. House Republicans have sort of said, oh, we don't quite want to do what the Senate Republicans and Governor Reynolds have agreed to on tax policy a few years ago. And so there was a stalemate for several weeks over that. And then fast forward to more recently, the, governor’s sort of redo for the Area Education Agencies got big push back from House Republicans. They got some concessions. So this is not a new sort of tension dynamic. Erin, the thing here is that it's new that it's so out in the open.

 

 

Erin Murphy

That it's so escalated and so public. That's exactly right. And I think most of us sitting at this table are fascinated by what this is going to look like next January, which is a long way off. But when these folks, and look, there's no election between now and next session. So it's mostly going to be the same people that are going to have to come together and figure out how to pass laws, including on eminent domain, if they want to. And given everything that's happened now, it's going to be fascinating to see how that all operates next year.

 

 

Stephen Gruber-Miller

Yeah, Republicans have liked to brag for several years now that they have one of the most effective, I think the phrase is “governing trifectas” in the country where you see other states with full Republican control where they're kind of at each other's throats. You know, there's deep divisions. They're bickering all the time. We haven't had that as much in Iowa. And we might be reaching that boiling point. You know, it's this issue in particular has been boiling. But you mentioned there's been other disagreements. And so how much of it is frustration over this? How much of it is, just the natural progression of they have been the party in control for so long and they've had the power to do these things. And so any disagreements really are with their own party.

 

 

Dave Price

I appreciate the way you laid this out, too. And I was reminded of the school funding fight where the House Republican caucus was not happy with what that final package looked like, and they really dug in on the extra money for para educators and decided that there were no, there. And with the budget too, they had to give in on some stuff. They made sure. And it was just one more level here, where this tension between the governor and House Republican leadership really seems magnified now.

 

 

Erin Murphy

And to that, maybe in a different timeline, you get to next year and there's the person at the top of the pyramid that can sort of mend things and orchestrate and get things back going in the same direction. But A - governor, a lot of, as we just established, a lot of House Republicans are very upset with Governor Reynolds right now. And on top of that, she had already announced that she's not running for reelection. She's not going to be on the ticket. So there's not that impetus to fall in line with the governor next year anyway. So, also.

 

 

Kay Henderson

Not to damage her reelection chances because she's not running for reelection.

 

 

Erin Murphy

Right. There's not that need to be part of the team.

 

 

Kay Henderson

So, Stephen, we've already established that there will not be a special session to override the veto. Could there be a special session, if you read the governor's veto message, she said there are things here that we agree on that we could do. This, this and this. Could there be some agreement to come about on a bill that would deal with the pipeline?

 

 

Stephen Gruber-Miller

Yeah, certainly. The governor has the power to call a special session between now and January. But the real tension here with House and Senate Republicans. I mean, there's a lot of different tension points, but one of the big ones is the House Republicans want whatever they do to be effective against projects like Summit Carbon Solutions pipeline, which is in the works now. Has received some degree of approval from the Iowa Utilities Commission, is, you know, has begun the planning phase. And Senate Republicans, I think, have said we're willing to do things on eminent domain, but it can't affect anything that's currently in the works. They're worried about a lawsuit against the state. They say that it would violate the contracts clause of the Constitution, which says the state can't do anything to violate contracts. And so they say we're opening up the state for litigation. So how do you compromise between it can only be for future projects versus it has to protect people now?

 

 

Erin Murphy

And to that point, you don't call a special session unless you've got the bill ready to go. You don’t call a special session

 

 

Kay Henderson

Right. But she was suggesting in her veto message, there are areas of agreement here. Let's get together.

 

 

Erin Murphy

I assume that will happen next, starting next January. Or at least discussing in the interim. But I don't see how they get to, to Stephen’s point, I don't get see how they get to an agreement on a bill in time to call a special session.

 

 

Dave Price

And doesn't that, wouldn't that show us how much she really wants to try to repair this relationship, if she's willing to do that and to lead on that?

