These 15 GOP Legislators Weren’t On Kim Reynolds’ Endorsement List

In advance of Cedar Rapids Mayor Ron Corbett’s announcement for governor today, Kim Reynolds’ campaign looked to flex their organizational muscle by releasing a list of 1,050 county chairs. Yes, 1,050 for a state with 99 counties. I’ve seen a lot of county leader endorsement lists in my time during past caucus campaigns, but that might top the largest ever assembled. It’s a bit over-the-top, but still effectively sends the message to Corbett on the day he kicks off his primary challenge: the party infrastructure is solidly behind Governor Reynolds.

Of course, when you have so many names as Reynolds did, the ones that stand out are no longer the ones on the list, but the ones not on it. So I went through to see which Republican legislators weren’t in the endorsement roll-out.

From the House:

Kristi Hager
Walt Rogers
Sandy Salmon
Linda Upmeyer
Joel Fry
Dave Heaton
Greg Heartsill
David Sieck
Chris Hagenow
Mary Ann Hanusa
Skyler Wheeler

From the Senate:

Bill Dix
Mark Segebart
Mark Lofgren
Jack Whitver

So why might these legislators not have added their name to Reynolds’ list?

First off, there seems to be some protocol among leadership that they don’t endorse (or at least not in this way) in the primary. The top two leaders in both chambers – Upmeyer, Hagenow, Dix, Whitver – are all missing, but they obviously personally support Reynolds regardless.

There’s not a lot of people from swing districts who are up next time, and distancing yourself from the governor probably won’t work much anyway. The 2016 campaign showed in Iowa that sticking close with Donald Trump, as polarizing and unpredictable as he was, was by far a net benefit thanks to having a united Republican front. Plus, it’s not like there’s many Republican legislators who were consistently voting against the party line this session.

A number of the Christian right crowd withheld their names. Many of the House co-sponors of this year’s “Life at Conception” bill, including Salmon, Fry, Hager, Rogers, Sieck, Wheeler and Heartsill, are not on Reynolds’ list. While Democrats saw this year’s legislative session as the worst ever for abortion rights, there were enough Republicans who seem to be so upset that they didn’t go even further (despite the likelihood of court challenges), that they’re not ready to get on board with their party’s governor.

On the other side of the ideological spectrum, more moderate (or as moderate as Republicans get) members Hanusa and Heaton are missing as well. Hansua seemed to run afoul of House leadership this year, in part due to her vote against the collective bargaining bill. And Heaton is in the middle of negotiations with Reynolds to win back some funding for autism and epilepsy assistance that was just cut by the Department of Public Health.

It’s not immediately clear why Senators Segebart and Lofgren didn’t add their names.

In terms of the governor’s primary, it’s not like many – if any – of these legislators are open to endorsing Corbett. It’ll be surprising if he gets many high-profile Republican endorsements outside of his Cedar Rapids area. His candidacy is simply too much of a long-shot at the moment to risk crossing Reynolds in an even bigger way by backing her opponent.

Of course, there could be one other, simpler answer for a handful of them. Sometimes when you try to put together a massive list like this, even if you have many staffers working on it, some people just don’t call or email you back. They’re on a long vacation, or are just difficult to get ahold of when they’re back in their district. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the real reason for one or two of these folks.

by Pat Rynard
Posted 6/20/17