Senate Hopeful Adams Says His Moderate Tone Resonates With West Des Moines, Waukee Voters

With voter registrations that favor Republicans in Senate District 22, Democrat Desmund Adams knows he’s the underdog in a race to unseat Sen. Pat Ward, who won an acerbic primary in the partly new-to-her district.

Adams says the numbers – Republicans, 16,746, and no-party registrants, 14,283, compared with Democrats’ 11,862 registered voters – don’t tell the full story of Senate District 22.

“Moderation needs a voice,” he said.

It’s new territory, carved out in redistricting after the 2010 census. The winner will represent residents of parts of West Des Moines, Waukee, Clive and Windsor Heights. Ward, who won a special election and has served in the Senate since 2004, was thrown into the same district as Sen. Matt McCoy, a popular Des Moines Democrat, so she moved to Clive and to a district she says reflects the conservative values of her old District 21.

Adams, a 39-year-old executive recruiter from Clive, says his defeat is no more a foregone conclusion than the notion that he’d stay “at the bottom looking up” after he dropped out of high school.

What are the issues you'd like to hear the candidates talk about in Senate District 22? Tell us below in comments.

Instead, he enrolled in the Kentucky Jobs Corps program, earned his GED, enrolled in Drake University and earned an undergraduate and then a law degree. “From GED to JD” is the way Adams describes his metamorphosis.

“Even the flattest pancake has two sides,” he said. “I’ve seen both sides.”

After the false start that led him to Job Corps, Adams’ campaign bio reads like an all-American success story. He owns his own executive search firm and works with Fortune 500 companies to find senior-level executives. He’s connected with high-profile groups, boards and philanthropic causes. He’s got a wife with her own professional career as a pharmacist, two kids and a nice house in the suburbs.

“He fits the demographics of this district perfectly,” said Julie Stewart Ziesman, Adams’ campaign manager. “The people here can relate. He’s a daddy with little ones, he has a nice home. He’ll be able to relate to everybody in this district. He’s an unusual candidate, one who understands business, as well as labor.”

Jo Ann Zimmerman, the last independently elected lieutenant governor in Iowa and the first woman in Iowa to occupy the spot, thinks it’ll be a tough campaign, but said Adams – whom she calls “a terrific candidate” – can win it. She used to represent parts of the district as a state representative.

“It will be difficult to win in this district,” Zimmerman said, “but if he can meet people and talk to them, I think they will be impressed.

“He has enthusiasm and a history of being able to bring groups together,” she said. “He’s not going in as a polarized partisan candidate.”

Stewart Ziesman, who moved to Waukee a year ago, said she met Adams last year at the Dallas County Fair. “You had me in the first hour,” she says she told him when she agreed to sign on as his campaign manager. “It’s your heart.”

Back-to-Back Parades, Non-Stop Campaigning

Campaigning traditionally begins in earnest after Labor Day, but Adams hasn’t slowed down much since announcing he would seek the Senate District 22 seat a year ago.

He managed to walk in four Fourth of July parades in two days – the West Des Moines parade on July 3, and in the Urbandale, Waukee and Windsor Heights parades on the holiday itself. He’s also door knocking three nights a week and hosting house parties and fundraisers whenever he can fit them in.

Adams says his path has broadened his perspective and he looks at policy through the lens of “real people, not just numbers.”

“A lot of people have not had the luxury of looking at life from only one side,” he said.

Voters in the November general election can find “stark differences” between the Republican and Democratic candidates, whether they’re looking at high-profile social issues like marriage equality (Adams thinks the Iowa Supreme Court got it right with its same-sex marriage ruling; Ward thinks the matter should be put to a constitutional amendment vote), or examining the effects of legislation Ward supported that allows MidAmerican Energy to hike rates to pay for a nuclear power plant whose future is uncertain.

“I do not believe it’s a good use of taxpayers’ money – some of them retired people on very fixed incomes – to help them do something they may or may not do, yet (utility customers) won’t get their money back,” he said. “That’s illogical.”

The candidate said he will bring “high visibility to what separates our thoughts, our ideas and our vision,” he said. “I think that’s the key to winning. … I don’t see it being that tough. I’ve knocked on thousands of doors, looked voters in the eye and shaken their hands. I’ve asked them for their vote and their ideas, whether they’re Republican or independent.

“It’s all very encouraging,” he said. “They’re like my story – you can’t put me in a box.”

Previously in this race, Patch reported: