Election Results Analysis

(music)

Iowa republicans celebrated another successful election night and democrats suffered another gut punch. We'll discuss what it all means with two political insiders on this edition of Iowa Press.

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

(music)

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

Elite Casino Resorts is rooted in Iowa. Elite's 1,600 employees are our company's greatest asset. A family run business, Elite supports volunteerism, encourages promotions from within and shares profits with our employees.

(music)

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.

(music)

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, November 8th edition of Iowa Press. Here is Kay Henderson.

(music)

[Henderson] Hey. There was an election this week. And you might guess that we're going to talk about it today. You are right. We are talking with two people who meet the very definition of political insiders. Let me introduce them. They are Jimmy Centers. He is a person who has worked on campaigns at all levels from the local to the presidential. He was the communications director for the Terry Branstad-Kim Reynolds gubernatorial administration. And he co-founded Cornerstone Public Affairs. Welcome.

[Centers] Thanks for having me.

[Henderson] Also, Matthew James Paul has had various roles. He worked on former Governor Tom Vilsack's administration. He managed Tom Harkin's last U.S. Senate campaign in 2008. He worked as the communications director at the USDA during the Obama administration. He was the Iowa state director for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign. Then chief of staff for vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine. And then he is also co-founder of Cornerstone Public Affairs. That is the last PSA for your firm.

[Paul] Thank you. We appreciate that very much.

[Henderson] Also joining the conversation are Dave Price. He is the, I guess chief Iowa guy. Can we say that?

[Price] What's a title really?

[Henderson] Exactly -- for the Gray Television stations in Iowa. And Erin Murphy of the Gazette in Cedar Rapids.

[Murphy] Gentlemen, before we get too granular, I just want to start big picture and get -- Jimmy Centers, let's start with you -- give us your reaction to the results/ What kind of jumped out to you as those election results rolled in on Tuesday?

[Centers] Well, first and foremost, here locally it was quite surprising how large the margin was for President Trump given what the polling had showed. The Des Moines Register's Iowa Poll of course had Vice President Harris leading in the days up to the election. But even the other polls, for example Emerson College, had Trump plus five. And he outperformed that number by a large margin and in doing so then brought a massive wave of republicans into the legislature as well. And it looks as if republicans will hold Iowa's four congressional districts too. That is what struck me immediately on election night.

[Murphy] You didn't necessarily expect that going in?

[Centers] I thought Trump would win. I didn't see him winning by as large of a margin as he did. And I did think we were going to have some battles for some of the legislative seats, particularly in the urban areas and in the Polk and Dallas County areas, fared a lot better for republicans. Senator Nate Boulton appears to have gone down. He was in line to be minority leader in the House. And there were some other races that I was watching that surprised me as well.

[Murphy] We're going to get back to some of that stuff including the polling. Matt Paul, what jumped out to you?

[Paul] The scale of it. I think we need to go back to the drawing board as a party and rebuild the drawing board. We have a base problem. We have a profound messaging problem. It wasn't just that voters didn't hear us, it's that we were talking on the wrong channel. We need to rethink how we message, especially around the economy. Democrats need to rethink how we talk about jobs and the future and talk about kitchen table issues that impact people on a daily occurrence.

[Murphy] And that gets into a little bit of what I wanted to ask you both. Let me stick with you, Matt, first. So, we asked you about what happened. The why now. Was it the issues? Was it just tribalism where people just in their corners? Was it candidate personalities? You maybe started to answer that a little bit though. But why do you think what happened, happened?

[Paul] I think we've got to go back, I think there was an underappreciation of the fact that you had somewhere between 65% and 70% of Americans who thought the country was headed in the wrong direction. You had a President who topped out at a favorability rating in the low 40s. So that was the baseline. And I think we didn't have a deep enough appreciation for that from a messaging standpoint and from an operations standpoint. We need to go back and listen. I think there's going to be, it has already begun, a lot of bloviating about what happened and everyone thinks they want to fix it on the democratic side, especially in the consultancy orbit. But I think we've got to get back to the basics and get out and listen to people and get back to our base and talk to people and engage before the next one because if we take the same approach, if we take the same path, we will not see electoral success in the future.

[Henderson] If I could, before we get to Jimmy, if I could follow up. One of the things that you hear democrats say is that, well you just don't understand. Maybe the voters do understand. Is that the problem here?

[Paul] I think we can't explain this if we don't understand it. If you're explaining you're losing and I think we've got to go back and connect with people and go back and dive deeper -- I think this is all centered around an economic message. And if we don't understand that and if we don't get that straight, especially in a presidential race, they are pocketbook elections and we missed the pocketbook completely.

