Here in Johnson County, registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by better than 2 to 1, and the last time we elected a registered Republican to a county office was John Etheredge who won a March 2013 special election, served less than two year, and was defeated in the subsequent general election in 2014. You have to go back decades further to find another Republican, and it’s, unsurprisingly, a county sheriff.
We just don’t elect Republicans here in the People’s Republic.
Local and state Republicans have widely framed this as a lack of “rural representation,” despite seats consistently being held by Democrats who live outside of the urban core. Their solution has long been to require we elect county supervisors by districts, erroneously believing we would somehow end up with at least one fully-rural district wrapped around metro area1.
Never mind that Johnson County was always going to end up with a Coralville district, North Liberty district, two Iowa City districts and a fifth very Iowa City district. In 2025 the state legislature decided to make Johnson County, and other counties with regent universities, adopt districts and make every elected supervisor run again.
The Republicans didn’t get the impossible district they wanted, and the final districting plan was pretty much what everyone who knew the rules for map drawing expected2.
No matter. What the Republicans got was even better: Democrats in disarray total fucking chaos.
Throwing all the seats on the ballot at once takes so-called silly season to a whole new level. From my conversations, folks working for the Board of Supervisors recognize that election season makes their jobs harder, but at least usually there’s two or three supervisors who aren’t up for election to temper the disruption, and the previous all-at-large set up meant incumbents weren’t forced to run head-to-head for a seat3.
The result is that we are in one of the ugliest cycles in a while, and that’s counting the March 2025 Iowa City Council special election Oliver Weilein won over Ross Nusser.
It’s spilling over into the board room, with obvious chippiness and condensation becoming a regular feature of work sessions and formal meetings. There is a long history of bad behavior in the board room, made more apparent by the increased access to video4, but this primary cycle is a whole new level of vitriol and both veiled and direct personal attacks.
Maybe we try to recenter around facts and care?
- John Deeth has done a good job of pointing out why, under current Iowa anti-gerrymander laws, an all-rural district would be impossible, but for the life of me I can’t find the post on his always informative blog. ↩︎
- There are three Republicans running for seats, and my gut says they all lose in the general. I think Phil Hemmingway in District 2, my district, has the best shot of any Republican. The district is a little more rural and Republican and he’s got some name recognition because he’s run and won local races before. ↩︎
- My guess is that districts will further entrench incumbents because running as a challenger will be harder: you’ll have to set your sights on a specific seat a current supervisor “owns” instead of running for one of two or three. ↩︎
- There has been, in my perception, increased scrutiny, too, as more urbanites began to see this as something that did affect them and was worth paying attention to. I’d peg it to everything 2020 and American Rescue Plan Act funding. ↩︎