Republican candidates for the Iowa House of Representatives and Senate achieved unexpected victories across the state last November. Riding on the back of a conservative movement no one saw coming, state legislative chambers across the country gained new GOP majorities as candidates campaigned on lower taxes, fiscal responsibility, local control, and abiding by the basic principles of the Constitution. Once elected, however, Iowa legislators seemed to have forgotten the very workers and families they had promised to protect just months earlier.
The members of the 87th General Assembly began their crusade on working families, women, and minorities by undercutting tens of thousands of hardworking (and frequently grossly underpaid) Iowa public employees, including Iowa’s teachers, by denying them their right to collectively negotiate their contracts. Apparently public employees were exempt from the promises Iowa lawmakers made to protect hard-working Iowans. Apparently the thousands of demonstrators who traveled from across the state to Des Moines to voice their staunch opposition to the bill did nothing to convince Republicans to stop and take a second look at how this legislation would actually help Iowans. It won’t.
Iowa legislators then followed suit by fabricating a problem in their state that doesn’t exist. Iowa lawmakers passionately felt that a top priority for this legislative session was to make it more difficult for Iowans to vote by requiring that they show government-issued photo identification at the voting booth, infringing on thousands of Iowans’ right to vote without unnecessary hassle or absurd mandates. House and Senate Republicans know that if the state’s most vulnerable citizens, namely the poor, sick, and elderly, have a harder time voting they simply won’t bother to vote at all. Many of those poor, sick, and elderly Iowans don’t own a government-issued photo ID. If those citizens simply couldn’t vote, GOP lawmakers could increase their majorities in both chambers and retain the governorship in 2018. When asked multiple times during floor debate to name one specific instance of voter fraud that would have prompted this erroneous legislation, Republicans couldn’t. Apparently Iowans’ constitutionally-guaranteed right to vote is of no concern to Republicans’ hell-bent priorities aimed to suppress the rights of minorities and the working poor.
House and Senate Republicans then worked to make it easier for criminals, the mentally ill, and those who wish to do harm to their neighbors to obtain firearms. They also made it legal for these people to carry those firearms into the Capitol building in Des Moines and, in an assault on the principle of local control they campaigned on just months ago, made it illegal for local governments to ban weapons from their city council meetings and for cities and counties to set a minimum wage higher than the state minimum of $7.25/hr, something four counties had already done. The working citizens of those counties will now take a pay cut thanks to the hard work of Iowa legislators.
They also made it legal for Iowans to use deadly force if someone has a “reasonable basis for the belief” that they may be in danger. If that’s not purposely vague language meant to be difficult to interpret in court, I don’t know what is. Essentially, this “stand your ground” language allows someone to use a deadly weapon, such as a firearm, to defend themselves if they feel that someone is endangering their life. This legislation will only serve to further entrench racial stereotypes and increase violence in Iowa’s cities.
Government, and most prominently the legislature, in Iowa used to work hard each year to improve the lives of Iowans by proposing and passing legislation that would help them and their families. Today, Iowa’s GOP-controlled government has forgotten this essential duty. Republican lawmakers surely did not campaign on lowering the wages of thousands of Iowans, preventing thousands of Iowans from voting, and making it easier for dangerous people to obtain and use deadly weapons. Yet, House and Senate Republicans continued on their crash-course legislative agenda to undermine the rights of individual Iowans and their local governments.
Iowans will suffer from the results of the legislation passed in this state. It will be a lengthy, arduous road back to the shining example of equality and fair-mindedness that Iowa has long been famous for.