 

 

Kay Henderson

Brianne one final point on this as we move on to talk about 2026, which is really, ramping up here. As we look at this thing and consider, you know, the dynamic that happened in the Iowa Senate whereby a smaller group of Republicans said we are going to insist on a vote on this, and were joined by Democrats. In a session that started where there was a lot of fury in the House of House Republicans after they passed a gambling referendum, I mean moratorium, pardon me, that would have prevented Cedar Rapids from getting a casino license. What are your thoughts on how unusual what happened in the Senate was this year?

 

 

Brianne Pfannenstiel

Well, it's very rare. I think all of this comes back to the idea that it's very rare to see a party openly fighting with itself. And that's been very true. And in the current climate, the Republican Party has been very disciplined most of the time at moving forward in lockstep and being, you know, singing from the same hymnal as it were. And so, yeah, it's very unusual to see them break and to see them break so publicly on an issue like this and to really stand firm and kind of hold the legislative process hostage. And I think it speaks to how important this issue has become for the Republican Party, because this didn't happen overnight. This has been a years long conversation that has been kind of simmering. And now I think we're seeing it really bubble over.

 

 

Kay Henderson

Well, how is it going to bubble over in 2026?

 

 

Brianne Pfannenstiel

I think this is going to be a major issue. Especially as we look at the governor's race. You know, Kim Reynolds is not running, but this issue now, again, now that it has bubbled over in this way, I think is going to be very major. We've seen candidates like Eddie Andrews, who's a state representative, former state representative Brad Sherman, both are very vocal about saying they're on the side of property owners, on landowner rights and wanting to pass some kind of legislation like this. Randy Feenstra, who may or may not be the frontrunner if he, you know, formally launches his campaign. He's in an exploratory committee, has not very, you know, has not committed on this issue. And so I think we'll see where he comes down, because I do think somebody is going to make him take a side.

 

 

Erin Murphy

Yeah. If one of us doesn't, his primary candidates will.

 

 

Stephen Gruber-Miller

And speaker Pat Grassley, when I was talking to him yesterday, called this a litmus test for Republican candidates in 2026. And Grassley has not ruled out running for governor either. But he said not just for governor, but for any office. And I think you have a lot of land owners who have four years of experience organizing at the Capitol, advocating for this legislation, who have said very clearly, we are going to make our frustration known against legislators who voted against this. So against some of these Republican senators. So perhaps we'll see legislative primaries next year as well.

 

 

Erin Murphy

I don't think there's any doubt of that. We're hearing from the folks who have been most active on the property rights side of this talking about exactly that and wanting to help recruit people who will run largely on a platform of, in their words, supporting property rights.

 

 

Dave Price

Grassley, to me personally, is maybe the most fascinating person in this discussion because of his prominence. Nothing against Andrews or Sherman. But as the Speaker, as a household name like Grassley, if he jumps into the governor's race and really embraces landowner rights in whatever way that could force Feenstra, you know, to that's a tough position for Feenstra, because he might have to really lean in one way or the other on this.

 

 

Kay Henderson

Let's shift to the U.S. Senate race. Joni Ernst has not said she's running for reelection in 2026, but she's hired a campaign manager. Stephen, you were at her first town hall meeting of the year, and it was memorable.

 

 

Stephen Gruber-Miller

It was memorable. It was a, it was a heated town hall, you know. 7:30 in the morning in Parkersburg. You had you had a good crowd come out, right. There were a lot of people there. And it started off pretty respectful. But as things went on, as Senator Ernst was talking about the one big beautiful bill, the big Trump tax cut package with Medicaid and SNAP cuts. As she started talking more about that, people started heckling her from the crowd, calling her a liar, things like that. And she had her moment of when somebody shouted people will die, she said, well, we all are going to die. And that has just really, I think, lit a fuse on this race and really thrown it into the national spotlight, especially the way she responded to it with like a sarcastic apology. So yeah, she's got to navigate those waters in terms of her support for that bill and her, you know, how she handles kind of criticism over that. And you've got Democrats jumping into the race against her, citing those comments as motivating factors.

