Election Edition: How Iowa Became a Battleground Again

0:00The tipping point in the battle for control of Congress this November may be a battleground neither party expected. Everything is moving either from lean Republican to toss-up or toss-up to lean Democratic. That's also been true in Iowa. So I just think if the trend continues, it could be a tough night for Republicans in Iowa.

0:22Welcome to Here's the Scoop, Election Edition. I'm Garrett Haake. Every Saturday from now until the midterms, I've been talking with the smartest voices to discuss the top issues, the places, and the players that could ultimately decide control in Washington. Two weeks ago, we went to Texas to check in on Democratic efforts to win in a state where they've faced decades of disappointment. But that's not the only red state seemingly in play this cycle. This week, we're focusing on Iowa, a state that sat for a generation at the center of the American political universe, but it then slipped off the map during the Trump era.

1:00Iowa was once your classic heartland swing state. Iowans sent Democrat Tom Harkin to the Senate for 30 years and re-elected Republican Terry Branstad as governor over and over again. They backed Barack Obama for president twice, then delivered their electoral votes for Donald Trump in the next three elections. Democrats all but abandoned the state then after the 2020 caucuses, seeing it as too old, too white, and too conservative. And Republicans took seemingly firm control of the statehouse, governor's office, and congressional delegations. But something is happening in the Hawkeye state. NBC News polls rate two of the state's four House seats and the governor's race as lean Democratic.

1:44The third House seat and the Senate seat being vacated by the retiring Joni Ernst, are toss-ups. Iowa is ground zero for many of the issues voters care most about in this election. We've talked about it. The war in Iran has driven up fuel prices, especially for diesel, essential for farmers and truckers in Iowa. And tariffs are making it harder for those farmers to buy what they need and sell what they grow. And inflation in the Midwest continues to outpace the national average. That may be why we're seeing some Republican candidates distancing themselves from the president in a state he won by 13 points just two years ago.

2:23So coming up, I'll talk to Josh Turek. He's the Democratic nominee for Senate in Iowa, a gold medal winning Paralympian, state legislator and former Republican. He's trying to capitalize on this moment to become Iowa's first Democratic senator in 20 years. And by the way, we did reach out to his opponent, Republican Ashley Hinson, but we were not able to schedule an interview with her. Then I'll speak with David Kochel. He's a longtime Republican strategist based in Iowa, who I first met when he was helping Mitt Romney squeak through the caucuses there back in 2012. He's worked on six presidential campaigns and was a key player in Joni Ernst's political rise.

3:02I'll ask him about how Republicans are handling these White House-generated headwinds. That's all ahead. Stay with us.

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4:20And we're back with Here's the Scoop, election edition. My first guest today is Josh Turek, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Iowa, one of just three Senate races that NBC News polls indicate to be a jump ball. And Turek knows a little something about ball. He's a four-time Paralympian and two-time gold medalist in wheelchair basketball. After his basketball career ended, his political career began. when he flipped a Republican-controlled statehouse district in a nail-biter of a race. He won by just six votes. He won much more comfortably in 2024, even though Donald Trump carried his district at the presidential level.

4:59And it's that bipartisan appeal that made him a top recruit for Democrats. Now Turek is navigating a bit of an electoral tightrope as a Democrat trying to win over voters that the national party has lately struggled to even understand. And Josh Turek joins me now from Western Iowa. Josh, thanks for taking time out of your campaign schedule to make this happen. Happy to do it. Thanks for having me. So this race was kind of not on the national radar when you first jumped into it. But now the polling all shows you neck and neck with Ashley Hinson. What made you decide to get into this race? What made you think you could be competitive in a state that Republicans have kind of dominated the last couple of elections?