[Henderson] Well, sorry to interrupt. You talked about centering. Let's go back to Mr. Centers here. What are your thoughts on why?

[Centers] I think Matt hit the nail on the head. There is going to be a tremendous amount of examination within the Democratic Party, not unlike what the Republican Party went through after Mitt Romney's loss in 2012, the republican autopsy. But democrats for the past year plus focused on issues that were not the issues that were being talked about around kitchen tables across America. Working families were trying to figure out how are we stretching our dollar further to buy groceries, to buy gas, to pay for our electrical bill? Meanwhile, democrats had a message that was totally out of touch with that and focused on the personality of the candidate that they were running against. And while certainly talking about the other candidate has a place in every race, it was not a deciding factor for any voters. Democrats must get back if they're going to be relevant again to focusing on the issues that republicans have, which are the issues of the kitchen table, as Matt referenced.

[Price] I was looking through the Iowa records and Trump's margin of victory will be the highest in more than half a century here by a presidential candidate, including Reagan who won by 12.7 in 1980. Should we expect, Jimmy, that -- I was trying to think of a way to characterize Trump. He is the R rated version of Reagan? He is inappropriate about many things that he says, but he has found a way to connect with social conservatives with everybody. Should we expect that Iowa republicans will behave more like Trump in the way they talk and act?

[Centers] Well, I'll say a couple of things. First, you can like or dislike how President-elect Trump speaks. But American voters clearly respond to the direct and frank nature of his remarks. That has been proven in this election.

[Price] I've also never seen a guy -- sorry to interrupt you -- but we've never seen a guy say so much stuff that's not true and it's okay.

[Centers] He's focusing on issues that are most important to them from public safety to economic issues and they give him a pass on this other stuff. It's part of the brand that he has built. And it gets to my next point, which is republicans, assuming that this coalition that President-elect Trump has built over the past eight years will just continue on, do so at their own peril. President Trump is a unicorn in the political space, the coalition that he has built for republicans is unique to him at this moment. It's going to be on republicans here in Iowa and at the national level to continue pushing the messaging that President Trump has run on and the policies that he has run on to keep this coalition together. But even then, it's not to be taken for granted.

[Paul] David, I just want to build on something. You referenced President Reagan. President Reagan said after he lost the primary in 1976 that republicans had a merchandising problem when President Carter was elected. We are in a similar situation today. These are -- elections are not permanent occurrences. We'll see what comes in these midterms. The point I think we need to think about is what do democrats need to do now to put us in a position to capitalize on the '26 midterm?

[Price] To drill into that, I first met you when you worked for Thomas J. Vilsack. That's a guy who was elected twice, probably could have been elected a third time had he chosen to, right? So, how is it possible that that age, when democrats were relevant, versus now where they are virtually irrelevant -- and you're talking about connecting with people and messaging and all that stuff -- but there has to be something huge that has changed that is missing, right?

[Paul] I know a large part of this is what has changed in your business, the way people seek and process information has changed dramatically. It has changed dramatically since the Clinton campaign in 2016 and the democratic system has not caught up with it. We have not engaged like we should in new communication and podcasts and what is going on in social channels. We had one surrogate who would go on Fox News, for the most part, that was Pete Buttigieg.

[Price] Who is very good at that.

[Paul] He's excellent at it. But we can't count on one person to carry that in a leading broadcast organization, their challenges aside from my perspective. But we've got to rethink all of this. And there's going to be some pain and there's going to be some awkward moments as we go through this. But there should be because we've got major problems we need to fix or this continues.

[Price] Your friend James Carville, who I'm sure you know. It's the economy, stupid. So, why -- if that is known, why was there so much focus on abortion rights? It felt like it was that or bust in a lot of ways.

[Paul] It was, we saw this a lot in the congressional races. We saw that here in the first and the third. I think, by the way, Christina and Lanon were terrific candidates. I think the fact that they were able to keep this race close in both instances is amazing when we understand now what was going on in the macro environment. I do think it's important to point out on a national standpoint, outside of Florida, which has the 60% rule, the other abortion rights ballot measures passed. But the durability of the issue is one that as we go back and look at the data have to take a look at. But especially in a presidential, what is the most important? How people feel about their economic standing.

[Henderson] Let's talk briefly about the Selzer poll. Ann Selzer did a poll for the Des Moines Register. It is called the Iowa Poll. It is traditionally released the weekend before the election. Jimmy Centers, what are your thoughts?