 

 

Kay Henderson

Brianne, you've got several, I'll say several people, have who have already announced and including one this week.

 

 

Brianne Pfannenstiel

Right. State legislator JD Scholten is someone who, you know, it had been out there that he was considering this. And then these comments happened, and I think he really kind of ramped up his timeline. Said, you know what? This this is pushing me over the edge. I'm making it public. And he got a lot of attention that week. You know, the decision to either move up his campaign or to get off the sidelines and make it official. He was on national TV all week. He was in national, coverage. And so I think this is a race that suddenly has gained some national prominence as well. It's a race that most elections analysts are calling as safe Republican or likely Republican. But they are moving it slightly more toward the middle from safe to likely. And so these Democrats are trying to capitalize on that.

 

 

Kay Henderson

Nathan Sage, the executive director of the Knoxville Chamber of Commerce has been in the race for over a month. And then we had a new entrant this week.

 

 

Erin Murphy

Yeah, another state legislator, Zach Wahls from Eastern Iowa. Coralville. Folks who have been following Iowa politics for a long time remember him from when he made a speech on the House floor in opposition to a proposed constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage. And he's been in the legislature since.

 

 

Kay Henderson

2023.

 

 

Erin Murphy

Thank you.

 

 

Stephen Gruber-Miller

2018.

 

 

Erin Murphy

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry. 2018. So Zach's, I think, and similar to JD's, early challenge will be getting the name out there to a broader electorate running for a federal office now, a statewide office. And we're probably not done with that primary field, as well. We're hearing from other Democrats who appear to be very seriously thinking about it. So that that could end up being a decent batch of people. And of all the names I've heard, I don't think any of them, you know, are the kind that like, oh, they're a clear favorite. So it could be an interesting primary,

 

 

Dave Price

To Brianne's point, though, with the additional attention that Ernst’s sarcastic comment to all of this brought, I was reminded of when Scholten ran in ’18? Was that right against Steve King?

 

 

Erin Murphy

Yep

 

 

Dave Price

Look at how well he did bringing in outside money. And I wonder if that's going, not only the attention to all of this, but as they look to raise money, you can clearly fundraise off her first response, but especially off that second response. And I wonder if that's where we're going to see this additional influx that makes this dynamic even more fascinating.

 

 

Stephen Gruber-Miller

Well, and if Democrats want a majority in the U.S. Senate again, they sort of have no choice but to play in Iowa.

 

 

Dave Price

For sure.

 

 

Stephen Gruber-Miller

Right? Because they're in the hole and the map only has so many seats. So that will maybe force their hand in terms of getting involved. But yeah, you have multiple candidates in the Democratic primary. You know, Scholten has a bit of a national profile from his runs for Congress. Wahls has a bit of a profile from that viral speech on same sex marriage. And also, he led the Senate Democrats and has a fundraising base from that. You've got other, the other candidates who are looking to jump in who have kind of their own unique profiles. It's going to be an interesting race.

 

 

Kay Henderson

Brianne, let's talk about the governor's race on the Democratic side. State Auditor Rob Sand made it official. He is running for the governor's race, but now he has an opponent.

 

 

Brianne Pfannenstiel

He does. Julie Stauch is a campaign operative. She's worked behind the scenes a lot of times. And so she's put her name into the race as well. And I think, is focused on a lot of the same themes that we're seeing from Rob Sand. You know, not trying to come at this in a hyper partisan way, but trying to say, fairness and truth and kind of being an independent minded Democrat is what matters. And so it'll be interesting to see that primary play out. She's not somebody who has the name ID of somebody like Rob Sand. And she certainly doesn't have the fundraising that Rob Sand has. You know, he came into this race with I think more than $8 million before he even announced behind his candidacy. And now it's going to be just a very difficult hill for anybody to climb.

