In 2025, we uncovered reasons for optimism about the potential for local government to drive leftist political change. Zohran Mamdani’s election in NYC, in particular, brought together a promising electoral coalition: leftists, young people, working class people across racial lines, the economically and politically disaffected, and progressives of all racial groups.
We even saw a local version in Iowa City. Electorally, Oliver Weilein won a city council special election, becoming likely the furthest left candidate ever elected to city office anywhere in the state of Iowa. But it’s not just about Weilein’s election. We also see potential in moves toward social democracy in our policy discussions. From fare free transit to permanent supportive housing, public debate shifted to approaches friendlier to leftist goals.
It did so against the backdrop of far right advance at the state and federal levels.
These are good things. But there’s a tension in that, or so I’ll argue. I want to balance the good with a note of caution. The shifts in local government remain partial, incomplete, and subject to sharp limits. While affirming the optimism many of us rightly feel, I’ll say a word in this post about those limits.
Progressivism and Local Government
In Iowa City – and, to some extent, also in NYC – gains for the left depend heavily on a base of highly engaged political progressives. These progressives lean very highly educated, relatively high income, and they practice a politics they center on social issues. They center their worldview on an ontology of gender, race, and sexual orientation.
The first Donald Trump election in 2016 motivated them. Indeed, after that election, Iowa City moved to the left in its 2017 city elections. And the second election of Trump in 2024 positively enraged the progressive base, particularly given that Trump won by defeating a black woman. Furthermore, Iowa City’s move to the left formed a rhythmic contrast to the rightward drift of the state of Iowa in the 2010s and 2020s.
In short, Iowa City’s politics often stand as a reaction to the state of Iowa. And statewide politics in the Iowa GOP react against Iowa City.
Policy Implications
This puts us in a position in Iowa City to advance a politics that aligns to leftist goals. The actual left – in contrast to ultra-progressives or radlibs – wants to build social democracy as a stepping stone to socialist democracy. And we now see these ideas popping up from time to time.
What kinds of policies do I mean? For one, we should expand our public utility offerings beyond water and into electric and gas. We should build (and purchase) new publicly owned and managed housing, as well as co-op and democratically governed housing. Finally, we should work on public banking to support city finances and social democratic projects.
Traditionally, Iowa City politics systematically ignored all of these ideas. But they’re starting to peek through the fog.
That said, we’ve got a long way to go. These ideas still sit nowhere near the center of our politics. And, contrary to a view widespread on our local political left, the reason is not that we’re electing the wrong politicians or that there’s some kind of “conservative majority” on our council.
So, what is the reason? For one, we’re all understandably upset about state and federal attacks on the rights of LGBTQ people and immigrants. Fighting these attacks takes up a great deal of space. We’re playing defense.
But that’s not the whole story. The fact of the matter is that progressives aren’t all that interested in social democracy. They often support it in the abstract – as Elizabeth Warren does – but they rarely center it. It’s rarely their top priority.
Instead, they support targeted, paternalistic relief programs and, at best, redistribution of wealth. These kinds of policies can achieve good, but they don’t set us up for transformation, and they don’t put working people in charge of their lives and politics.
Municipal Power
Of course, even if we lined up a deep working class movement and politics in Iowa City, we still face more sinister limits on local government. The state and federal governments make it difficult for social democracy. Their funding mechanisms – and even downright bans on certain policies (e.g., rent control) – place serious obstacles in the path of putting working class people at the center of our politics.
Federal housing policy has for decades strongly discouraged mixed income public housing and social housing. Instead, it encourages expensive, inefficient solutions (e.g., housing vouchers) that concentrate poverty and build public resentment. These solutions aren’t worthless. They do some good. But they come at the expense of much better ideas – ideas better both for how they help working people and how they help us work toward socialist democracy.
At the state level, the Iowa GOP has few, if any, real ideas. Instead it looks to Iowa City (and, to some extent, Des Moines) for something to get outraged at. And then it legislatively restricts cities from doing those things.
Even when the state isn’t literally blocking us from taking action, it makes threats to do so. And these threats provide progressives with the psychological excuse to oppose social democratic ideas that they actually oppose for ideological reasons.
Final Thoughts
Where does that leave us?
I focused on the negative and critical in this post. But it’s important not to lose sight of the positive. Iowa City politics are objectively better in 2026 than at any point in the last several decades. There’s reason for optimism in that. We can introduce social democratic ideas in ways I wouldn’t have imagined when I moved here in 2007.
However, it all comes with limits and challenges. Social democracy tends to get bumped from public debate. And so, we have to continuously fight to put it on the agenda and keep it there.
And we have to figure out how to creatively work around state and federal chaos.
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