Editorials: Rural Iowa worth voting for

We met a sharp farmer from North Central Iowa who works for an ag manufacturer, conservative politically and agriculturally. He’s into reduced tillage and cover crops. He loathes regulation, which is one of his arguments for conservation agriculture. He works with the Practical Farmers of Iowa. Boots and blue jeans sort of guy.
Our new friend says he is bearish on rural Iowa.
His day job subsidizes his passion for farming. Net farm income is not so great, expected to decline slightly this year. The USDA projections show steeper declines five years out. When net income declines and technology replaces labor, consolidation accelerates.
It takes fortitude and cash to bid on $15,000-per-acre ground against private equity funds, Bill Gates and the Mormon Church. Keep your concerns about nitrate leaching into the river to yourself, tenant, and get that 200-bushel corn into the semi trailer. A young farmer should marry well, strike it rich in crypto or get an engineering day job.
Rural population over two-thirds of our 99 counties continues to decline. Little stops it (that steel mill may be a mirage). In Galva, the ethanol plant closed. A sow confinement is economic development. The legislature puts the slow squeeze on rural schools, which squeezes villages like Early or Odebolt.
Young people leave to find their fortune. Our public officials are openly hostile to immigrants, based on what they hear in private. Policy is to chase them off. Fonda and Varina are home to immigrants who work in Storm Lake or in those confinements. When you make people feel unwelcome, they leave when opportunity presents itself. That weakens our small towns.
If we had clean air and water, that would be something to sell. If rural Iowa schools were the best in the nation, as they used to be, families would want to live here. If you did not have the highest student debt load in America, you could afford to live in Pocahontas County. If we invested in health care, rather than starving Medicaid, people might prefer rural life. Apparently we can afford $1.5 billion for a steel mill but not a penny more for a school with declining enrollment or to keep the nursing home open at Newell.
Technology should make rural life more amenable, not just eliminate jobs. If there were a union, tough jobs in food and agriculture would pay more. Everyone would be better off. People would flock here for the beauty if every acre weren’t under the plow. Our lakes and rivers would not be polluted if there were a modicum of regulation. Our air would be safe were it not for the concentration of livestock.
We should vote for strong rural schools, clean air and water, for a balanced agriculture that can be sustained, for better roads and more accessible health care. We should quit trying to run off immigrants from jobs out here in the netherworld. We should do everything under the sun to support private colleges in small towns instead of harassing them. These are the real issues in Iowa. Our friend has reason to be bearish because the numbers paint a stark future. For now, at least, we still have the vote. We can do something about it. We should. Rural Iowa is worth saving.

Numbers favor GOP
A reader suggested that we give short shrift to Dave Dawson, Democratic candidate for Congress, when we report that three of Iowa’s four districts are in play — the Fourth District not among them. Republicans rule the roost around here. It’s been 40 years since Berkley Bedell of Spirit Lake was in Congress. He beat Republican Wiley Mayne of Sioux City in the post-Watergate wave that also saw Democrat Tom Harkin win a House seat.
That was then. The latest numbers from the Iowa Secretary of State’s Office tell us that there are 212,000 registered Republicans in the Fourth District. There are just 95,000 Democrats and about 124,000 independents. In Cherokee County, there are four times as many Republicans as there are Democrats (4,000 v. 1,000). The ratio is about 2 to 1 in Buena Vista County. Here, independents trend Republican. Mike Frantz is running as a Democrat for state senate against incumbent Republican Lynn Evans. Frantz has worked very hard but the deck is stacked against him. Dawson may be a great candidate but the reality is that this is one of the most Republican districts in the USA.
It was not always so. The Democratic brand is badly tarnished because the party shook off rural precincts with their guns and Bibles, and left them to the GOP decades ago. Dawson and Frantz are a credit to their country for running, but that does not mean they can surmount the odds.
Statewide, Republicans hold an edge of about 180,000 voters. That is a big gap, which makes it all the more remarkable that three of the four districts are in play. Democrat Rob Sand appears to be leading Republican Zach Lahn, and Democrat Josh Turek is running neck-and-neck with Republican Ashley Hinson. Independent voters are trending toward Democrats this year thanks to high prices and the unpopularity of President Trump and Gov. Reynolds. The Democratic brand is not popular in rural Iowa, but people are fed up with the status quo. The fact that Sand is in a position to win speaks to how badly Reynolds has managed our affairs.
This is a Republican state, but the Republicans have blown it — except for the Fourth Congressional District where it is almost a religion. This is where the US Senate race will be determined by GOP turnout or lack thereof.


Senate must check Trump
If you want to witness the end of the world, you might get your chance. President Trump is considering joining Saudi Arabia in its war against the Houthis of Yemen following deadly attacks on the main airport in Riyadh. We are now at war around the Persian Gulf, and aiding both sides of a war between Russia and Ukraine. The Chinese operate in the background as we weaken ourselves.
President Trump and Defense Secretary Hegseth are dense enough to step deeper into the quicksand of a super-regional war sparked by Israel, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Trump has all sorts of business wrapped up with the Saudi princes and has been eager to do their bidding. The Saudis and Israelis egged us on to attack Iran, a Persian Shiite nation that is a bitter power rival of Arab Sunni Saudi Arabia. Now they want us to go deeper in the war. It is a quagmire of biblical proportion. Iran is draining us. So is the war in Europe. China stands by.
This is one reason we need a check on Trump. We need to extricate ourselves from the web of chaos driven by religious zeal.
The United States is being held in check. We have thrown so many bombs on Iran and Yemen that we are running out. Ukraine is under constant bombardment while we buy diesel from Russia and fund its war machine.
We must place control of the Senate in the hands of the Democrats. That is our best hope for controlling the spiraling madness. As a Member of Congress, Republican Ashley Hinson is stalwart in her support for Trump and Hegseth. She has voted seven times to endorse the war on Iran that is wreaking havoc on Iowa farmers with higher fuel and fertilizer costs. A vote for Democrat Josh Turek presumably would slow down this march to a world war involving Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
American boots will be on the desert before you know it if Trump and the Saudis are left to conspire without opposition. The Republicans in Congress have not mustered the courage to restrain from Trump’s juvenile impulses. Trump has put the US economy in peril, our power projection is greatly diminished, and we are reviled among our former friends in Western Europe. This is what Osama bin Laden intended.
That’s why the Democrats must be put in charge of the Senate on Nov. 3. Vote for Turek. Enough of the aimless, endless wars that we fight for some foreign zealots.