[Centers] I was shocked when it was released. I thought that it was probably a single digit race with Trump up. And so, when it showed that Vice President Harris was up three, I was very surprised. I was also very surprised by some of the underlying data within the poll that suggested that older women were breaking more towards Vice President Harris than I would have anticipated. There were some other cracks in the demos where I thought if this is true, President-elect Trump has got some serious problems and that blue wall is going to hold. Well, it turned out the blue wall is made of paper mache and he ran right through it. She has said since that she's going to examine the data. I still think that she is an exceptional pollster. And let’s be honest, as it relates to Iowa, as I referenced earlier, a lot of polls got it wrong in that they missed it outside of their margin of error. President-elect Trump won by double digits handily and there wasn't a poll that I saw in the closing days that had him anywhere close to that margin. In my opinion, pollsters need to rethink how they are connecting with voters and then how they are weighing that, especially when Donald Trump is on the ticket. They're going to have to take a hard look and do some examination in terms of does this change now that he will not be running for president again.

[Henderson] Matt Paul, as someone who works in the consulting world who relies on data from polling, how do you poll in this era?

[Paul] Again, Jimmy and I agree on a lot of things, except when he's wrong. But I would say that qualitative really matters. We do a lot of work on this with our corporate clients and others. But getting in a room and facilitating a discussion at a qualitative and seeing the exchange and seeing the back and forth allows you to pressure chest some of these issues before you go in and do a quantitative poll sample on this. I agree with Jimmy. And it is exceptional I think if you look at the depth and breadth of her career and her performance. It speaks for itself. But you have to have the balance between, and an understanding of how people engage now. It's harder to get people on the phone. Can you rely as much on samples from texts? We've all received those both from a fundraising standpoint and from a polling standpoint and that has become saturated. So, I think taking that with a grain of salt but always pressure testing it with qualitative is really important.

[Murphy] All right, let's talk about these two House races that we had in the state that were especially competitive and we'll start in the first district. Jimmy Centers, republican incumbent Mariannette Miller-Meeks as we sit here and tape on Friday morning appears to have held onto that seat, but it's close enough it hasn't been officially called yet. Christina Bohannan hasn't conceded yet. We'll see whether there is a recount. But Mariannette Miller-Meeks I believe is up around 800 votes last checked. This was a close one obviously. Mariannette Miller-Meeks survived. Is that a good sign that she survived a stiff challenge? Or should she have won more comfortably than she did in that first district?

[Centers] Well, it's a landslide considering how much she won by her first time around, six votes. Look, she I think had a great night because she is sort of the, she is made in the image of the district. She is self-made. She is a U.S. Army veteran. She put herself through medical school and is an ophthalmologist. She has served at the state level and now at the federal level. Would I have loved to see the margin be more than 800 votes and a few points? Absolutely. But the fact of the matter is she had a candidate who raised an exceptional amount of money from the coasts and within Johnson County. Johnson County presents a challenge in that district. The margin always gets run up for democrats there. But at the end of the day, a win is a win and I'm thankful that she's heading back to Washington, D.C.

[Murphy] Matt Paul, for Christina Bohannan and democrats, was this a case of the candidate did about as well as could be expected there? Or is this a missed opportunity for democrats to have flipped that seat?

[Paul] I thought she ran a very good campaign. Sometimes you've got to run twice. Tom Harkin had to run twice. He ran in '72, lost, ran in '74 and won. I was really impressed with the campaign she ran. She got better in the second cycle. I think what we have to look at is our over reliance on urban centers. We have got to get creative in Iowa through the party structure and take a risk and try some regional approaches that take the strength and the organizations that counties like Johnson, Polk, Linn, Scott and others have and apply it to some of these rural places. We cannot continue to rely on university towns and larger cities to drive our outcome and try and make up for the margin in rural places. We've got to try and strike a balance and hold our own in some of these rural counties. And I think that is going to take some creativity that we've tried in the past that hasn't been sustained.

[Price] Continuing that, there in the third, Polk was it for Baccam and he won by about ten or so. But if you look at the way demographics have changed and all kinds of things, while I understand what you're saying there, isn't it about the types of people who are living in these bigger areas, the issues that are important to them, and then all of the folks who are not, they're not hearing the issues that are connecting with them, right? So, while you're talking about getting out there, the stuff that the democrats are talking about, it's not the right stuff.

[Paul] Right, I think we go back to where we started in that we have to put forward a meaningful and successful message that is authentic, that is connected in everyday lives of Iowans. And I don't know that we've done that, I know we haven't done that to the extent we should and we've got to get much, much better at that moving forward.

[Price] Jimmy, what did you learn from Dallas in the way that Zach Nunn's numbers came in because Dallas County was probably the more interesting county to me going into that third? We knew that Baccam would have to try to run the tables in Polk to boost his margins. But what did you learn from that Dallas turnout because the thought going into that is well what about the suburbanites? Are they going to turn away from Trump?

