Kim Reynolds Declares War

I live in Iowa, which is the happiest, most fiscally sound, and best-governed state in the universe, and also the one with the most economic opportunity. In what our recently reelected governor, Kim Reynolds, calls "a world increasingly marked by chaos," it is comforting to live in a place that is so normal and right-thinking and non-threatening.

There are Iowans, and there are extra-special Iowans like our law enforcement heroes and "parents" (i.e. parents who agree with the governor), and then there are... well, I don't know what to call them, but they're everywhere, aren't they? Even in Iowa. About the only surprise one gets in Iowa is that not everyone appreciates living in this paradise. While recounting her administration's accomplishments in her annual Condition of the State address, Governor Reynolds took time to point out that these accomplishments happened despite the direst predictions of our opponents ("as expected"--just like them!), members of the media (booooo!), and "so-called experts." In the face of our excellence, that bunch characteristically resorted to "hysteria," saving their "angriest attacks" for requiring schools to be in-person during the coronavirus pandemic. When those haters goes on about overcrowded hospitals and Iowa at one point having the highest death rate in the country, we know they're just hating for the sake of their own bilious hatred. Unlike us, they don't want what's best for our children!

We plan to shift money from under-funded public schools to private schools because we want to give "every child a chance to succeed." We could address concerns like those of Darwin Lehmann, superintendent of the Central Springs and Forest City school districts, who told the Cedar Rapids Gazette--an acknowledged media outlet, I regret to say--he worried about the proposal's impacts on public schools (McCullough 2023). But we don't see concerns, only "hysteria," and we "ignore the hysteria," don't we?

Of course, this can't go without mentioning a public school teacher who sent one of her children to private school, and some of her colleagues turned their backs on her! Haters, is what they are, haters and meanyheads! "It's about our children," haters! And we can't talk about our plan to ban all abortion without mentioning Sara in the audience, whose partner left her when she changed her mind about getting an abortion. That's the sort of moral sewer our enemies live in, folks, not only wrong all the time about policy but wrong all the time about life. And children!

(By the way, Sara now counsels other women who face the same decision she did. Until we pass the law and there won't need to be decisions any more.)

The Governor announced a public awareness campaign on the dangers of the opioid fentanyl, as well as increased penalties for manufacturing and distributing fentanyl. Fentanyl comes from immigration, which comes from Mexico through "the holes in the border," which come from the Biden administration. Truly I say to you, it is what enters Iowa that defiles it. (For the record, two days before the speech, President Biden had been in El Paso, Texas, to announce new measures on immigration policy (see Ignatius 2023)).

So let us get angry, stay angry, and all will stay well in the State of Iowa. I know this, you know this, and that's all we need to know, which is why we don't need to have any interviews with pesky reporters. And whoever wrote the headline atop this post? Probably hates children. And if someone would like to know about job creation, or the pandemic, or groundwater pollution, or police oversight, or climate change that brings tornadoes in January... well, they probably hate children, too.

(swiped from http://taccle2.eu/wp/core-skills/how-do-you-feel)

SEE ALSO:

"Is Iowa Becoming Even More Republican?" 3 December 2022

"Why Should I Vote For..." 23 October 2022

"Condition of the State 2022," 11 January 2023

Is Iowa Becoming Even More Republican?

 

Governor Kim Reynolds won 95 counties and reelection

Iowa turned red in 2014 after years as a purple state, and Republican control of the state endured what was a pretty good year nationally for Democrats in 2018. Governor Reynolds, winning her first election, won majorities in 88 of Iowa's 99 counties, and the Republicans controlled both houses of the legislature. This year, notwithstanding the coronavirus pandemic, the Trump presidency, and the ongoing decline of most of the state, Reynolds won 95 counties and Republicans gains in both houses neared supermajority levels (with a handful of races still to be decided). All six Iowa members of the U.S. Congress are now Republican. Are Iowa's recent Republican tendencies getting even stronger?

I will, with due caution given limited data, say yes. There's variation across election years and indeed across races, so there's no certainty that Democrats won't do better statewide in 2024 than they did this year. But all indications are that Republicans have increased their hold on the rural vote, and at least this year made substantial gains in some urban counties.

