Florida Governor Ron DeSantis suspended his presidential campaign in humiliating fashion on January 21, endorsing the man who had taunted and mocked “DeSanctimonious” for months.
Many political reporters have written about what went wrong for DeSantis, who ended up fighting for second place in Iowa after his team and allied super PACs spent at least $150 million and landed coveted endorsements. I wrote my own Iowa obituary for the Florida governor’s campaign shortly before the caucuses.
But make no mistake: despite gaining only 23,420 votes here last week, the DeSantis approach to politics left its mark on Iowa. While Governor Kim Reynolds formally endorsed her friend less than three months ago, she’s been copying his leadership style for years, hurting many vulnerable Iowans in the process.
SHUNNING COVID-19 MITIGATION
Both governors shunned many COVID-19 mitigation efforts and later bragged about that stance on the campaign trail. As a surrogate for DeSantis, Reynolds often remarked that the two governors were “out there on an island” with their pandemic response. Even as DeSantis dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed the presumptive GOP nominee, he mentioned one disagreement with Donald Trump: “on the coronavirus pandemic, and his elevation of Anthony Fauci.”
Reynolds refused to order a mask mandate for schools or other indoor public spaces in 2020, which contributed to our state’s higher than average rate of COVID-19 infections and “many preventable deaths,” according to Trump’s White House Coronavirus Task Force. In 2021, she successfully pushed state lawmakers to ban schools and local governments from requiring masks.
After encouraging Iowans to get vaccinated for COVID-19 in early 2021, Reynolds pivoted, increasingly pandering to anti-vaxxers and downplaying the importance of booster shots. Like DeSantis had done in Florida, she railed against vaccine mandates in schools and workplaces.
Before children were eligible to receive the vaccine, Reynolds turned down $95 million in federal funding designated for COVID-19 testing in schools. She announced that decision not in an official statement or news conference, but during a Fox News town hall in April 2021, alongside DeSantis and three other Republican governors.
One study covering the period from January 2021 to April 2022 estimated that with a fully vaccinated population, 2,879 fewer Iowans would have died from COVID-19—roughly half of the 5,583 coronavirus deaths recorded in the state during the same time span. (That number doesn’t include the many Iowans who died in 2020 due to inadequate practices in long-term care facilities.)
ANTI-LGBTQ DISCRIMINATION
Every state with a GOP trifecta has enacted laws targeting LGBTQ residents in recent years. But DeSantis was among the leaders of the pack, and Reynolds was eager to follow his example, after not highlighting those issues earlier in her tenure.
At the April 2021 Fox News event with GOP governors, DeSantis and Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves bragged about banning transgender athletes from competing in girls’ or women’s sports. Reynolds surprised many Iowa politics watchers by blurting out on live television that her team was “working on legislation” to do the same.
The governor hadn’t pushed for any such bill in 2021, but she came home from the town hall determined to make it happen. Republicans moved quickly in 2022 to get a transgender sports ban to Reynolds’ desk. She could hardly contain her joy at the public bill signing, and later boasted about knowing “boys from girls” in a widely-aired campaign commercial.
Reynolds continued to build her political brand by punching down on LGBTQ and especially transgender Iowans in 2023. After pressuring Republican lawmakers to fast-track a school bathroom bill and a ban on gender-affirming care for minors, she pretended to be heartbroken to sign those measures.
Iowa followed Florida’s “don’t say gay” innovation and one-upped the sunshine state by banning instruction “relating to gender identity or sexual orientation” from kindergarten through sixth grade in a 2023 law known as Senate File 496. (Florida’s law initially regulated K-3 curriculum, but was expanded to cover such instruction through high school.) Iowa’s K-6 teaching restrictions are currently blocked by court order after a federal judge determined the “staggeringly broad” language was unconstitutionally vague.
Books centering LGBTQ characters inspired sweeping restrictions on library and classroom materials in SF 496. The federal court blocked enforcement of those provisions as well, finding them overbroad in violation of the First Amendment.
Other anti-LGBTQ provisions from SF 496 remain in effect, as school administrators are required to inform parents or guardians if students request any accommodation based on gender identity, such as using a different name or pronouns at school. In addition, the law undermined the Iowa Youth Survey by requiring written parental consent before schools administer “any survey, analysis, activity, or evaluation” not required by state or federal law, which asks about topics such as sexual behavior or orientation. (Previously, parents could opt their children out of such surveys; now they must opt in.)
UNDERMINING PUBLIC EDUCATION
Under DeSantis, Florida adopted a school voucher program several years before Reynolds was able to ram her proposal through the Iowa House. She made up for lost time by enacting a plan with no income limits in year three and beyond. DeSantis worked in stages to divert more public funds to private K-12 schools and signed a bill eliminating income caps last March.