[Centers] Dallas was interesting for a variety of reasons, certainly in the third, but also there were some state senate races that were really interesting out in Dallas County as well. But from the Iowa three perspective, I learned again that it's an economic message. My goodness, anyone that lives within the Des Moines television market, all the ads they saw on the Baccam-Nunn race, Dave your voice was in a lot of them, and it was focused on --

[Price] And a much younger looking face I noticed as well.

[Henderson] And no residuals.

[Price] Yeah, none at all.

[Centers] It was an abortion focused ad campaign. And voters despite all of that sent Nunn back fairly comfortably considering the makeup of the district and his history in that race. And so, I think his message and the republicans' larger message of making it about economics and pocketbook issues carried Dallas. And Dallas County is still focused more so on those issues.

[Paul] Sorry, I was just going to say, I think that is where we saw where abortion rights in Dallas County, I thought we would have done better there among suburban women on that issue. So again, but we were able to hang onto that state senate race there. She is an example of someone who has been --

[Price] Sarah Trone Garriott?

[Paul] Sarah Trone Garriott has been a terrific innovative communicator online and through Twitter and through other channels. I have been very impressed with that and I think it made a difference in her race.

[Henderson] Well, let's talk more in depth about the legislative landscape here. Jimmy Centers, republicans made gains in the House and in the Senate. What do you make of what happened this week?

[Centers] Well, it was a -- they have a resounding mandate going into 2025. And if I'm them I'm feeling exceptional about the policies I passed over the past two years. They clearly got a thumbs up from voters across this state. And so, looking ahead into 2025 I'm guessing they're going to do more of the same in terms of looking at ways to reduce the tax burden on Iowa families. I would expect them to take a good hard look at property taxes. I would expect them to take a good hard look at how they reduce income taxes even further, closer to zero as the Governor and the legislative leaders have clearly indicated is a goal. And anyone who was listening to Speaker Pat Grassley's remarks after it became clear that they were going to hold the majority and even gain on it, he made pretty clear that those are the issues that they're focused on and they're kind of done talking about these "woke" policy issues.

[Henderson] Matt Paul, thumbs down on democrats? They've gone lower than they were.

[Paul] They have. I do think there is an opportunity for them if we can capitalize on it. When I worked for Governor Vilsack, the best we ever had in the legislature was a split Senate I believe, the best we ever had. Otherwise, it was a republican legislature. That forces you to the middle. That forces you to compromise. And it will be interesting to see as we head to a Trump midterm how this plays out in the '26 races. They have no bad guy. They have the table. They can play it as they see fit. Will they overreach?

[Murphy] Democrats have been making the argument for years that they have already overreached and yet republicans keep growing their majority. Aren't Iowans not buying that argument?

[Paul] They have made the argument. But who have they made the argument to? We've made it to sort of the chattering class and we've made it around Des Moines and maybe around Davenport and Cedar Rapids. But have we gone out and talked about this? And have we seen the impact of school vouchers? Have we seen the impact of some of these land use questions and eminent domain? Have we seen the impact of some of these choices facing the budget? And as those come home, again, we've got to make some changes. I'm not defending what happened in the past. But I think there may be an opportunity if it can be capitalized upon.

[Henderson] About a minute left. Jimmy Centers, will Kim Reynolds seek another term?

[Centers] Yes.

[Henderson] Why?

[Centers] Because she has work left to do. We'll see what happens in this legislative session. But she is energized. She is passionate about the job. And I think she really enjoys it.

[Henderson] Matt Paul, who runs against her?

[Paul] I think that is for others. I'm not going to follow Jimmy's lead and make other people's news on this program. But I think we could have a strong primary. But I think we have a leading candidate who will probably be out on this very soon.

[Henderson] A leading candidate. Who is it?

[Paul] I'll leave that to you. I'm not in the news business, Kay.

[Price] But he's been on this show.

[Murphy] In the last few seconds, what kind of candidates do democrats need to challenge Kim Reynolds?

[Paul] Somebody who can go out in the country and talk and connect and somebody who can build our base and can grow the opportunity that exists in Iowa and make a connection.

[Price] And he likes pizza pizza.

[Henderson] Joni Ernst?

[Centers] Yeah, I think she runs again.

[Henderson] Okay. We are done with our conversation today. Thanks to both of you for being here for it.

[Centers] Thank you, Kay.

[Paul] Thank you.

[Henderson] You may watch every episode of Iowa Press at iowapbs.org. For everyone here at Iowa PBS, thanks for watching today.

(music)

(music)

(music)

(music)

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

(music)

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

Elite Casino Resorts a family run business rooted in Iowa. We believe our employees are part of our family and we strive to improve their quality of life and the quality of lives within the communities we serve.

(music)

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.

(music)