Marty Ryan previously published a version of this essay in the November 2024 issue of the Prairie Progressive.

Campaign strategist Jim Carville coined the phrase “[It’s] the economy, stupid” back in 1992 when he worked on Bill Clinton’s first presidential campaign. That phrase “was directed at the campaign’s workers and intended as one of three messages for them to focus on.”

Evidently, the intent, if not the quote, has come back to the 2024 campaign. U.S. Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks has been insisting in one of her campaign’s television commercials that “we gotta bring these prices down.” Good luck!

As misinformation about the federal response to natural disasters hampers relief efforts in the southeast U.S., several Iowa Republicans have seized the opportunity to spread lies about the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Echoing “pants on fire” claims from former President Donald Trump, U.S. Representatives Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA-01) and Ashley Hinson (IA-02) have repeatedly asserted that FEMA lacks the resources needed to help those harmed by Hurricanes Helene and Milton, because it has spent too much supporting undocumented immigrants. Representative Zach Nunn (IA-03) and U.S. Senator Joni Ernst have likewise claimed Americans are being shortchanged due to FEMA’s allegedly excessive spending on migrants.

Those lies are part of a national effort by Trump supporters and the leading pro-Republican cable news network to assist Trump’s campaign. For Iowa Republicans as well, the false talking points direct voters’ attention toward immigration and border security, topics perceived to boost GOP candidates up and down the ballot.

Nunn, Miller-Meeks, and Hinson all invested in election-year messaging about immigration long before the hurricanes made landfall.

We often hear that Iowans like to re-elect their incumbents. But when it comes to members of the U.S. House, Iowa’s office-holders have less job security than many of their peers.

Across the country, voters have re-elected more than 90 percent of U.S. House incumbents in most elections over the past five decades. Here in Iowa, where our four districts are not gerrymandered, challengers defeated two sitting members of Congress in 2018, two in 2020 (one in the primary, one in the general election), and one in 2022.

Incumbents still enjoy inherent advantages in a Congressional campaign: higher name recognition, larger contributions from political action committees, more opportunities to generate news coverage, and an official budget that can fund outreach to constituents. But not all House members use the available tools the same way.

This post, the first in a series, will explore how Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks has used her office to boost her re-election chances in Iowa’s first Congressional district.

Notably, Miller-Meeks has spent hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on messages to constituents, with much of the spending going through her top campaign vendor. She has also built up goodwill by being one of the chamber’s most frequent floor speakers, and has used the earmark process to help fund projects in her district.

National Democratic groups are investing significant funds in Iowa’s first Congressional district race, suggesting they believe Christina Bohannan has a solid chance to defeat two-term Republican incumbent Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks.

The House Majority PAC, a super-PAC connected to House Democratic leadership, has reserved another $2.3 million in television advertising time for the IA-01 race, Ally Mutnick reported for Politico on September 9. Those funds will be divided among the Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, and Quad Cities markets, which collectively reach seventeen of the district’s 20 counties.* Mutnick noted the super-PAC “reserved just $350,000 in that district in July.”

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), which also spends heavily to influence U.S. House races, has already reserved $1,551,000 in tv air time in Des Moines, $534,000 in Cedar Rapids, and $438,000 in Davenport. Much of the DCCC’s Des Moines market buy will be directed toward the third Congressional district, where Democrat Lanon Baccam is challenging first-term Republican incumbent Zach Nunn.

The planned spending is a huge contrast to the 2022 cycle, when Democratic-aligned groups spent less than $100,000 on the IA-01 race, while GOP-aligned groups spent more than $2.7 million on messaging that supported Miller-Meeks or opposed Bohannan. Ad reservations on this scale indicate that internal Democratic polling shows Miller-Meeks is vulnerable.

Blake Iverson is a member of Central Iowa Democratic Socialists of America.

A crusading fervor has caught hold of many liberal news outlets following the recent Democratic National Convention in Chicago. They marvel at the raw star power on display: the Clintons, the Obamas, the Emhoffs, and even Lil’ John graced the stage to celebrate Joe Biden’s exit from the presidential race. They offer something of a benediction to the thousands gathered–elite operatives and rank-and-file activists alike–and readying them to go out and retake the shining city on the hill. 

But there is a striking absence from the convention itself and from the ebullient media coverage: the United States’s actual crusade in the holy land, the genocide in Gaza. While the Democratic National Committee allowed Palestine solidarity activists to hold a panel during the convention, and Vice President Kamala Harris uttered the word “Palestine” during her acceptance speech, the party made it clear, throughout the festivities and at every level, that the policy will not change. The genocide will continue until Israel and the United States finish the job.

Genocide apologists and the cynical within the party claim this is an unfortunate but necessary tradeoff between ending the genocide and electing Donald Trump. They are wrong. The choice is between not ending the genocide and electing Donald Trump.

Libertarian candidates have qualified for the general election ballot in three of Iowa’s four U.S. House districts.

A state party convention in early June nominated Nicholas Gluba in the first Congressional district, Marco Battaglia in the third, and Charles Aldrich in the fourth.

All three candidates spoke to Bleeding Heartland about their goals and priorities at the state capitol on July 29. That was the first day federal candidates who did not compete in a major-party primary could submit nominating papers to the Iowa Secretary of State’s office for the November 5 election.

Declaring that “This election is bigger than any one person” and “the stakes are just too high,” first Congressional district nominee Christina Bohannan on July 11 called for President Joe Biden “to withdraw from this campaign and pass the torch to a new generation of leadership.”

The same day, the Democratic nominee in Iowa’s second Congressional district, Sarah Corkery, said the president should “pass the baton” to Vice President Kamala Harris.