5:42Well, I got involved in politics four years ago, and it was because of the privatization of Medicaid. After my basketball career finished, I was assessing and providing mobility devices like power wheelchairs for individuals with progressive conditions, conditions like muscular dystrophy and ALS. And what we were finding was since Iowa had privatized its Medicaid system, a 1 ,000 % increase in denial rate. And then I'd found out with further research that even though we're a state of 150 years and a governing body of 150 members, we had never had a permanently physically disabled member of the Iowa legislature.

6:16And I thought it's got to be because of this complete and total lack of representation is why we're seeing all these barriers to health care and to employment. And so I decided to run and decided to run for the U.S. Senate. One reason is because I'm only here because of a senator from Iowa. Senator Tom Harkin was the father of the American with Disabilities Act. And his work on the ADA, I think, is a shining example of what the Senate can do when it's at its best, a bipartisan piece of legislation that literally provided myself and so many other disabled Americans an on-ramp-on to society. And I come from humble means.

6:51I come from a working-class family in Council Bloss, Iowa, where I'm at right now. And, you know, in my family, we went to the Goodwill for clothes. We shared clothes. We went to the free summer lunch programs and so went through a lot of economic adversity and then born with a disability of spina bifida due to my father's exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam. I had my first surgery at one day old. I had 21 of them by the age of 12, gone through a lot of health care adversity. And I think what D.C. is missing is it's missing people that have come through legitimate struggle, both economically and health care.

7:24And I think there's a lot of people up there that are multimillionaires, a lot of people from privilege. and there's not a lot of people that have dealt with real adversity. And I think when you've gone through that struggle personally, you have a different level of empathy, a different level of fight, a different level of understanding. And that's what we're missing. We're missing fighters for the people because here in Iowa, people are uniquely struggling. I'm interested in the different ways you're trying to sort of present yourself to voters in Iowa. You call yourself a common sense prairie populist.

7:53What does that mean? Well, the first part is the common sense. That might be the most important part. That might be what's missing the most in D.C. right now. Prairie populists, though, we have a long history of prairie populists. First, you've got to come from a prairie state. And, you know, I think in the U.S. Senate, we were able to win in prairie states 30 years. Senator Harkin, even able to win in Nebraska with Bob Carey, South Dakota with Daschle. But the populist part is certainly the most important. And that is, for me, what populism is, is that my political North Star more than being about political ideology associated with party.

8:30It is that my ideology is what is best for Iowa, what's best for Iowans, what's best for the middle class, what's best for our workers, what's best for small rural communities and small family farms, because they're the ones that are hurting and being hollowed out. And I think uniquely so here in Iowa. The common sense part of it's interesting to me. I cover mostly Republicans, and I feel like that's become part of the branding that they've really embraced, to say, like, Democrats are out of touch. We're sort of the party of normal. Do you see part of your candidacy of trying to reclaim that sort of center of the electorate from Republicans who sort of push Democrats to the outer left side of it?

9:08My campaign has been laser-focused on the issues that apply to all 3.2 million Iowans. When I'm going around Iowa, I'm hearing over and over them telling me, Josh, I am struggling just to keep food on the table, even though both me and my wife are working full time, still going to the, you know, food assistance. And I'm struggling just to keep a roof above my head, pay my electric bill. And with this war in Iran that my opponent, Ashley Henson, has voted in favor of seven times, I'm struggling just to keep gas in my tank. And I think moving away from a focus on, you know, culture war issues and being laser focused on the economic populism, you know, a livable wage, affordable housing, affordable health care, affordable pharmaceuticals, drinkable water, functioning public schools, infrastructure, campaign finance reform and addressing the corruption on both sides of the aisle.

9:57That's where Iowans are. That's what they care about. Those are the issues. I think they want someone that is going to go up there and actually provide solutions to their problems through policy, not up there playing political games. You mentioned the war in Iran. The other thing that I hear come up time and time again, we talk to people about Iowa is the tariffs. How much did President Trump's policies kind of open the door for this race to be more competitive? I mean, that's a state he obviously he won by 13 points. Now, all of a sudden, he's underwater there and voters are looking around for alternative options.

