Doris J. Kelley is a former member of the Iowa House and former Iowa Board of Parole Chair, Vice-Chair and Executive Director.

After being re-elected to the Iowa House of Representatives, I met newly elected State Senator Kim Reynolds in 2009 at an event where a bipartisan group of “veteran” legislators were giving advice to newly elected ones. My next interaction with Reynolds was when she was lieutenant governor, and Governor Terry Branstad appointed me to serve as Vice-Chair of the Iowa Board of Parole. After I was promoted to chair that board, I met frequently with Branstad and Reynolds, apprising them of the progressive measures the board was undertaking.

Two recent surveys by Morning Consult, released in late October and late November, identified Reynolds as the country’s governor with the highest disapproval rating. A summary of the October poll noted, “her unpopularity increased partly because of a surge in negative sentiment among independent and Republican voters during a year in which she signed a strict anti-abortion law and took a lashing from former President Donald Trump …”

What has happened to Iowa since Reynolds assumed the office of governor on May 24, 2017?

1. The Iowa Supreme Court unanimously ruled this year that an open records lawsuit against Reynolds could proceed. (Editor’s note: Laura Belin and Bleeding Heartland were among the plaintiffs in that case.) Although the governor never admitted to violating the open records law, the state settled that case and two others, causing Iowa’s citizens to fork over $174,108.75 in attorney fees. After the settlements were finalized, Thomas Story, the ACLU of Iowa attorney who represented the plaintiffs, stated, “Nobody’s above the law. It starts at the top …”

2. Between fiscal year 2014 and fiscal year 2023, the state has spent $108 million of Iowa taxpayers’ hard-earned-money to settle lawsuits claims. Actions by Reynolds, GOP legislators, or state employees have cost Iowa citizens dearly.

3. Iowa ranks 49th in the nation for its ratio of inspectors to care facilities, according to the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging.

4. Families for Better Care ranked Iowa nursing homes as 37th best in America; some 42 percent of Iowa nursing homes have staffing shortages.

5. Reynolds has blessed excluding homeschooled students in Iowa from curriculum standards, required learning assessments, abuse record checks on parent-teachers and attendance monitoring. Accountability is void. This policy affects an estimated 19,226 homeschooled Iowa students (about 6.6 percent of all K-12 students, according to the National Center for Education Statistics).

6. Even the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which should give a red state like Iowa high ratings, ranks Iowa 41st for its K-12 school system, with an overall grade of C-minus. In the 1990s, Iowa consistently ranked in the top five states for public education.

7. Iowa ranks 29th on public education funding. Despite Iowa desperately needing to improve K-12 public school funding, Reynolds and the GOP-controlled legislature allocated $107 million to pay for private school vouchers, in the first year of the program alone. But far more students applied than were projected, which could result in a potential loss of $54 million in state aid to public schools, due to students leaving public schools for private ones. Note: Selzer & Co’s Iowa Poll for the Des Moines Register and Mediacom found in March of this year that 62 percent of Iowa adults opposed the “school choice” law.

8. Iowa ranked as the twelfth most obese state in 2022. Yet Republican lawmakers approved and Reynolds signed legislation this year restricting eligibility for federal food assistance, which helps lower-income families afford more nutritional foods. The new asset test won’t save the state of Iowa money and may kick thousands of recipients off the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

9. The Iowa Department of Health and Human Services has failed to comply with 50 out of 65 (77 percent) standards in a settlement with the Justice Department in operating the Glenwood Resource Center for people with disabilities, Clark Kauffman recently reported for Iowa Capital Dispatch.

10. Iowa has consistently ranked near the bottom of the country for staffing psychiatric beds. Nevertheless, Reynolds and the GOP legislature shifted the local property tax levy for mental health care to the state general fund.

These are just ten examples of Reynolds’ poor leadership of our state. Imagine her being vice president, a member of Congress, or holding a cabinet position.

Many would argue that Reynolds has met the long-held and revered business definition of the Peter Principle: “rising to a level of respective incompetence,” rightly earning the label as America’s most unpopular governor.