Charles Bruner is a former Democratic Iowa legislator (1978-1990), was the founding director of Iowa Child and Family Policy Center (1990-2015, now Common Good Iowa), and is national director of the InCK Marks Initiative’s Child Health Equity Leadership Group.

PREFACE

Between 2008 and 2024, about one in ten voters in Iowa shifted from voting for Democrats to voting for Republicans. Over those eight elections, the overall shift in Iowa’s rural, white, working-class counties and communities was closer to one voter in five. From being bluish-purple, Iowa now is considered a solid red state. If Democrats are to become competitive in 2026 and future elections, they must regain trust with and win a good share of these voters back.

Bleeding Heartland has done a public service in publishing the statements of the three candidates seeking to be Iowa Democratic Party chair and rebuild the Democratic party and its brand. (Editor’s note: here are the statements from Rita Hart, Tim Winter, and Alexandra Nickolas-Dermody.)

I hope these statements receive broad review, and people will look at them as more than either-or statements for selecting a party chair. Hopefully, they will serve as a basis for dialogue and activism among Democrats on how to move forward.

I am a Democrat because I believe in the values Democrats hold and seek to place into public policy—one recognizing that government must play a positive role in ensuring broadly shared and sustainable prosperity for its residents and their families. I am a policy wonk when it comes to operationalizing those values into specific policies (and there is a role there – see below for a beginning iteration), but I believe key to restoring the Democratic party is a much more concerted articulation of these values. Moreover, I believe there is substantial consensus among Democratics, whether considering themselves moderate or progressive, on those values and the policy agendas that advance them.

During these last sixteen years, campaigns have become increasingly expensive, negative, and managed by political consultants and their media messaging (and propagandizing). This has created election fatigue, at best, but at worst it has created distrust of politicians and government, fitting much more into the Republican brand and dialogue than the Democratic one. Simply tinkering with soundbites and social media shots is not likely to change this; but more deliberative dialogues and interactions at the community level hold that potential (and imperative). They represent roles the Iowa Democratic Party can foster in its own work and organization. I believe there are many of us—young and old, city and small town, urban and rural—eager to participate in this work and dialogues.

Below is a compilation of my own thinking about Democratic policy framing, branding, and messaging, first as a synthesis and then in more detail.

STATEMENT SYNTHESIS: An Iowa Democratic Party vision and message to voters

Democrats have a proactive vision for government rooted in principles of fairness, opportunity, and support for all families. Recognizing the foundational importance of families, education, hard work, and community, Democrats advocate for a proactive government fostering these values and bringing Iowans together. This vision stands in direct opposition to that of MAGA Republicans, who promote exclusionary ideologies and undermine public systems.

Key Democratic policy priorities include:

1. Supporting families and children: Adopting paid family leave, expanded child tax credits, affordable child care and home- and eldercare services to relieve financial and emotional stress on families and enable parents to raise their children according to their values and faith.
2. Providing high-quality education for all: Maintaining strong public education systems accessible to and meeting the needs of all, while opposing redirecting public education funding to private alternatives without oversight.
3. Ensuring a sustainable economy: Promoting innovation while ensuring fairness, environmental protection, and a level economic playing field not controlled by the few.
4. Emphasizing worker rights and shared prosperity: Supporting unions, fair wages, family farmers, and protections for evolving industries, especially in service and care sectors vital to community well-being.
5. Enacting fair taxation: Enacting a tax system that ensures the wealthiest pay their fair share while recognizing the needs of working families.

The statement underscores a shared commitment to public investment, community support, and policies that promote dignity, equality, and opportunity for all Iowans.

STATEMENT IN DETAIL: An Iowa Democratic Party vision and message to voters

Messaging research shows the importance of starting with values recognized by one’s audience before going into specific requests for action. A policy narrative starts with those values, then how those values can be incorporated into public policy, and then the specific policies that can do that. The following narrative is based on this messaging research and represents a starting point for a Democratic Party Vision and Message.

Iowa values. Iowans recognize families as the foundation for society, with parents having the right and responsibility to raise their children according to their faith and values. As the Iowa quarter depicts, Iowans place particular value on ensuring all children are educated according to their abilities and grow into caring and productive adults.

Iowans value hard work, personal responsibility, and caring for one’s family, friends, and community. These also are American values; but, as a rural and small town state, Iowans place special emphasis upon the state’s vitality in agriculture and stewardship of the land, with an emphasis upon neighborliness and helping one another. Iowans particularly believe in fairness and equal opportunity. For many Iowans, whether in farming or small business or working in the public or private sectors, employment represents a way of life as well as a source of income.

