Photo of Joan Marttila provided by the author and published with permission.

Joan Martila is a retired Mississippi Bend Area Education Agency audiologist. She is a former president of the Iowa Speech Language Hearing Association as well as a former president of the Iowa Speech Language Hearing Foundation. 

Another election year is upon us. I can guess what you’re thinking, because I have heard others say it: Why do Iowa Democrats have so many losers running of office? 

I am one of those losers. Let me tell you my side of the story.

I ran for the Iowa House in 2018 in what was previously District 94, a heavily Republican district in Bettendorf. By the time Iowa candidates were beginning their 2018 campaigns, Donald Trump had been president for one year. We had experienced the heady jubilation of the Women’s March and the anxiety of airport protests resulting from Trump’s executive order banning travel from several countries. Opposition from Indivisible and other grassroots political organizations sprang up across the country. Many people, including myself, felt the need to step up at the local, state, or federal level. 

I am not a political person. Although I am a very consistent voter, I had never felt the need or urge to run for office at any level of government. Instead, I chose to pour my professional knowledge and interest into making things better for Iowa children with hearing loss.

Since the Dark Ages when I was in graduate school, the dream of audiologists was to identify hearing loss in infants as early as possible.  My profession longed for the day when babies could have a hearing screening before they left the hospital and for a statewide program that smoothly linked hearing loss identification with intervention. By the end of 2016, Iowa’s early hearing loss identification and intervention program was a well running machine with data to back up its success. Although not perfect, other states were envious of what Iowa had accomplished. 

You can imagine my distress when I learned in late 2017 that in order to balance the budget, a very small line item that funded hearing aids for children was being considered for elimination. Fortunately, thanks to effective advocacy, that never came to pass. 

Still, the cavalier attitude about eliminating such critical funding for children with hearing loss left me with an overwhelming sense that uneducated and careless budget cutting might be acceptable to the incumbents. 

I wondered what kind of people would even consider cutting this line item. Had they talked to any Iowans who were knowledgeable about identification and intervention of childhood hearing loss? Had any data informed their decision? I had no evidence that policy makers had contacted professionals or parents of children with hearing loss, or had reviewed any of the relevant data. I was concerned the state legislators elected in 2016 were not focused on doing what was right or pursuing data-driven results for the people of Iowa.

Incidentally, my concern turned out to be well founded. During the 2023 legislative session, the Republican-controlled legislature continued to ignore Iowa parents, health care providers, and American Association of Pediatrics guidelines, which recognized the importance of gender care for Iowans under 18.  Something other than the well-being of Iowa children continues to motivate the majority party.

Back to 2017: I could see no positive outcomes for children with hearing loss if the state cut funding for children’s hearing aids. Consequently, I decided to run for the Iowa House. I had no background in politics, but I did have an overwhelming desire to stand for data-based policies and programs that helped the people of Iowa. 

I later learned that this was not enough. 

As a first-time candidate, you spend a lot of time knocking on doors, making fundraising calls, attending fundraising events, all the while feeling that you are not doing enough, that you are in over your head, that surely someone else could do a better job.

I had a good treasurer, friends, and family who were willing to help me. I had support from Let America Vote, the “Flip It Iowa” group, as well as the House Truman Fund (the campaign arm for Iowa House Democrats). They all worked hard to support me.

But opposition research is out there. It certainly was surprising when a flier hit my mailbox featuring a bad picture, claiming I did not support the use of the phrase “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance (no one asked), and that I would be a fiscally irresponsible legislator (I had no track record). 

I learned all is fair in love, war, and politics, where besting the other person is a requirement of victory.

Midway through the campaign, I attended a fundraiser for Iowa House Democratic candidates in eastern Iowa. Those candidates were a lot like me: first-timers who probably never thought they’d be running for office, but felt compelled to do so. They came from a variety of professional backgrounds and would bring that expertise to the legislature. They had an enthusiasm for the office they were seeking and for the interests of the people they would represent. They were articulate, kind, approachable, and humorous. 

Had enough of them been elected to flip the Iowa House, I am sure our state would be in a much better place. But almost all of us were all losers. And so was Iowa. 

Candidates run for office; the voters elect them. Many voters have no idea what their current elected officials are doing, the policies they vote for and the ones they vote against. Instead, I am convinced voters use political party affiliation as their guide or vote for the incumbent because of name recognition. Even worse, many Americans don’t vote at all. Consequently, after every election, we end up being governed by a minority no matter which party wins.

Americans have increasingly been trained to focus on national elections, particularly during presidential election years. Iowans are learning the hard lesson that it is the people elected to state, county, and city positions who set the policies that strongly influence, change, or restrict our daily lives. It matters who represents you in the Iowa House and Senate, who fills elected state offices, who sits on your county board of supervisors, your school board, your city council, and in you mayor’s chair. It matters who sits in the governor’s office.

Currently, many Iowans think it is enough to elect a new governor, but our current governor has two more years in office. The clock is ticking and a quicker way to stop the state’s current trajectory is to flip at least one of the legislative bodies. 

Iowans face many serious problems. Solving them will require science-based policies shaped by Iowa’s best minds. Will we continue to have a minimum wage that is not a living wage? Will we continue the downward spiral of public education? Will book banning and curriculum sanitizing become our future? Will water, air, and soil quality continue to degrade? Will forced birth be required? Will LBGTQ individuals, people of color, and immigrant communities be increasingly marginalized and unwelcomed? Will climate change affect our livelihoods and our lives? 

These and other issues are important to Iowa’s future. They are not fake news, and they are not going away.

So, please, monitor the voting patterns of your elected officials. The VoteSmart website is a quick and easy way to check your state and federal legislators’ voting record. You can also sign up for your state legislators’ newsletters, follow them on social media, attend their forums, email them, and call them. If you are unhappy with what you learn, check the other candidate’s website, attend fundraisers, talk to the candidate personally, and then, vote for them. 

Opposition research will continue to impugn Democrats, pushing biased information that implies candidates are unpatriotic, financially irresponsible, or other undesirable traits. Don’t fall for it. You will find that candidates are regular people (just like you), some with a lot of political experience, some with very little. 

We owe it to generations to come to become responsible and informed voters. That is how we will write Iowa’s future.