Bohannan and Corkery were the first Iowa Democratic candidates to publicly endorse replacing the party’s presumptive presidential nominee. It’s a risky move that could appeal to independents who overwhelmingly disapprove of Biden’s job performance, but could also alienate the party faithful the challengers need to volunteer for and donate to their campaigns.

The president of the Congressional Leadership Fund (the main super-PAC aligned with U.S. House Republicans) congratulated U.S. Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks on her “resounding victory” in the June 4 primary to represent Iowa’s first district.

U.S. Representative Randy Feenstra hailed the “clear message” from fourth district voters, saying he was “humbled by the strong support for our campaign.”

They can spin, but they can’t hide.

Pulling 55 to 60 percent of the vote against an underfunded, first-time candidate is anything but a “resounding” or “strong” performance for a member of Congress.

U.S. Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks officially has competition in the 2024 Republican primary to represent Iowa’s first Congressional district. David Pautsch, best known as the founder of the Quad Cities Prayer Breakfast, filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission this month and held a news conference on November 16 to lay out his vision.

Based on what we’ve heard so far, Pautsch won’t give Miller-Meeks anything to worry about. She defeated several well-funded opponents as a non-incumbent candidate for Congress, and will take more advantages into next year’s race as an incumbent.

UPDATE: All four Iowans voted for Mike Johnson for speaker on October 25. Original post follows.

Iowa’s four U.S. House members didn’t want to be here.

Representatives Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA-01), Ashley Hinson (IA-02), Zach Nunn (IA-03), and Randy Feenstra (IA-04) were Kevin McCarthy loyalists from day one of the new Congress. All voted against the motion to vacate the speaker’s position early this month.

Nineteen days after the House of Representatives removed a speaker for the first time in history, the Republican majority is no closer to finding a way out of the morass. A plan to temporarily empower interim Speaker Patrick McHenry collapsed before coming to the floor. House Judiciary chair Jim Jordan was unable to gain a majority in any of the three House votes this past week. Republicans voted by secret ballot on October 20 not to keep Jordan as their nominee for speaker.

At minimum, the House will be without a leader for three weeks. Members went home for the weekend with plans to return for a “candidate forum” on October 23, and a possible House floor vote the following day. More than a half-dozen Republicans are now considering running for speaker; none has a clear path to 217 votes. McCarthy has endorsed Representative Tom Emmer, the current majority whip. But former President Donald Trump, a close ally of Jordan, doesn’t like Emmer, who voted to certify the 2020 presidential election results. Most Republicans in public life are afraid to become a target for Trump or his devoted followers.

The Iowans have adopted distinct strategies for navigating the embarrassing crisis.

Photo of Christina Bohannan at the Polk County Steak Fry in September 2022 is by Greg Hauenstein and published with permission.

The latest batch of Federal Election Commission quarterly filings from Congressional candidates contained one Iowa surprise: Democratic challenger Christina Bohannan substantially outraised U.S. Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks during the third quarter.

Bohannan’s campaign for Iowa’s first district reported raising $663,417.54, of which nearly all ($644,805.03) came from individual donors. Five political action committees donated a total of $12,012.51, and the candidate gave $6,600.

Miller-Meeks’ campaign reported raising $467,286.85, but only $225,385.34 of the total came from individuals. As was the case during the first and second quarters of 2023, the majority of funds donated to the incumbent’s campaign came from PACs or other political committees.

Photo of Christina Bohannan at the Polk County Steak Fry in September 2021 is by Greg Hauenstein and published with permission.

Christina Bohannan is hoping to join Neal Smith, Tom Harkin, and Berkley Bedell in the club of Iowa Democrats who were elected to Congress on their second attempt.

Challenging an incumbent is usually an uphill battle, and recent voting trends favor Republicans in southeast Iowa, where Bohannan is running against U.S. Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks. The Cook Partisan Voting Index for Iowa’s first Congressional district is R+3, meaning that in the last two presidential elections, voters living in the 20 counties that now make up IA-01 voted about three points more Republican than did the national electorate. The Daily Kos Elections team calculated that Donald Trump received about 50.5 percent of the 2020 presidential vote in this area, to 47.6 percent for Joe Biden.

The Cook Political Report and Sabato’s Crystal Ball rate IA-01 as “likely Republican” for 2024—potentially competitive, but not among the top two or three dozen U.S. House battlegrounds across the country. Inside Elections recently moved this district to the more competitive “lean Republican” category.

That said, no one should write off this race. Miller-Meeks ran for Congress unsuccessfully three times and was considered the underdog against Democrat Rita Hart in 2020. Many factors contributed to the Republican’s six-vote win that year, and I’ve been thinking about what would need to happen for Bohannan to prevail in next year’s IA-01 rematch.

Iowa’s four U.S. House members stuck with the Republican majority by voting on May 17 to refer a motion to expel U.S. Representative George Santos to the House Ethics Committee. The House had already referred the motion to that committee in February. But after the U.S. Department of Justice indicted Santos on thirteen felony counts including fraudulent campaign contributions and unemployment insurance fraud, Democratic Representative Robert Garcia used a House rule to force a floor vote on the motion.

A two-thirds vote would have been needed to expel Santos. House members approved the referral instead along party lines, 221 to 204.

Two of Iowa’s four U.S. House districts are among the 31 top targets for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee next cycle.

On April 3, Sahil Kapur of NBC News was first to publish the Democratic target list. It includes Iowa’s first and third districts, now represented by Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Zach Nunn.

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee executive director Julie Merz told NBC that Democrats will present their candidates “as ‘team normal’ against a chaotic band of “MAGA extremists” they say have taken over the House Republican conference.”