After the 2018 election I looked at the ten most populous counties in Iowa, which accounted for a majority of the state's overall population as well as 74.5 percent of statewide job growth. The story seemed to be that large urban counties were Democratic to the extent that they were also high in population and job growth, job growth, and (by Iowa standards) non-white population. Extending the analysis  the following summer to all Iowa counties highlighted the difference between growing and non-growing counties. Reynolds won over 60 percent of the vote in the 70 counties that had lost population since 2010, while barely winning 40 percent of the vote in the seven counties that grew faster than the U.S. as a whole. 

Curiously, the number of votes cast in the two groups of counties was roughly the same. With Democrats strong in growing areas, and Republicans strong in non-growing areas, time seemed to be on the Democrats' side. While time may in fact be on the Democrats' side, so far the numbers are trending the opposite way.

We're down to six counties that grew faster than the U.S. as a whole; all are large by Iowa standards. They include Polk, Story, Dallas and Warren counties in the Des Moines-Ames area, as well as Johnson and Linn counties in the Cedar Rapids-Iowa City area. (Included in the 2018 fast-growing group, but omitted here, is little Jefferson county in southeast Iowa. After showing population growth every year in annual U.S. Census Bureau estimates, the 2020 census showed a 7 percent decline there since 2010, an anomaly I discussed here.) Scott County (Davenport) and Dubuque County (Dubuque) are other large Iowa counties that grew faster than the overall state population increase in the 2010s.

Most of these eight large and growing counties showed pretty consistent partisanship across statewide elections from 2016-2022. Johnson County (Iowa City) is by far the most Democratic each year, while the suburban Des Moines counties of Dallas and Warren are the most Republican. The slower-growing urban counties of Dubuque and Scott, on the other hand, both shifted substantially to the Republicans in the 2022 gubernatorial race.

PCT R/D BY COUNTY, 2016-2022

COUNTY (growth 10-20)	2016 PRES (Trump/Clinton)	2018 GOV (Reynolds/Hubbell)	2020 PRES (Trump/Biden)	2022 GOV (Reynolds/DeJear)
Johnson +16.8	29.5-70.5	27.1-72.9	27.9-72.1	29.7-70.3
Story +10.0	43.1-56.9	39.7-60.3	41.1-58.9	44.9-55.1
Polk +14.3	43.8-56.2	40.7-59.3	42.2-57.8	46.0-54.0
Linn +9.0	45.1-54.9	42.8-57.2	43.0-57.0	47.4-52.6
Scott +5.7	49.2-50.8	48.2-51.8	48.2-51.8	55.7-44.3
Dallas +50.7	55.2-44.8	51.7-48.3	51.0-49.0	55.9-44.1
Dubuque +6.0	50.7-49.3	49.3-50.7	48.5-51.5	58.3-41.7
Warren +13.4	58.7-41.3	53.9-46.1	58.6-41.4	63.2-36.8
All Others -1.2	62.8-37.2	58.9-41.1	62.8-37.2	68.6-31.4
IOWA +4.7	55.0-45.0	51.4-48.6	54.1-45.9	59.5-40.5
Sioux +6.4	86.5-13.5	86.8-13.2	83.9-16.1	90.9-09.1
Dickinson +6.2 (Iowa Great Lakes area)	68.8-31.2	64.0-36.0	67.0-33.0	74.5-25.5
Madison +5.5	66.7-33.3	63.4-36.6	67.5-32.5	71.9-28.1
Clarke +5.0	64.9-35.1	64.7-35.3	68.2-31.8	75.2-24.8

The rest of the state outside these eight counties showed a pretty steady increase in support for Republicans. Collectively, they were 7+ percentage points above statewide in 2016 and 2018, and around 9 percentage points in 2020 and 2022. This holds true even where their population has grown, as witness the strongly Republican Sioux County in northwestern Iowa becoming even more strongly Republican through this period.

The House of Representatives races in these years also showed consistency across large urban counties, but Republican shifts in the rest of the state (including, again, Dubuque and Scott counties). Note that Sioux County, with a population of about 35000, can produce Republican majorities that swamp Democratic majorities from larger counties, particularly Story which is in the same U.S. House district.

