美国国家公共电台 NPR Iowa Democrats Want Back Control Of The State, Starting With The Governor

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NOEL KING, HOST:

All right. We're going to go now to Iowa. High stakes there for Democrats² who will go to the polls tomorrow to pick a candidate to run against the state's Republican governor. Iowa Public Radio's Clay Masters reports the candidates are scrambling³ for votes.

CLAY MASTERS, BYLINE⁴: With early voting underway and less than two weeks before the Iowa primary election, three women came forward. They accused one of the Democratic candidates for governor, State senator and labor⁵ attorney Nate Boulton, of sexual misconduct. The 38-year-old, who was seen as a rising star in the Democratic Party, suspended his campaign. Now the remaining five candidates are working to woo Boulton's supporters. Danny Homan is the president of the state's largest public sector⁶ union, which endorsed⁷ Boulton. He's disappointed but not deterred⁹.

DANNY HOMAN: I am going to do everything within my power to elect a Democrat¹ governor of this state in every other elected office that we possibly can.

MASTERS: Nate Boulton, the first-term senator, has been a champion for union worker rights in the Legislature. Homan says he'll now support whoever gets the nomination¹⁰ to take on Republican Governor Kim Reynolds.

HOMAN: Not necessarily because I believe in everything that they stand for but because I believe in absolutely nothing that Kim Reynolds stands for.

MASTERS: Before Boulton dropped out, polls showed him as the most likely to pull ahead of the front-runner, Fred Hubbell. He's a 67-year-old businessman. Hubbell has put over 2 million of his own dollars into his campaign and is massively outspending all of the other candidates. That's something one of his competitors, longtime Democratic operative John Norris, pointed⁸ out in a debate.

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JOHN NORRIS: Fred told me before either one of us got in that I couldn't win because he's going to have all the money - honest story.

MASTERS: But his wealth doesn't bother Felicia Hilton. She gathered with other Hubbell supporters outside the final debate.

FELICIA HILTON: If Fred Hubbell is willing to spend every dime¹¹ that he has, in my opinion, to save Iowa from this radical¹², extreme Republican Party that we have right now, I'm all for it.

MASTERS: Republicans took over the state House last year, passing many conservative priorities, like gutting¹³ public sector union rights and passing the country's most restrictive abortion¹⁴ law. A judge last week temporarily blocked that one. While walking into that final debate, Hubbell tells me the state's a mess.

FRED HUBBELL: We need to fix this state. We need to turn it around and take it back where most Iowans want it.

MASTERS: Hubbell blames what he calls mismanagement on Governor Kim Reynolds. She's never been elected to the job. She was lieutenant¹⁵ governor and took over last year after President Trump¹⁶ tapped former Governor Terry Branstad to become the U.S. ambassador to China. Reynolds is unopposed in her primary and is running ads introducing herself to Iowans.

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KIM REYNOLDS: My husband and I used to wave goodbye in the driveway as we took turns leaving for work and watching the girls...

MASTERS: While campaigning at a Des Moines bar, one of the Democratic candidates, Cathy Glasson, meets with supporters. Glasson is a nurse and union leader who has a lot of support from Iowans who backed Bernie Sanders in 2016. She's calling for things like Medicare for all and stricter gun control. Glasson says her opponents are not being bold enough.

CATHY GLASSON: They think by staying in the center and doing status quo politics as usual is how to beat her. It's absolutely not the way to beat her because Democrats have lost 11 out of the last 14 governor's races by doing that.

MASTERS: Betty Solomon, a retired¹⁷ teacher, thinks Glasson would win in a matchup against Reynolds.

BETTY SOLOMON: I think she's trying to make up for a lot of lost years that we've been sitting on the fence and not really addressing the problems that have been building up to this point.

MASTERS: And if Democrats can't take over the governor's mansion¹⁸, the party will face even bigger problems in gaining back the ground they've lost in the last decade. For NPR News, I'm Clay Masters in Des Moines.