10:30Yeah, I think that Iowa is hurting more than any other state right now. We're essentially dead last for every health care metrics from OBGYNs, mental health providers, mental health supports. Just in the last six years, we've closed 842 health care entities here in Iowa. We've got a cancer crisis, second highest rates of cancer behind only Kentucky. We've had public education that's gone from the gold standard, including being on our quarter foundation in education, to the bottom half because we're now giving public money to private schools. And I've been making the argument that the tariffs and the war in Iran has hurt Iowa more than any other state.

11:07You know, farmers rely on free trade, open markets more than any other group. You go and you talk to farmers and they'll tell you it's been one gut punch after another. First, the tariffs where they have lost their markets, commodities, prices upside down. Then you've got the administration giving$20 billion to Argentina. And then you've got this war in Iran. And it has led to gas prices going up more in Iowa than basically any other state. It has led to diesel prices being at an all-time high as our farmers are out there harvesting their crops. And it's led to furthering cost of input prices like fertilizer prices, which were already crippling farmers.

11:46It's really been what I've been calling a farmageddon, a second farm crisis. And it's decimating rural communities and small family farmers. What do you think Congress can do about those issues? What can Congress do potentially with your vote to bring down prices, especially with a hostile president potentially? First thing I think we can do is in the war in Iran. You know, I can speak about this in some level of personal experience. I come from a family of veterans. Both of my grandfathers served in World War II, Navy men, and my father. The day he turned 18 enlisted to go to Vietnam. He spent 22 months there.

12:23It's because of his exposure to Agent Orange there is why I ended up with my disability. I'm an example of the generational consequences to these forever wars that we're constantly finding ourselves into. And here we are again, what I've seen in my lifetime, a trillion dollars spent in Afghanistan, a trillion dollars spent in Iraq in particular. And for what? Here we are spending more than a billion dollars a day again as we're closing schools and roads and hospitals here. So I think the very first thing is fight day one to end this war in Iran because it's hurt Iowans. Second is repeal the tariffs.

12:55I think that we need to have strategic tariffs to protect American jobs and American manufacturing, but certainly not off the backs of our farmers, our rural communities, and our small family farms. I would say additionally, we can put guardrails on insurance companies so that doctors are deciding care, not insurance companies actually. And I would love to be able to break up monopolies and ban vertical integration and ban price gouging so that Iowans and Americans can actually afford their grocery prices. Because everywhere I'm going, I'm hearing people say that they're unable able to afford it right now.

13:28Those are a lot of big potential fights to pick with the Trump administration. Is there anything you think you can work with the president on? Absolutely. Well, one of them he talks about, and I've said that I agree with him on, which is getting private equity out of housing. Secondly, I would say that I agree with the Trump administration that we should have no tax on tips and overtime and social security. And actually, I think that there's becoming more and more agreement on the need to address corruption on both sides of the aisle. I think that ideas like passing the Disclose Act to get dark money out of politics or, you know, a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United, I hear more and more agreement upon that when I'm out knocking doors.

14:11It doesn't matter if it's a Republican and independent. I'm out here talking about the need for term limits to ban members of Congress from owning and trading stocks because like the person I'm running against, Ashley Hinson, has become 15 times more wealthy just in six years of being up in D.C. These are issues that I think there's actually a lot of agreement on and would love to be able to get up to the U.S. Senate and address them. The only other Democrat in office right now statewide in Iowa is Auditor Rob Sand, who's running for governor. He's been doing very well in the polls. He's got some outside of the margin of error leads.

14:45To what degree are you two working together? Like, how important is it to have sort of a strong ticket for Democrats in Iowa? Well, I think it's a real opportunity for us to see a rising tide, you know, for both. I would say that the thing that we are doing is, I think that we are both focused on the issues that apply to all 3.2 million Iowans. You know, I'm calling it common sense, prairie populism. He's saying not redder or bluer, but truer and better. I think it's going out there and making sure that Iowans know that we're not going to be up there fighting for billionaires and large corporations, that we're going to be out there laser focused on providing bipartisan solutions to people's problems.