CONGRESSIONAL VOTE DIFFERENTIAL BY COUNTY, 2016-2022

COUNTY	2016 HR	2018 HR	2020 HR	2022 HR
Johnson	+27305	+32012	+32028	+27349
Story	+4815	+14095	+7555	+3613
Polk	+271	+33473	+39247	+26498
Linn	+3361	+16979	+13148	+9907
Scott	+6448	+9270	+5516	+3417
Dallas	+9828	+2496	+2540	+1575
Dubuque	+4490	+3077	+278	+2904
Warren	+5922	+2415	+3775	+4529
All Others	+161821 (59.5-40.5)	+51657 (53.7-46.3)	+188604 (60.5-39.5)	+206225 (65.8-34.2)
IOWA	+139861 (54.7-58.2)	+52338 (48.0-52.0)	+97147 (53.0-47.0)	+151283 (56.3-44.7)
Sioux	+11846	+7142	+13271	+11384
Dickinson	+2884	+745	+3630	+3727
Madison	+3372	+2160	+2731	+2492
Clarke	+321	+414	+1073	+1175

This is admittedly rough analysis, focusing on the dimension of growing vs. not-growing areas, and using results from a relative handful of races. There are other dimensions to consider, including urban/rural, or race. Iowa has a strikingly low nonwhite population, but Democrats tend to do better in counties like Black Hawk (Waterloo) which is "only" 78 percent white. (Even then, Black Hawk went Democratic in the 2022 congressional race but Republican in the gubernatorial race.)

It does suggest that Republican strength overall in the state is growing, with the growth concentrated in shrinking rural areas and possibly slower-growing urban areas. This is consistent with national analysis by The Washington Post, which found among Republican gains in 2022, "many of their largest swings" were in districts Trump won in the 2020 presidential election (Keating, Stevens and Mourtoupalas 2022). Of course, they are looking shifts over two years, whereas I am looking over six years and trying to spot or at least deduce longer-term trends.

So, for the time being, politics in Iowa looks like more of the same, maybe bolder. The state appears to be continuing its shift towards the Republican Party, but not uniformly, so that divisions within the state are increasing. "Whatever it takes, whatever it costs, they are fundamentally trying to change who we are as a country," Reynolds said of Democrats at a Sioux City rally headlined by former President Trump. To the extent that she and the legislature are only here for those who she called "the real Iowa," this will not be a comfortable state for those who are in any way different.

DATA SOURCES: 

Elections 2016-18-20: https://sos.iowa.gov/elections/pdf/2020/general/canvsummary.pdf

Governor 22: cnn.com/election/2022/results/iowa

House 22: https://www.usatoday.com/elections/results/2022-11-08/us-house/iowa/

SEE ALSO

"Small Towns, Rural Areas, and State Legislatures," 11 June 2019

"Election 2018 and What Happens Next," 20 November 2018

"Turn Red For What," 5 November 2014

Condition of the State 2022

St. Luke's Hospital emergency entrance

[UPDATE: The day after the governor's address, Iowa Department of Public Health announced that 182 Iowans had died of COVID in the previous week; COVID-related hospitalizations rose to 923 from 792, the highest in over a year; and the 14-day positivity rate rose to 21.2 percent.]

The Iowa legislature begins its 2022 session this week, and if early remarks by Republican leaders are any indication, it looks to be another year of fabricating problems to solve while ignoring the actual problems. Iowa's 188 percent increase in deaths from COVID during the previous week make it 5th in the nation, while its vaccination rate of 59 percent is falling farther behind the nation as a whole (63 percent). Hospitals and caregivers across the state suffer from overwork and stretched capacity (Parker 2022). But as far as the Governor and the legislature are concerned, the pandemic is beyond over. It was not mentioned at all in the Condition of the State address, except in connection with her demand that "Schools. Stay. Open." At least that's more than climate change or systemic racism or economic inequality got.

