Act One
What Iowa
Was
Every number on this page carries its source. If I could not verify it, I did not print it.
I grew up here and I was a Republican for most of my life. This page is not a list of talking points. It is a set of measurements, taken from federal statistical agencies, state agency reports, and the Legislature's own published record.
Iowa used to be an average-or-better state on the things that matter to a family. Take teacher pay, because the Legislature's own analysts have tracked it for twenty five years.
Fiscal year 2000
3.1%
below the national average teacher salary
Legislative Services Agency, September 19, 2000
Fiscal year 2024-25
12.3%
below the national average teacher salary
National Education Association, April 2026
Three percent below is a rounding error. Twelve percent below is a reason to move to Nebraska. In 2011 the Legislative Services Agency put Iowa 25th in the country for teacher pay. Iowa now ranks 30th of 51.
The same shape shows up elsewhere. In December 2022, 7.7 percent of Iowa's mid-size and large farms were rated financially vulnerable. Three years later it was 19 percent. The national cancer rate was falling the whole time. Iowa's was rising.
None of that happened by accident, and none of it happened all at once. What follows are the decisions, then the measurements, then the documents.
Every figure in this section is charted with its source in Act Three. Where Iowa has no verified historical series, this page shows no line rather than an estimated one.
Act Two
The
Decisions
Below are specific bills, with their numbers, their dates, and who controlled each chamber when they passed.
This part matters more than it looks. Iowa Republicans have held the House, the Senate and the Governor's office together since 2017. But Iowa has also governed under divided control, and decisions made then belong on the same timeline. A page that only blames one party for everything that happened over thirty years is not a record. It is a mailer. Where control was divided, this timeline says so.
Act Three
Where Iowa
Ranks Now
Each measure below shows its value, its rank, how many places it was ranked against, the date it describes, and where it came from. Where a number needs a caveat to be honest, the caveat is printed next to it, not buried.
Act Four
Who
Benefited
This section holds itself to one standard: documents. Every entry below is a position an organization registered itself, in the Iowa Legislature's own published lobbyist declarations, on a specific bill, on a specific date.
Nothing here says any organization caused any outcome. That claim is not made, and the underlying database is built so it cannot be made: an entry can only exist if it is a registered lobbyist declaration, a documented state contract or award, a recorded campaign contribution, a market share figure from a government source, or a figure from an SEC filing. "This industry did well while that number got worse" is not evidence, so it is stored and never shown.
Which is why the profit figures below are not the story you might expect. Where a company files with the SEC, its reported net income is shown, taken from its own Form 10-K. Two of the three earned less in 2025 than in 2021. Corteva went from $1.76 billion to $1.09 billion. Elevance went from $6.16 billion to $5.66 billion. If the argument here were that these companies got rich while Iowa got worse, their own filings would refute it. The argument is narrower than that, and it holds: these are the organizations that showed up, in writing, on the bills.
Act Five
What I
Would Do
Every plank below points back at a number on this page.
This is my platform, unchanged from the front of this site. What is added here is the receipt: which measurement each plank is answering, and where that measurement came from. If a plank is not tied to something measurable, it does not belong in a campaign.
-
Hospitals and Clinics That Stay Open
Pay nurses and doctors to plant roots here on multi-year contracts. Hold managed care companies accountable. Keep the front door of the health system open in towns this size.
What closed here, with dates:
- January 15, 2026. Pella Regional Medical Clinic in Ottumwa reduces family practice operations, citing difficulty recruiting and retaining providers. Wapello County.
- February 27, 2026. MercyOne closes its Ottumwa facility outright, a 33,000 square foot building that opened in 2017. Patients are referred to MercyOne Family Medicine in Centerville, about an hour away. Wapello County.
- April 29, 2026. River Hills Community Health Center announces the closure of its Richland dental clinic. Keokuk County.
- July 31, 2026. River Hills closes its Centerville clinic, which offered medical, dental, women's health and pediatric care. Appanoose County.
Read those last two together. Ottumwa patients were told to drive to Centerville. Five months later, Centerville lost a clinic of its own.