15:28So from the beginning, I've said that this campaign is about protecting the middle class. It's about the average Iowan rural community, small family farms. And so focusing on those issues, a livable wage and affordable housing and affordable health care, affordable pharmaceuticals, drinkable water, cancer rates, functioning public schools. I think that's what if there is any similarity, that's where it is. I also hear similarities in your rhetoric. And I heard it when I interviewed James Tallarico, too. It's kind of like a little bit of a pushing back of the Democratic brand. I mean, can you talk a little bit about the separation you feel from the campaign you're running and what sort of national Democratic Party priorities or messaging might be?

16:10I mean, honestly, I don't think a whole lot about it. I'm laser focused on the issues here in Iowa. And to me, if there's anything to learn from this or if there's a direction nationally that I think that the party should have going forward, it would be that we have to once again very clearly be the party of the people. The party of the middle class, the party of the workers, the party of rural communities, the party of small family farmers. If we do that, I think that we will be able to, once again, as we did here in Iowa with another common sense prairie populist, Tom Harkin, to be able to win the Senate race.

16:45But I think that that's what Iowans care about. And that's what I'm laser focused on. That's three Tom Harkin name drops in like 12 minutes. I have to say that's very impressive. He is my political hero. I mean, honestly. And, you know, it's not hyperbole. I'm only here because of his work. And I think that the best vehicle for societal change is the U.S. Senate. And that's what I want to get back to, you know, and people that are willing to work across the aisle. One of the things that I'm the most proud of in my time in the Iowa legislature is I've been independently recognized as one of the most bipartisan and one of the most effective.

17:21And I've been willing to do the work behind the scenes that no one will ever see of building relationships and saying, look, we disagree on 95 percent of policy, but we agree on this issue. Let's work together on that, even if I have to take my name off it. It's amazing what we can accomplish when no one cares who takes credit. And that's what I think is missing in the Senate. One of the things that put you on my radar was the endorsement you got from President Obama. I have to say the ad of you two shooting hoops, I think, is one of the best uses of a presidential endorsement in a campaign ad that I've seen.

17:53Thank you. I think it reminds people of the connection he had with people, particularly in Iowa, which he won twice. Why do you think that Iowans connected with him in a way that they haven't with other Democrats since? I think that he was out there speaking about hope and positivity and optimism and, you Getting back to what Lincoln said, our better angels, showing people that there's a possibility of doing better and doing things in a better way. And I think that Iowans are out there uniquely struggling, saying, I'm hurting. I can't afford grocery bill. I'm putting my groceries on my credit card.

18:37I can't afford my health care. I can't afford to put gas in my tank. And they're not feeling hurt. They're represented by people like Ashley Henson, who have used their position of power and influence to make themselves more wealthy, only looking out for billionaires and large corporations, donors and lobbyists. I think that Iowans, that's what they want. They want someone that they know is going to fight for them. I think that's what they saw with Obama was the ability to see change, legitimate change. And I think that's what they see in me with a common sense, very populist is someone that is going to go out there and fight for the average person.

19:12So on election night, when everyone's nervously watching the results come in, what are you going to be looking for to have a sense of if you're going to be going to the U.S. Senate or not? I think we're going to win this off of young people being engaged. I think they uniquely are realizing that they may be the first generation of Americans that are seeing their quality of life not being quite as high. They're looking at a situation where the average age of a first-time homebuyer is 40 years old. And so I think inspiring them, I think also we're going to win this by trimming the margins in rural communities and amongst farmers.

19:48I think that a mistake that far too many Democrats have made over the last decade is thinking about this, because this is ultimately a math problem. We've got to get one more vote than the other side of we just need to focus on turnout in the urban areas. And that's why my campaign has been focused on going out to all of the counties, all 99, including these deeply red counties. and talking to them about common sense period populism saying, look, I understand why you voted for Trump. He talked about lowering your electric bill and lowering your grocery bill and keeping us out of forever wars and saying, I'm going to go up there and actually fight for you for these rural communities that have been hollowed out and for these small family farmers because they're hurting.

20:31Have you hit the full 99 yet? Already all 99 and every single day getting in front of as many of the 3.2 million Iowans as we can. And what I think it's about, you know, modern politics, the coin of the realm is meeting people about politics in an apolitical fashion. So whether it's going to an Oktoberfest or going to NASCAR, I just was at the Field of Dreams, doing RAGBRAI, it's meeting people face to face, showing them that you're a real person, three-dimensional, and talking with them. And that message seems to be resonating in a real way out here in Iowa, I think we're going to do something really special here in November because Iowans are ready for change.

21:12Josh Turek, good luck on the trail. Stay safe. Thank you. Thanks for having me. I really enjoyed this. You bet. All right, we're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, how Republicans are trying to hold on to their edge in Iowa.

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22:59Welcome back to Here's the Scoop Election Edition. I'm Garrett Haig. I first met Republican strategist David Kochel back in 2011, and he served as Mitt Romney's top campaign advisor in Iowa. After engineering what looked like a single-digit Iowa caucus win, Romney nicknamed him Landslide. Never mind that a recount gave the victory to Rick Santorum, Romney was on his way to the nomination, and David Kochel was on his way to legendary status in the Hawkeye State. He's also worked with five other presidential candidates and advised the retiring Republican Joni Ernst on her campaigns. When I want to know what's going on with Republicans in Iowa, he is the man I call.

23:40And today he picked up for our podcast. Dave, thank you for making time to do this. I was looking at a CNN poll this morning that showed 40 % of Iowa's likely voters say that their financial situation has gotten worse in the last two years. And 74 % said that President Trump's policies increase the cost of living in Iowa. How bad is the overall environment for the Republicans running in Iowa right now? It's pretty bad. It's tough. It's probably tougher than it was even in 2018 when kind of Trump's presidency looked a little chaotic. And of course, Democrats did pretty well. We kind of survived that election.

24:22But this is pretty bad. And it boils down to two things. Number one, the tariffs, which are not popular in Iowa. And number two, the war. And as you know, agriculture as an industry is very energy dependent. You know, you got to put the stuff in the ground. You got to get it out of the ground. You got to dry it. You got to get it to market. A lot of diesel. Diesel's, what, 620 or something right now. 626, the last time I looked. There you go. Very difficult environment. Trump is upside down by public polling. Has him anywhere? job approval underwater, you know, maybe 12 to 15 in a state that he carried by 13 points.

25:02So it's not good. Some of the private polling I've seen, he's not quite as far upside down, but it's a bad environment. It's a tough environment. It's why you're seeing some of these candidates now breaking from him on things like the Iran war and maybe stepping gingerly around issues like tariffs. But I think the permission structure is there for Republican candidates in Iowa to make sure that they're running their own campaign, that they're not trying to tie themselves to the White House, that they're talking about the economy in a way that families sort of understand that it's tough out there right now.

25:42And so it's going to be uphill for a couple of these congressional races that are in, And, you know, in fact, you saw I think two of them just moved from toss up to lean Democratic. That's the first and the second district. I think, you know, this is this is an election where these Republican candidates are going to have to defy gravity. We've seen some of those candidates, Zach Nunn, Marianne Miller-Meeks, actually vote against their fellow Republicans against the president to end the Iran war. Ashley Hinson didn't, but she said that it should come to an end. how important is it for these candidates to be seen kind of pushing back on the president in these moments?