What climate? My backyard, August 2020. A rare December derecho followed in 2021

 

We in Iowa like things cheap. We're also into nostalgia, and self-congratulation (and taking credit for federal government spending). After introducing a couple who moved to Iowa, where people are nice, from California, where people are not nice, Governor Reynolds presented her "bold" vision for the "state of opportunity:" cutting income taxes to a flat rate of 4 percent, with no tax on retirement income no matter how wealthy you are; cutting "onerous" regulations on child care providers and training teachers; banning "explicit" books from school libraries; and using state education funds for private schools.  Also, there were plenty of swats at the federal government, bureaucrats, employable people supposedly making a living off unemployment benefits, and people in other states who refuse to teach and want to ban police. In Iowa, we like our rhetorical meat like we like our politics: very, very red. 

"Explicit" book banned in Ankeny

Senate leader Jack Whitver, R-Ankeny, told Iowa Public Radio's "River to River" yesterday that Iowa is looking to its western neighbor South Dakota as a role model, while rejecting that of its eastern neighbor Illinois. Illinois certainly has its share of problems, but it has way outpaced Iowa and South Dakota in job creation: Illinois increased employment by 4.1 percent between November 2020 and November 2021, while Iowa was less than half of that, at 2.0 percent, lower than any of its neighbors except... South Dakota (1.8 percent). South Dakota leads Iowa in deaths per 100,000 people from COVID, 286-254, and it is 10th in the nation in occupied ICU beds per capita. And as an added bonus, its porous tax system has made it a haven for foreign money laundering (Cenziper, Fitzgibbon and Georges 2021)!

South Dakota and Iowa are low-tax, low-service states, competing with each other on the basis of cheapness. That's a policy choice, and seemingly one that majorities in both states are happy with. But it is a choice, one that reflects a worldview that the cheapest product is the best. People in a marketplace don't always choose the cheapest product, though. Some prefer amenities, a social experience, or ethical values. We in Iowa are choosing the cheapest life. Our policies will attract those who share our values of cheapness and nostalgia, like those people Senator Whitver referenced who work in Iowa but live across the border in South Dakota because the taxes are lower. The 21st century may have other ideas.

SEE ALSO: "Iowa: It's Unreal," 13 January 2021 

Iowa: It's Unreal!

 Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds to state Republicans' latest round of electoral victories in November by saying "they validated the direction we are taking the state" (Pearce 2020). She doubled down on that Tuesday night during the Condition of the State address, praising the state's response to COVID and the August derecho, as well as its budget surplus. She did not mention the state being 7th per capita in COVID cases (17th in deaths), nor its reliance on federal grants for economic relief. Dislocations to businesses and students by the prolonged pandemic were attributed to overzealous precautions, to which she is determined to put a stop.

It has become an article of faith for a considerable chunk of Iowans that the pandemic is relatively benign, and requiring precautions such as facemasks are a blatant attack on our individual liberties. "Our liberties we prize and our rights we will maintain," goes our state motto, possibly written by someone who had a sense of responsibility to his fellow humans, but also possibly an early form of "You're not the boss of me!" Which would be an okay motto as well. The chamber seemed somewhat empty, as some members were (wisely) attending remotely. About half the members shown when the camera cut away from Reynolds were wearing face masks. The front page of Tuesday's Cedar Rapids Gazette showed a crowd of anti-mask protestors at the Capitol. The legislative leadership has said they will not require masks for committee meetings or floor proceedings. Representative Art Staed (D-Cedar Rapids) reported unmasked colleagues at each of the three committee hearings he attended Tuesday.

So Reynolds's call for public schools to open in-person rings hollow. Of course, students should be in school. Besides what must be an accumulating pile of research on the issue, I can testify from my experiences in 2020 going between in-person and online instruction that the very best students do well either way, but the farther you get away from that standard the more trouble students have with online instruction. So let's get students back to the classroom! 

Washington High School, Cedar Rapids, was closed for repairs until this month
(Google Screenshot)

But what has Governor Reynolds, or anyone in Iowa government, done to make that possible? Besides demanding it, I mean. She's resisted shutdowns and mask mandates, and overruled districts that have tried to do pandemic measures on their own. Tuesday night she called for a bill "that gives parents the choice to send their child back to school full-time." She also wants to expand open enrollment [to Des Moines and Waterloo, IPTV commentator O. Kay Henderson explained afterwards] and charter schools, as well as "education savings accounts for students who are trapped in a failing school." There will be no spending increase, though, because she wants to cut taxes again. She was full of flattery for teachers who went to extraordinary lengths for their students this year, but is proposing nothing to make their jobs less difficult or more safe. Minority leader Todd Pritchard (D-Charles City) called this part of the speech "a little bit of warfare with out public schools."