Iowa’s governor also embraced other education goals championed by the conservative group Moms for Liberty, established in Florida in 2021. She was a featured speaker at a large event the group organized in Des Moines in early 2023. While ostensibly still neutral in the presidential race, Reynolds joined Florida First Lady Casey DeSantis last July to launch the “Mamas for DeSantis” organization, modeled on Moms for Liberty.
Moms for Liberty activists in Iowa pushed for removing HPV and the vaccine that prevents HPV from the state’s mandatory sex ed curriculum for middle school and high school students. To the dismay of public health experts, the governor’s wide-ranging education bill (which eventually became SF 496) included that language. Reynolds pushed for keeping teenagers ignorant about HPV even though Iowa has the country’s worst rate of head and neck cancers. Decades from now, long after Reynolds has left the political stage, some Iowans will be sickened or killed by cancers that could have been prevented with a timely HPV vaccine.
When he launched his presidential campaign last May, DeSantis joked, “Maybe Florida is the Iowa of the south.” But Reynolds has followed her counterpart’s example more often than she has led the way. Iowans are worse off for it.
Top photo of Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis originally posted on Reynolds’ political Facebook page on January 15, 2024.
6 Comments
This is a textbook case of fascism
It’s important to call out the unusual and major influence that De Santis has had on Iowa politics. It took me time to understand that he is a fascist, and a reason for that is that Iowa mainstream media like the Register have little to none quality political reporting. When I saw that classic books were banned from our high schools, that’s when I opened my eyes: De Santis is a fascist, and Reynolds is the accountant only too happy to have found a political mentor who writes bills for her.
Karl M Mon 22 Jan 3:57 AM
De Santis has done even more harm
Another major harm that copying De Santis policies has done for Iowa is with Medicaid. Reynolds has cut State resources and contracted with shady private health insurance companies who call from Florida numbers. Every few months our low income people are arbitrarily switched between these unreliable health and dental plans that few doctors participate in, risk losing access to their regular providers, unless they take complex actions within unreasonable deadlines. The goal here is to create instabilities in the lives of our weakest citizens in the hope that they leave the system one way or the other.
Weakening traditional Givernment institutions and replacing these with private companies is a trademark of De Santis and Reynolds has done it to our schools, our Medicaid and now to our special ed agencies.
Karl M Mon 22 Jan 4:16 AM
Giving credits to Reynolds when deserved
I see the Covid situation a bit differently than the author. Reynold was first to allow reopening of businesses mid May 2020, while DeSantis followed a month later. In matter of Covid, I believe that Reynolds preceded De Santis with the vision that society has important activities that must not stop even as an epidemic is ongoing. An immense majority of Americans ended up agreeing with Reynolds, voting with their feet by stopping getting booster “vaccines” that the industry prescribed up to 3 times a year.
Yet Reynolds made an error during Covid by reopening bars and dance clubs before schools. I understand it was easier to convince bar owners than the progressive school boards who did not see the importance of keeping schools open, but I wish we had reopened our schools before the bars.
Karl M Mon 22 Jan 5:05 AM
thanks for spelling out how Iowa's politicians are more MAGA then Trump
DeSantis ran to the right of Trump and that fits right in with COVID Kim and company, the dangerous looniness of the above comment on public health measures our Gov was indeed at the forefront of putting commercial interests over lives killing many people and continuing to kill and crippled many people both directly and by the general dropping of masks in our healthcare facilities such that people with underlying conditions and other related disabilities still have to choose between risking infection and getting healthcare. Also lets please not forget the assaults on voting rights and peaceful protests and press coverage we are suffering under these fascist wannabes. Too many people seem to believe that there is some magical silent majority of Iowans who will save the day in future elections and so undermining necessary movements of active resistance in the here and now like the good folks across the country running a kind of underground railroad for people needing abortions and people who are offering mutual aid to refugees all while funding legal defenses of liberty and political campaigns for truly progressive candidates, like the good folks @ https://runforsomething.net/about/
dirkiniowacity Mon 22 Jan 12:29 PM
The DeSantis environmental record got very little attention in Iowa, of course...
…but it is bad, even though Nikki Haley has bizarrely accused DeSantis of being a “liberal” on the environment, which says a lot about her own environmental intentions. If Kim Reynolds paid any attention to the DeSantis environmental record, she found him a kindred spirit. And his record would have confirmed that even in Florida, where voters have demonstrated more environmental concern than voters in Iowa, it can be politically safe to get an “F” grade from the Sierra Club.
PrairieFan Mon 22 Jan 12:50 PM
reply to PrairieFan
For sure, the DeSantis environmental record was atrocious. Sadly, Kim Reynolds didn’t need any mentoring in that department.
Laura Belin Mon 22 Jan 8:32 PM