26:23Yeah, I think it's pretty important right now to establish some independence. You don't want this vote to be a referendum on the job that President Trump is doing, because if you do that, you're going to lose. All these candidates are now engaged in a pretty high profile effort to turn the race from a referendum into a choice between them and their Democratic opponent. And it's important to remember Trump being upside down 12 or 15 points is not great. But the Democratic Party is deeply unpopular in Iowa, which is why you see the gubernatorial candidate running as fast as he can away from the Democratic brand, taking some positions that upset the progressive activists in Iowa City and some of the more liberal parts of Iowa.

27:08But, you know, so this is a tale of two very unpopular parties right now, you know, kind of fighting to see which one survives in a very difficult environment. This has been a theme we've talked about on this show every week of candidates in both parties trying to separate themselves from their parties. And really what put Iowa on my radar this cycle was watching Rob Sand campaign for the governor's race, the governor's mansion in Iowa, because he really doesn't sort of present or identify as a Democrat very much publicly at all. How do you look at that race right now? I think a lot of the prognosticators are saying it leans Democratic.

27:49The polling seems to indicate he is an advantage. What do you think are the strengths and weaknesses of the candidates in the governor's race there? Well, Rob Sand's been on the ballot twice. He barely won the last election, which was a real red wave in Iowa. We defied kind of the national trend a little bit. So he's been on the ballot a couple of times. He's developed a, you know, I think a pretty consistent set of talking points around. He doesn't like either party. He doesn't think we should be in this frame where it's just constant partisan battle all the time. And Iowans are pretty good about choosing divided government anyway.

28:24Since 2014, it's been a pretty red state. But prior to that, it's a pretty purple state. We always had Tom Harkin and Chuck Grassley, polar opposites on the political spectrum, both of whom were pretty easily reelected almost every time they came on the ballot. So Rob Sane is trying to tap into that sort of purple. I'm not either one of them. And I'm just going to do what's right for you. He's very good at that message. And I think, you know, he's also used his office to go around the state doing town halls and every county and all that. You know, he's the state auditor. So he can he can say, I'm saving you money.

29:00I'm getting money back and all these things. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So he's got a pretty good message. Zach Lane is kind of a newcomer to Iowa in recent years. Now, he he's you know, he's the sixth generation. This is the Republican nominee for governor for folks who have not been following it as closely. Yeah, the Republican nominee who upset Randy Feenstra, who everyone assumed was going to win the primary because he was a pretty popular member of Congress from the most Republican part of the state. Zach Lane kind of run a different kind of campaign. He's embraced this Maha message. He's been – he takes several anti-corporate positions that are more populist.

29:37He's a sixth-generation Iowan, but he's been outside of Iowa for a while working in Kansas, and he worked in Montana. So, you know, they're trying to tag him with a with kind of a carpetbagger label. But but I think, you know, he's running a better campaign than people think just because the numbers have been tough. He's been upside. You know, he's he's probably down. I think real clear politics probably has it about six, seven points. I've seen private polling that has it a little bit closer just because of the partisan bent of Iowa. There's a lot more Republicans than there are Democrats right now.

30:10People have fled the Democratic Party. So, you know, I think that race, I would say it definitely leans Democratic. I wouldn't say it's safe Democratic. Rob Sand, right now, everybody kind of thinks that he's going to win. Is he going to win with enough coattails to help any of these congressional candidates? Is it going to tie to Turek? I see data right now that shows that six to eight percent of Rob Sand voters are voting for Ashley Hinson. So you got a whole bunch of voters who are splitting the ticket there. Mostly the reason for that is because they say they know her. They like her. But we do have some ticket splitting that's happening here.

30:49Every poll that I've seen has Ashley running, you know, six, eight, sometimes even more points ahead of Zach Lane on the ballot. But so, you know, it's a real mixed bag what's going to happen here. And I think the theme of this ought to be we don't really know what's going to happen November 3rd because a couple of these races are going to be so close. I mean, you led me to where I wanted to go about this idea of ticket splitters and kind of if Rob Sand runs away with it, how great of a campaign does Ashley Hinson have to run to be competitive in a year where a lot of people are going to check the box for a Democrat at the top of the ticket?