We want to do what other countries have been able to do during pandemic, without any personal inconvenience or going to the efforts they did.

From education Rerynolds pivoted to red meat about BLM protests. Reynolds did wear a facemask on her way out of the chamber... and hugged a whole bunch of people.

Iowans are brave and good and tough, and if you come to our state, you had better be, too!

The complete text of the governor's speech is here.

SEE ALSO:

"Condition of the State 2020," 15 January 2020

"Condition of the State 2019," 14 January 2019

Iowa and the coronavirus: 22 counties, 77 counties

Iowa map showing counties under separate COVID order (swiped from wgem.com)

Iowa like other states is trying to figure out how to manage the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Governor Kim Reynolds has issued a series of proclamations, while stopping short of an all-encompassing shutdown as experienced in neighboring states like Illinois and Minnesota. Most business restrictions will expire at the end of this week, with remaining exceptions bars, casinos, and public gatherings of more than ten people (Hadish 2020b).

Prior to this, most restrictions had been lifted in most counties, but retained in 22 counties, colored orange in the map above (Roberts 2020)--which I must say, before we go any further, looks a lot like this...

...which relates either to I Thessalonians 4:16-17, or to a geometric figure with finite volume and infinite surface area. But I digress, don't I?

There is certainly room to question the timing of reopening (Abutaleb et al. 2020, Berch 2020), and even whether more counties should have been covered by the stricter rules (Iowa Fiscal Partnership 2020).The governor herself is on "modified quarantine" after interacting with President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence last week (Hadish 2020a).

("I shouldn't punish half of the state when we've got a significant spike in eight areas," Reynolds said at the time (Henderson 2020). This seems to me the most bizarre formulation in a series of bizarre official communications. Protecting the public health and safety is not punishment. Unless it is?)

However, we are not going to go there. On the assumption that there is or was some qualitative distinction in virus severity between the 77 counties mostly-opened on May 1 and the 22 counties mostly-opened on May 15, we are going to soak and poke in some data to see what that distinction might be.

We begin by noting that growth in Iowa has been concentrated in a relative few of our 99 counties, mostly clustered around the cities of Cedar Rapids, Davenport, Des Moines, Dubuque and Iowa City. Updating the data from my 2018 post on the subject, the ten largest urban-suburban counties have added 142,659 residents since the 2010 census, which means the other 89 counties combined are at minus 35,000 over that same period. Linn County is up 15,463, more than the Cedar Rapids metropolitan statistical area as a whole, while the Des Moines metro area's growth has included fast-growing Dallas County to the west and Warren County to the south as well as Polk County. 

The ten urban-suburban counties now account for 52.5 percent of the state's population, but have added 84 percent of the state's new jobs in this decade, attracted 312 percent of people moving into the state, and account for well over half (56.6 percent) of people aged 25-44. [The other 89 counties have a combined net out-migration, so the number of migrants into the core 10 more than triples that of the whole state.] Polk and Johnson Counties, famously contrasted by the Governor with "the real Iowa" in 2018, while comprising 20 percent of Iowa's population, have together added 80,000 residents since 2010, along with 42.5 percent of the state's job growth, 31 percent of the state's economic output, 202 percent of people moving into the state, 26.9 percent of college graduates, and 29.3 percent of those with graduate or professional degrees. Not sure what "the real Iowa" would do without them. 

For the record, since we've been talking about density of late in relation to the pandemic, the density of the ten largest counties is 254 people per square mile, ranging from 750.5 (Polk) to 98 (Pottawattamie). Density is 54.5 for the state as a whole, 30.4 for the "other 89."

The 22 counties whose COVID situation merited a two week delay in lifting restrictions include eight of the ten largest counties, excepting Pottawattamie (Council Bluffs) and Story (Ames); three that are part of MSAs (Benton, Bremer, and Washington); and eleven that are in neither category. 

Are the 22 counties different from the 77 in some characteristic(s) that would lead us to expect the pandemic would be more severe there?

