‘Everything goes my way’ – the wonderful political life of Kim Reynolds
Actor Michael Urie’s character, Brian, the gay best friend of lead Jason Segel in the Apple TV hit “Shrinking,” has a catch phrase that’s caught me in a days-long pondering of Gov. Kim Reynolds, her remarkable ascendency and defining of Iowa, a mark-making perhaps more permanent than anything shepherded by any Hawkeye State leader in history, in her visions (or at least of those circling happily these days) in the considerable political gravity of her seemingly endless orbit.
“Everything goes my way,” Brian colorfully proclaims in Urie’s scene-stealing moments in the comedy “Shrinking,” which also stars a surprisingly very funny Harrison Ford. Not since Jimmie (JJ) Walker’s “dynamite!” has a little ditty stuck the landing so effectively on the small screen.
A gay character should be the last person (or perhaps the first, depending on perspective) to prompt reflection on Reynolds.
But that catch line is defining — for actor Urie and Governor Reynolds. Everything is, indeed, going her way these days.
It’s luck, timing, and all credit to Reynolds, her steadfastness in staying on message, remaining in her lane with political blinders that obscure from her vision and policy or political exit ramps into off-brand territory.
The governor is being feted, as much as vetted, by the obligatory adorations of a parade of Republican presidential hopefuls, all who sing her praises as “the best governor” in the nation. Nikki Haley, a former South Carolina governor, celebrated Reynolds in grand fashion Monday night in Ankeny.
The leading Republican White House candidate, former President Donald Trump, campaigned with Reynolds just days before the November election in Sioux City. Trump dropped anecdotes about his son, Donald Jr., hunting the frozen lands of Iowa with Reynolds’ husband, Kevin, a supremely nice man, who if truth be told, would probably prefer no adjacency to the ugliness of modern politics.
Then on Wednesday, another likely presidential candidate, Tim Scott, the South Carolina senator, undeclared, but a Republican who is running Facebook ads in Iowa, endorsed Reynolds’ biggest political achievement to date during an event at Drake University in Des Moines: the passage of school reform with big vouchers, what Republicans call education savings accounts, for private-school families. For better or worse, the legislation is likely to change Iowa more than any bill in the history of the state.
Reynolds, who I think could wage a winning presidential campaign of her own if she owned the moment, is on something of a statewide victory tour from now through the Republican caucuses. She can appear with all the candidates, and endorse none, all the while showing the Oval Office aspirants (and their ever-observing advisors) her popularity in the state.
She is the clear front-runner for the Republican vice presidential nomination — whether the GOP pick for the White House is male or female, Midwestern or Southern, Trump or DeSantis or a surging surprise.
Here in Iowa, Democrats, and many Republicans, see the school voucher regime as catastrophic, an ideological asteroid hurtling out of the DC think-tank solar system and headed straight at rural public schools, the foundation of what makes Iowa, well, Iowa. Or did.
If they are right, no worries for Reynolds. A constellation of factors is contributing to rural decay in Iowa — from consolidation in agriculture to the sweeping out of local businesses in favor of giant, out-of-state purveyors of goods and services. Place has no place in modern America, where one’s online existence matters more than where the head falls on the pillow at night.
It will be impossible to draw a direct-line correlation between Reynolds’ school reform and the diminishing, even destruction, of swaths of rural Iowa, should Democratic detractors prove accurate in their predictions of the long-term effects of school vouchers. Should this happen, Reynolds can distract and deflect to other issues, knowing the Iowa Democratic Party is depleted of trusted messengers in rural reaches of the state to tie her policies to their demise.
And then there is this: Reynolds is close to vanquishing the media’s power to illuminate her mistakes, hold her accountable. She rarely holds news conferences, and could serve the remainder of her term taking no questions from reporters and pay no election-day consequences if she stands for re-election in 2026. “I don’t trust the media, and you shouldn’t either,” Reynolds could confidently say. In fact, Reynolds could tell Iowans she’s saving them hundreds of thousands of dollars and just eliminate her press and communications team entirely, opting to have no interaction whatsoever with the media. A critical mass of Iowans wouldn’t even blink, such is the blind obedience to her vision of Iowa, her way of doing things around these parts.
Luck is an underrated handmaiden in human affairs. Two of the more intelligent and qualified politicians in the state’s history, Herbert Hoover and Henry Wallace, respectively a Republican and a Democrat, ran into what Frank Sinatra would have called a “streak of bad luck” The brilliance of Wallace and Hoover found no shine in their time.
And here’s Reynolds, a lightly-resumed middle finger to meritocracy itself, what used to be the coin of the realm in Iowa, remaking the state at a breakneck pace.
Everything is going her way. No one person has defined Iowa as much as Kim Reynolds. It’s her state. The rest of us are just living in it. Which, to be fair, remains a choice for most.
If you haven’t already, check out some of the other Iowa Writers’ Collaborative columnists:
Epic lede!
What is the word I want to use to describe this well written, yet almost overwhelmingly scary story? I think pungent (second meaning). Thank you.