The measurement: Iowa has lost a larger share of its rural obstetric units than any state in the country, 30.8 percent against a national 16.8. Iowa has the second fewest OB-GYNs per woman of reproductive age and fewer doctors per person than all but eight states.
I am not going to tell you Iowa's hospitals are closing. They are not. Iowa has lost two rural hospitals since 2005, out of 197 closures and conversions nationally, and on rural health clinics Iowa is doing better than the country: 15.4 percent of the 2015 clinics have closed here against 25.7 percent nationally. If I told you the buildings were disappearing, one search would prove me wrong. What is disappearing is what happens inside them. Iowa's hospitals stayed open and stopped delivering babies, and in this district the primary care clinics are the ones going.
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Iowa Healthy Waters Act
Pay farmers to lead it. A tax credit for every acre under a real nutrient management plan, zero percent loans for precision equipment that already reduces runoff, and batch-and-build wetlands and saturated buffers.
The measurement: 72.6 percent of Iowa's assessed river miles are impaired, against a median state at 64.4. Central Iowa Water Works banned lawn watering in 2025 and again in 2026 because of nitrate.
I am not going to tell you nitrate is causing Iowa's cancer rate. I do not know that, and neither does anyone else yet. Iowa is not an outlier on the cancers usually linked to nitrate: 8th on colorectal, 7th on bladder, and 28th on ovarian, which is below the national rate. A large Danish study found elevated colorectal risk below the current standard. A systematic review found no association. That is a contested question, not a settled one. The Iowa Cancer Registry also reports that Iowa farmers, the people most exposed to farm chemicals, had 13 percent fewer cancers than Iowans generally.
So the ask is measurement, not blame. The state put $1 million into asking why Iowa's cancer rate is rising. Phase one found no single cause, and it did not examine environmental or genetic factors at all. That is the gap. Fund phase two, and keep the instruments that measure our water running, because the Legislature just stopped guaranteeing them. You cannot manage what you refuse to measure.
-
Return the AEA to Locals
Rural kids deserve the same resources as city kids. Restore the Area Education Agencies and fully fund public schools.
The measurement: Iowa spends $14,369 per pupil against a national $17,619, 35th of 50. The AEA restructuring was HF 2612, which passed the House 53 to 41 and the Senate 28 to 22 and was signed on March 27, 2024.
-
Cap and Sunset Vouchers
Public dollars belong in public schools. Half of Iowa's counties do not have a private school for that money to follow a student to.
The measurement: the Legislative Services Agency describes what HF 68 created as "a standing unlimited General Fund appropriation." For FY 2026 LSA estimated the education savings account increase at $129.3 million, while the School Foundation Aid increase of $43.2 million was based on a 0.0 percent increase in the state cost per pupil.
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Tools for Schools
Put welders, lathes and diagnostic equipment back in our high schools. AI is not going to plumb a hospital or run a CNC machine. We need plumbers, electricians and machinists, and the trades deserve fair wages, benefits and an apprenticeship pipeline worth the body.
The measurement: Iowa ranks 43rd of 51 as a place to teach, and the gap between Iowa teacher pay and the national average has gone from 3.1 percent to 12.3 percent since 2000. You cannot staff a shop class you cannot hire for.
-
Homes You Can Afford
Out-of-state funds are buying manufactured home parks and raising lot rents on fixed-income seniors. Real first-time homebuyer help. Rent tied to inflation with three months' notice. Triple the Homestead Tax Credit and freeze property taxes for seniors.
The measurement: Iowa's effective property tax rate is 1.29 percent against a national 0.89, 43rd of 51. On manufactured homes, HF 2562 extended the notice period for a rent increase and did not limit the increase itself. The Iowa Manufactured Housing Association was the only organization registered in favour of it.
Be precise here. On overall housing cost burden Iowa is 3rd best in the country. Housing in Iowa is comparatively affordable, and claiming otherwise invites an easy correction. The real argument is narrower and stronger: property taxes are high, and park residents who own the home but rent the ground underneath it have almost no protection.
And one more, which is what this page is. Publish the scoreboard. The state should keep a public dashboard of these measures, on a fixed schedule, with the source document linked for every number, including the ones where Iowa is doing well. Iowans should not have to learn how their state is doing from a campaign website.