Iowa Democrats and the role of government. Iowa Democrats believe that government has a positive role to play in supporting these Iowa values. This includes supporting families in raising their children and caring for their loved ones, maintaining a strong physical infrastructure (roads, water and sanitation systems, parks and open spaces, police and fire services, etc.), ensuring a strong education system (prek to post-secondary including options for apprenticeships and training as well as college), ensuring a fair and free market and protecting against predatory practices and harm to the environment, and providing child and family services to meet special conditions and needs (including health and other social services). These are essential for the private sector economy to prosper and for people to share in that prosperity and live in dignity.

The difference between Democrats and MAGA Republicans. When government does these things well, most people don’t think too much about them or the policies that support them. Historically, there has been substantial common ground across the political parties in supporting public services in education, public infrastructure such as roads and hospitals and parks and water and sanitation systems, and in meeting the special needs of those with disabilities or other special needs. There has been bipartisan support for civil and human rights and for gender equality. There remains a broad base of support among the electorate for public policies across this spectrum of public responsibilities.

At the same politics has become polarized, and elected Republican officials (MAGA Republicans) increasingly depict government as a threat to “true Americans,” suggesting the government should protect only a particular type of family and ideology.

The following describes Democratic policy positions on a number of important areas of public responsibility and contrasts these with those promoted by MAGA Republicans: (1) Supporting Children and Families as a Foundation for the Future, (2) Providing a Foundation in Education for All, (3) Ensuring a Sustainable and Productive Economy, (4) Ensuring Worker Rights and Broadly Shared Prosperity, and (5) Providing Fair and Productive Taxes to Meet the Common Good. This represents only a beginning iteration, but provides a narrative for each of these areas of public policy that starts with common values in making the case for Democratic actions based upon them.

Supporting children and families as the foundation for the future. Families come in all sizes and shapes, but when they are raising their children (and particularly when their children are young), they generally are younger and at the starting point of their earnings and careers. Fulfilling both bread-winning and caregiving roles has become increasingly challenging in today’s society, and for many families requires both parents to be in the workforce. Parents have the right and responsibility to raise their children according to their values and their faith, but they require safe and supportive communities and a responsive government to do so.

At both the national and state levels, Democrats have led calls for paid family and medical leave, changes in income taxes to recognize the additional costs households incur when raising the next generation, and public supports to make child care and preschool affordable and available. Democrats have recognized that many families with children are in the sandwich generation and promote additional home and community-based services for people with special health care needs or disabilities, including eldercare. At the federal level, this constituted a major part of Vice President Kamala Harris’ Care Agenda and Opportunity Agenda, which was started in the American Rescue Plan Act (supported by all Democratic members of Congress and opposed by all Republican members). The increases to the child tax credit alone amounted to an extra $170 per month per child through the federal income tax to support all families with children.

These four policies (paid family and medical leave, an expanded and refundable child tax credit, affordable child care, and home and community-based services) relieve both financial and psychological stress upon families with children – including working class, rural households trying to maintain their way of life.

MAGA Republicans, meanwhile, have proposed major domestic spending cuts at the federal level, where current child care and home-and-community-based as well as nursing home services are provided under Medicaid and Medicare.

While Republicans contend that they are the party that believes “parents matter” and are leading a “pro-family revolution,” they speak only families representing the “traditional” type of family (Christian, husband-and-wife) and actually provide very limited support to them, while Democrats propose child and family policies that support all families and give all families greater security and opportunity, including those Christian, husband-and-wife, rural, working class families.

Providing a foundation in education for all. One of President George W. Bush’s signature actions, with bipartisan support, was to expand federal funding for support of K-12 education, through “No Child Left Behind” legislation. More than half of Iowa’s general fund budget is directed to K-12 education, with the federal government playing a major role in supporting special education through the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (one of Senator Tom Harkin’s major Congressional accomplishments) and through Title I (to provide additional support to schools to meeting the needs of disadvantaged students).

Historically, both parties have supported government’s role in financing a public education system governed by locally-elected school boards, responsible for serving children of all faiths and abilities and any special needs.

Iowa’s public schools have been the bedrock of the educational system in this rural and small town state, and Iowans have taken pride in their quality. At both the federal and state levels, however, MAGA Republicans have attacked public education, even contending that public school teachers are “indoctrinating students.” They have called for abolishing the U.S. Department of Education and redirecting money for public education to parents, in the form of vouchers to choose their education system or engage in home schooling – without any provisions to ensure strong public schools remain available to meet all children’s needs and abilities.