31:25Well, first of all, remember that the top of the ticket is going to be the federal Senate race. Oh, that's right. Ashley Hinson will be the first. She'll be the first name on the ballot. Then it'll be the congressional candidate in that district because we put we place the federal names on the top and then Rob Sand will be the third. So if you're a Republican and you're kind of going in with your jersey on and you're going to vote your party, you're going to vote for Ashley Hinson. You're going to vote for your congressional candidate. And then if you're going to do a ticket split, maybe now you're going to get comfortable with that.

31:54If you just don't know Zach Lane well enough or you're just, you know, you think Rob's done a good job and maybe he's earned your vote. So I think, you know, we're going to see a dynamic there on the on the actual physical ballot that probably works in Ashley's favor because she comes up first. She's going to have to run a really good campaign and she is running a really good campaign. The thing I've worked with Ashley in the past on her congressional races. She's probably the most talented. She's probably the best candidate that I've ever seen in Iowa. And I worked with national political figures, as you know.

32:28She is really, really good. She works incredibly hard. She's a great messenger. She knows how to communicate through the camera, obviously, with her television news background. And she's a very effective legislator. So, you know, the trouble that she has is that she is now a little bit more identified with Washington, which is not popular. And, you know, Turek doesn't have that stain on him at this point. But she's been pretty good in this campaign about defining him, hitting on his missed votes, talking about the votes that he did show up for that were bad. And I think she's been pretty effective at turning that race into a choice as opposed to a referendum.

33:12them. And if anybody's going to run well ahead of the party brand, it's someone like Ashley Hinson, who just has incredible gifts as a candidate. If you were advising Ashley Hinson, would you encourage her to campaign with Donald Trump in Iowa or to keep her distance? If I were advising her, I would probably say to keep her distance. But but, you know, it it's a double edged sword because he definitely has voters that care about him more than they care about the party or any of the party's candidates. And if he comes in and fires them up, it helps the Republican candidate. At the same time, Ashley's coalition is different than Trump's.

33:53They ran differently in the second district when she was running for Congress. She performs better among higher educated voters, among suburban women in particular. And then he performed better in some of these rural kind of exurban precincts where the educational attainment is a little bit lower. So in an off year election, a midterm election like this, you want those voters that are more educated because they're gonna be the more reliable voters to come out in a midterm. That said, if he comes in and fires up the base, it will help her. She's already got all of the negativity on her for the tariffs and the war.

34:32Democrats are not going to be more motivated than they are now if Donald Trump comes to Iowa. But some Trump voters, some MAGA voters who maybe are not as engaged in this election could get more excited. So I think net-net, it probably would be good for him to come to Iowa. But then it's going to be up to her whether or not she wants to be on a stage with him, whether or not she wants that to be in an ad. I don't know the decision that they might make, but I do think that when he comes in, it's for the good for some of those MAGA voters who are less passionate right now about the election. Josh Turk was our first guest on this program.

35:13He likes to talk a lot about his own sort of bipartisan credentials that he won in a Republican-held seat. How do you view the strengths and weakness of the campaign that he's putting on right now? You know, he's got a pretty easy message because people are not happy with the direction of the country and they want to fire people who are in office. So it's not a hard lift. You know, I think he's running a decent campaign. I don't think he's a particularly compelling candidate, not in the way that Rob Sand is. And I think he's got some problems. You know, he's showed up for some votes and gone along with his party, which is very progressive and out of step with the rest of the state.

35:51So, you know, I think he's running an OK campaign. His net favorable is maybe plus two or three points. Ashley's a little bit underwater. But, you know, he started out with high positives and almost no negatives. So the campaign that she's run has been pretty effective at branding him as just part of the Democratic Party that Iowans don't like. If Democrats do, you know, have a big night in Iowa and take some or all of those House seats, take some of these statewide seats, what will be the takeaway from that? Have they sort of – is it that they've cracked the code to make Iowa competitive again or is it more about the environment, do you think?

