Governor-to-Be Kim Reynolds and Iowa Democrats

Caption: Iowa Sen. Rob Hogg (D-Cedar Rapids) at the 9/7/2016 Labor Day picnic in City Park, Iowa City.

Will anyone notice that Gov.-for-Life Terry Branstad has gone to China to be our ambassador there when current Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds becomes governor of Iowa? All she has to do is reward big business and big polluters, punish the poor and the mentally ill, and be as big a horse’s patooty as possible to unions and public employees and nobody will notice she doesn’t have a mustache.

The only thing left to complete this scenario is a U.S. Senate confirmation hearing for our current governor so he can go off to be ambassador to China. This should be a slam dunk, considering who else is coming up for confirmation. The Democrats have already announced that they will pick their battles. They’re not going to fight every confirmation, though logic would seem to dictate that they should.

Iowa Democrats need to take advantage of every opportunity to seize on whatever weakness they find in the Iowa Republican establishment once Branstad is gone. Kim Reynolds is not without documented flaws. Anticipating Branstad's departure from the governor's office, key Democrats have mentioned Kim Reynolds' flaws at Democratic fundraisers in mini-strategy sessions.

I don’t think that Dr. Andy McGuire, chair of Iowa’s Democratic Party, or former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack should lead Iowa Democrats in the party's quest to regain the governor's office and legislative seats. McGuire was clearly ineffective since Trump won Iowa by nearly 10 percentage points. The Trump vote may have nothing to do with her, but you can’t say she was effective, either. It’s probably not her fault that so many Bernie supporters (not me) voted for third-party candidates or Trump or not at all, but the fact remains, her candidate lost.

When Gov. Tom Vilsack ran for president, he joked in the South about Iowa’s racism toward African-Americans. However, he didn’t do anything about it when he was governor. His joke really offended me at the time, so that’s why I remember it. I remember thinking, "Why act like Iowa's racism has nothing to do with you?"

On Sharyl Attkisson’s KGAN Sunday morning TV news show “Full Measure” 12/11/2016, women in the Forestry Division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported repeated sexual harassment by male supervisors. One supervisor forced a female underling to come to his office and tell him when she began menstruating each month. Another yelled at his female underling and poked each of her breasts with an object during his harangue. Both women were on Attkisson's show and testified to supervisory misconduct.

Not only did nothing change despite the women’s complaints, but sexual harassment in the Forestry Division actually got worse, according to Forestry’s women employees, during Vilsack’s tenure.

Either former Iowa Sen. Mike Gronstal (D-Council Bluffs) or Iowa Sen. Rob Hogg (D-Cedar Rapids) should lead the Iowa Democratic Party, in my opinion. My preference is Rob Hogg.