PROFILE: Kim Reynolds Shows Her Work.
Reynolds was an accidental governor. Elected lieutenant governor in 2010 as an afterthought on a ticket with Terry Branstad, the longest-serving governor in the state’s history, she was elevated to the big job in 2017 when Branstad was named ambassador to China. Reynolds was mistrusted in some conservative quarters, perceived as a colorless moderate functionary. With a low-key demeanor, pixie-cut hairdo, and skirt suits, she looked the part of one. She did not speak as if her hair were on fire. But “colorless moderate functionary” proved to be a grave underestimation.
Reynolds surprised many observers by winning reelection by a 2.7-point margin in a bad Republican year in the Upper Midwest in 2018. It was the smallest margin of victory for a reelected governor in Iowa since the 1890s. Reynolds had trailed in four of the five post–Labor Day public polls, and she trailed 44 percent to 46 percent in the final Des Moines Register poll — by tradition the gold standard in the state. Yet she ended up clearing 50 percent of the vote, sweeping Iowa’s rural west.
The politics of Iowa were already shifting when Reynolds took office. An older generation of Iowans, who came of age with the New Deal and prairie populism, were staunch Democrats, but they were dying off. Michael Dukakis and Al Gore won Iowa; Bill Clinton and Barack Obama both won it twice. Democrats Tom Vilsack and Chet Culver won three straight elections to the governorship between 1998 and 2006. Democrats controlled the state senate for a decade from 2007 to 2016. Liberal icon Tom Harkin won five terms in the Senate, carrying 94 of the state’s 99 counties in his last election in 2008.
The state swung 16 points to the right between 2012 and 2016, when Donald Trump carried it by 9.4 points. Even so, Democrats as recently as 2018 won three of the state’s four House districts while Reynolds was winning her first statewide election. Like Ron DeSantis in Florida, Reynolds has presided over the consolidation of a purple state into a red juggernaut.
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