Ensuring a sustainable and productive economy. Innovation and entrepreneurship in the private sector are key to a vibrant free market economy that produces goods and services for the population. This is core to Iowa’s and the nation’s capitalist system. At the same time, however, government is needed to ensure an open market and protect against monopolization, market manipulation, and excess profits. Government is needed to ensure private sector practices do not pollute or create other hazards for the public and that businesses pay their fair share for supporting the infrastructure they need for their operation and success. Businesses must maintain safe workplaces for those in their employ.

While government can sometimes stimulate economic progress and action, particularly in supporting private sector efforts that contribute to more long-term sustainability (such as investments in clean energy), government plays a much more essential role in ensuring a level playing field for private sector activity and in providing the overall infrastructure for commerce and industry.

Democrats believe in strong policies to restrict price-gouging, unsafe working conditions, and to promote commerce that does not degrade the environment. MAGA Republicans do the opposite.

Guaranteeing worker rights and broadly shared prosperity. The nature of the economy and economic production has changed dramatically – in Iowa, in the nation, and in the world.

Changes in agriculture have led to many fewer people engaged in farming the land, with much more mechanization, emphasis upon maximizing yields, monoculture crop production, and reliance upon capital. While Iowa still has many family farmers who see farming as a way of life, there has been a major shift to larger-scale agricultural corporate production. While in 1900 half of all Iowans had ties to farms and agricultural production, many fewer do today. Many who still farm feel under stress in maintaining their way of life, let alone passing it on to the next generation.

This part of the economy and workforce is particularly important to Iowa. Democrats support agricultural policies which help family farmers and support energy- and environmentally conscious uses of the land. The American Rescue Plan Act included new policies to support those goals, as did initiatives developed former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack developed as U.S. secretary of agriculture, such as support for farm-to-market opportunities and for start-up financing for new generations of farmers. Democrats support rural community development. 

In addition, there has been a steady decline over the last fifty years in the proportion of workers in manufacturing and production and traditional union employment. A good share of this has been due to increased automation and now the use of artificial intelligence. Some has been due to production moving to countries where the costs of production (including worker wages) are lower. Overall, however, capital, rather than labor, has played a more essential role in private sector productivity and profit.

While the American economy from the 1950s to the 1980s grew a broader middle class and shared prosperity through working class, manufacturing, and distribution jobs in the private sector, that opportunity has narrowed. The continued growth in the economy and workforce has been much more in the information and services sectors, including those providing health and other direct care services. Those jobs have disproportionately been filled by women, who have entered the workforce to help support their families.

Many of these positions, while in businesses operating in the private sector including nonprofit health and service agencies, child care, and personal care and small businesses, require government funding to remain viable. Without such support, the services they provide would not be available or affordable to the vast majority of people who require them to meet their families’ needs.

Democrats support workers’ rights to organize and support strong unions as a way to maintain a prosperous middle class. Democrats also realize that the traditional union workforce in manufacturing and production is not sufficient to provide for broad-based prosperity in the population.

Democrats support new forms for ensuring equal and value-based pay for workers in service and helping industries and for young adults, in particular, in the gig economy. Democrats have led in supporting micro-enterprise development and preventing predatory lending practices which impede entrepreneurship at its most elemental level. MAGA Republicans seek to eliminate any government oversight of private business and protections against monopolization.

The public sector and its financing must ensure that jobs which require public financing are compensated and valued according to their worth in society. Many female-dominated positions (in home and community and residential and hospital care, home-and-community services, and child care and eldercare) have too long been undercompensated when they represent keys to households and families achieving middle-class status. Democrats support more rights and organizational opportunities for those in such service sectors endeavors, including through organizing efforts like those of AFSCME and SEIU, but also through guarantees of rights to change jobs and rights to repair. This was a core part of the Care Agenda that was initiated in the American Rescue Plan Act and part of Harris’ Opportunity Agenda.

Providing fair and productive taxes to meet the common good. The positive role government needs to play includes investing in people, education, and infrastructure, which must be financed. While the public supports these investments in concept, the public also feels the current tax system is unfair and average Americans pay more than their fair share.

The Republican Tax Cut and Jobs Act (supported by all Republicans and opposed by all Democrats in Congress in 2017) gave huge tax breaks to the wealthiest individuals and most profitable large corporations. It has reinforced this belief in such tax unfairness, particularly because that legislation did almost nothing to address the taxes that average Americans pay.

As the private sector has become more capital-intensive, it also has concentrated profits in the hands of those who have capital, which leads to monopolization that exacerbates inequality and runs counter to broadly shared prosperity. To keep pace with the changing structure of the private sector economy, taxes need to change to more fairly and productively tax profits that come from capital and not labor. Doing so also is needed to make investments in the public infrastructure that the overall economy needs to prosper. Democrats support that fairer tax system that recognizes the full cost of households meeting basic needs and raising the next generation while ensuring that those who have benefited most pay their fair share.