“More private schools, less healthcare, lower wages—we’ve already been headed in this direction as a state. I think it’s time to try something different.”
That’s Charlie Wishman, president of the Iowa Federation of Labor AFL-CIO, the umbrella organization for many of Iowa’s unions.
Every election year, the organization’s members vote at their convention to endorse a slate of candidates for state and federal offices they say “puts workers first.”
This year, that includes the high-profile Iowa governor’s race. And I wanted to find out why they chose who they did.
“It’s been a long time since we could actually have a sit-down conversation with somebody and feel like we’re not getting the runaround,” Wishman told me.
Voting for ‘character’
There are two candidates for the open governor’s seat this year: Republican Zach Lahn and Democrat Rob Sand. Both look to take over the job from Governor Kim Reynolds, who is stepping down at the end of her term.
“I often tell people, ‘You’re not just voting for the person on the ballot, you’re voting for everybody that they’re gonna put in charge of things,’ right?” Wishman said. “So to get an idea of what somebody’s character is, I think is really important.”
Lahn worked for Americans for Prosperity, both in Montana and nationally, which was the same lobbying group that gutted Iowa’s collective bargaining laws for public workers nearly a decade ago.
“Americans for Prosperity in 2017, in this state, did a number on organized labor— specifically, on purpose, as a very coordinated effort,” Wishman said of the Iowa Legislature’s changes to public worker bargaining. “ Collective bargaining, work comp, PLAs went away, anything that actually was trying to make Iowa into a higher wage state.”
And he said Lahn’s worker record in Montana is even worse:
“[He] fought hardcore and stopped a minimum wage increase to $10.10 an hour,” Wishman said. “They didn’t want Medicaid expansion in that state, which is just wild. We know that he’s a big champion of private schools and charter schools, but in those bills, he actually even went as far as to write in there that there couldn’t be union work on it in terms of prevailing wage. They couldn’t be unionized.
“It’s just really, really different values than anything I’ve seen out of even Republican candidates.”
Why Rob Sand?
But it’s not just an endorsement against Lahn. Wishman said, though he’ll have to work with a likely majority Republican legislature, Sand’s policies would reverse the worker slide.
“[Sand] is for regulating AI. He’d love to raise the minimum wage. I think he would love to restore collective bargaining back to what it was, if not actually look at what a public sector collective bargaining law for this state actually would look like,” Wishman said.
And, he said, workers like Rob Sand’s no-nonsense style.
“He’ll tell me straight up, yes, no, whatever,” Wishman said. “Like, I have never felt like he’s given me or anybody else in labor the runaround as to where he stands on anything.”
It’s a refreshing change, Wishman added.
“It’s not just that we support his policies, but he’s able to actually communicate why he’s for those things to our members and to the working class in the state in a way that, I’m sorry, Democrats have been really bad at doing for quite some time.”