36:31It's going to be much more about the environment. Now, Rob Sand, you know, branding himself as this kind of nonpartisan, postpartisan figure, he'll get a lot of credit for how he does. the rest of it will be terrible environment. You know, these days you see negative partisanship drives everything. And so we don't see the big swings that we used to see. But in Iowa in 2018, Kim Reynolds wins her governor's race by three points and then comes back four years later when Biden is president and wins it by basically 20 points. That's a 17 point swing in a midterm off-year environment where turnout is a little bit unpredictable.

37:12That's a lot of movement. over four years. So I think if the Democrats were to do a clean sweep in Iowa, it wouldn't say much about the Democratic Party. It wouldn't even say that much about the candidates they chose. I don't think it means that Iowa's a purple state again. I think a lot would have to change in the Democratic Party for that to happen. And I don't think I don't see any of those changes coming. I think they're going to still nominate very progressive candidates all around the country. The national Democratic brand is not going to improve in Iowa. And the fact that they could pull off three wins in the House and a win in the Senate, a win in the governor's race, doesn't automatically flip Iowa overnight to becoming a purple state.

37:56I think it would take a lot more than that. And I don't think that the Democratic Party nationally is built to take advantage of that. So when we're sitting around on election night, starting to watch the results come in, what should we be watching for to be kind of an early indicator of how things are going to go in Iowa? I think you need to watch the ballot difference between Zach Lane and Ashley Hinson, the governor, governor's nominee and the Senate nominee, and watch the spread there. If that spread is outside of six points, I think Ashley wins. and I think it probably portends better for the three toss-up or lean Democratic congressional races as well, because I do think that those top two ballot positions, if Ashley's going to win by two or three points, which I think is entirely possible in a lot of the polling that I see, assumes that she's inside the margin of error, but a couple points ahead and it's a durable lead.

38:58If she actually accomplishes that, I think she's going to have coattails for that congressional candidate as well. But, you know, like we've been talking about, all the trends in the last month or so nationally have favored Democrats. You've seen a lot of polling shifts. You've seen a lot of these prediction folks shifting races. Everything is moving either from lean Republican to toss up or toss up to lean Democratic. That's also been true in Iowa. So I just think if the trend continues, it could be a tough night for Republicans in Iowa. But, you know, we just got to wait and see, you know, see what these voters do.

39:38If they come home to the to the GOP and if she performs well enough and particularly, you know, at that top of the ticket and she wins by two or three, I think it's going to help everywhere. Landslide, David Kochel. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me here. It's good to see you. You too.

39:57All right, that's going to do it for today on Here's the Scoop Election Edition. Thank you for joining us. Next week, we're going to look at an issue that has been percolating for a while across the country and has really boiled over in this election, AI. Republicans have largely supported AI data center construction from Virginia to Wyoming to Arizona as future-proofing moneymakers for their districts and their states. Democrats have pushed back, calling for moratoriums to investigate environmental concerns and energy usage. But I'm going to make sure that when you come here to New York, you're not driving up the rates, that you're paying more for the power or you're bringing your own power source, that you're not disrupting our water supply and you're not contaminating it.

40:41I need to know these answers because I don't want to just rush to this now like other states have done and find out the collateral damage later when it's too late to fix it. Most voters are saying, not in my backyard. And they have other concerns about AI, about privacy, safety, deepfakes, and the political influence that the AI billionaires are wielding. We're going to talk about the AI conundrum next week on Here's the Scoop Election Edition. Our show was produced by Caroline Kenney and Amanda Llewellyn. Erica Huang and Bobby Carlisto engineered with support from Jessica Fenton and Jacob Condon.

41:17Gutteri Yoakum is the executive producer of Here's the Scoop. And Shalini Sharma is the senior vice president of content development at NBC News. I'm Garrett Haake. See you next time.

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