 

 

Kay Henderson

When I asked her about it, I said isn't that a deterrent? And she told me in my interview with her that that's the only thing that he has going for him right now. So she's willing to go there as a Democrat, whereas heretofore we've only heard that criticism from Republicans.

 

 

Erin Murphy

She mentioned in an interview with me, too. She said, you know, I even made the allusion, I don't have a family that I can tap into to get that money that a lot of the donations to Rob Sand’s come from his in-laws. The one interesting thing really quick about that to me is we've been kind of pontificating, wondering aloud and asking some of our guests, especially on the Democratic side, is it a good or bad thing if Rob Sand doesn't have a primary and doesn't get tested? Well, now he has one. I don't know how serious a challenge Julie Stauch presents to Rob Sand, but he's going to actually have to have to do the work at least.

 

 

Kay Henderson

Stephen, we have a couple of minutes left. We've got Congressional races sort of starting up in the Third Congressional District.

 

 

Stephen Gruber-Miller

Yeah, that's right. So Representative Zach Nunn is running again after first winning in 2022. And, he's got a couple of Democrats in a primary seeking to get the nomination to challenge him. So we've got former House Minority Leader Jennifer Konfrst and state Senator Sarah Trone Garriott. I think both candidates who are pretty well-liked among Democrats in the Third District. And again, both decently well known, right, for Democrats, at least in the state. Trone Garriott has some attention from flipping Republican seats. She defeated Senate president, Iowa Senate President Jake Chapman in 2022. And then Konfrst has led the Iowa House Democrats. And so she's been, you know, kind of front and center in terms of Democrats opposition messaging at the Statehouse.

 

 

Kay Henderson

Miller-Meeks in Iowa's First Congressional District going to seek reelection. And what's going on in the opposition?

 

 

Erin Murphy

I think the biggest thing there is we're waiting to see if Democrat Christina Bohannan is going to announce for another run. She's run against Miller-Meeks the last two cycles unsuccessfully. I haven't heard any other names about anyone strongly considering. And I think that's just the opening question is, is Christina Bohannan going to take another try at it? And if she doesn't, then maybe that opens up. But for now, we're waiting on Bohannan.

 

 

Kay Henderson

One minute left. And Brianne you've written about this, and we should probably touch on it. The Iowa Democratic Party lost a seat on an important party panel.

 

 

Brianne Pfannenstiel

Right. The Democratic National Committee’s rules and bylaws committee. It sounds very boring and tedious, and it indeed can be tedious to cover. But it does this very important thing of setting the presidential nominating calendar. So Iowa has had a representative on this committee for at least the last four presidential cycles. And that person was removed just this past week or two. And so that really, I think, sends a message about where Iowa stands in this process going into the 2028 cycle.

 

 

Kay Henderson

And oddly enough, Rita Hart issued a statement and referred to the calendar that was used in 2024 as the Biden calendar. So there's, they're starting to bite back against this, but it may be too late.

 

 

Brianne Pfannenstiel

That's exactly right. We'll see what they do. They might choose to go rogue the way that New Hampshire did. There were no repercussions from the national party. So we'll see if they decide to go their own way and try and try and make it.

 

 

Kay Henderson

Well, that is it for our conversation today. Thank you all for sharing your reporting. You can watch every episode of Iowa Press at IowaPBS.org for everyone here at Iowa PBS, thanks for watching today.

 

 

Announcer

Funding for Iowa Press was provided by Friends, the Iowa PBS Foundation.

The Associated General Contractors of Iowa, the public's partner in building Iowa's highway, bridge and municipal utility Infrastructure.

Across Iowa, hundreds of neighborhood banks strive to serve their communities, provide jobs and help local businesses. Iowa banks are proud to back the life you build. Learn more at Iowa bankers dot com.