The density hypothesis (Rosenthal 2020) posits that places with greater population density will see greater community transmission of the virus, with New York City and its environs the example that springs immediately to mind. The 11 in MSAs include the state's five densest counties, as well as Dubuque, Woodbury, and Dallas at #7-8-9. Benton and Bremer, though, are at about the statewide average, and Washington County (38.2/sqmi) is quite a bit below. The 11 non-MSA counties include two in southeast Iowa with near-MSA-level density, Des Moines (96.9) and Muscatine (97.7). [NOTE FOR NON-IOWANS: Des Moines County does not contain the City of Des Moines. In fact, they are nowhere near each other.] However, five of the counties are below average for non-MSA Iowa counties, including Allamakee (22.3/sqmi); the median case, Poweshiek County, is at 32.3/sqmi almost exactly the statewide average for non-MSA counties. So, if your county is densely-populated it was slightly more likely to land on this list, but being sparsely-populated was no insurance against inclusion.

Sure is dense in here! (Reopened bar in West Allis, Wisconsin, swiped from WDJT)

The connectedness hypothesis posits that as the virus spreads, it will spread first to places that are most connected (economically, socially) to the rest of the world, and only eventually will get to more outlying areas. Iowa does not have any global cities, but there are definite variations in local economies, as shown by variations in job growth, in-migration, and percentage of graduate and professional degrees. Successful cities tend to be distinct from the rest of the state on these factors, but not all cities are successful. Weirdly, the two largest counties among the 77 display nearly opposite experiences: Story County, home to Iowa State University, is second only to Johnson in graduate and professional degree holders at 2.5 times the statewide average; it is 6th in in-migration and 7th in GDP. And it's right by Des Moines (the city). Pottawattamie is comparable to Story in GDP, but for advanced degrees has only 2/3 the statewide average, and has had substantial out-migration (though less than Black Hawk and Woodbury Counties, which are among the 22). It's also right by the big city of Omaha, Nebraska. Among the 11 non-MSA counties, only Jasper (+38) had net in-migration in the 2010s; the relatively-dense Des Moines and Muscatine Counties also had substantially larger GDP; and all are at or below the statewide average for advanced degree holders except for Powesheik, which is home to Grinnell College. These data are no more conclusive than the density measure! and there's a lot of coincidence between the two.

Besides the lack of conclusiveness on these two dimensions, there are just too many confounding factors to draw a solid conclusion on what areas are most at risk for spreading the coronavirus. A lot has to do with local incidence of things like meatpacking plants and nursing homes, how people behave in specific areas, and maybe even good or bad luck. The situation in late April when the Governor made her decision was a single snapshot in an evolving event; whatever data she and her advisers were using, they might have produced a different set of counties two weeks earlier or later. And there's the further confounding factor that the data on coronavirus incidence, hospitalizations, and deaths are shaky and likely to be understated (see Kristof 2020).

In the two weeks after the Governor's proclamation in question, 22 Iowa counties attained High COVID-19 Prevalence as defined by William H. Frey of the Brookings Institution i.e. 100 cases per 100,000 population. From April 27 to May 3: Crawford, Dubuque, Fayette, Greene, Grundy, Guthrie, Howard, Jones, Lyon, Monona, Shelby, and Wapello. From May 4 to May 10: Audubon, Boone, Buchanan, Buena Vista, Clayton, Davis, Des Moines, O'Brien, Plymouth, and Sioux. Only Dubuque and Des Moines counties were on the Governor's list of 22. (Five other counties not on the list--Cedar, Clinton, Harrison, Osceola, and Van Buren--had attained High COVID-19 Prevalence before April 27.) Frey sees the virus moving into "Trump counties;" 20 of the 22 new counties were carried by Reynolds in 2018.

Perhaps the most reasonable conclusion from all this is that the coronavirus does not have opinions about partisan politics, or walkable urbanism, or the state of the economy, and it should be treated as a live problem wherever you are. Ask not where the coronavirus is coming... it's coming at you.

EARLIER POSTS

"Election 2018 and What Happens Next," 20 November 2018
"What is the Future of Iowa's Small Towns?" 3 July 2018