I have to start by saying I’m very pleasantly surprised by the results of the county supervisor primary in Johnson County. The winners, of course, were Rod Sullivan, Lisa Green-Douglass, and Mandi Remington (in that order).

The first two names should surprise no one. They’re incumbents. Incumbents can lose in Johnson County Democratic primaries, in the sense that it’s a theoretical possibility. But it happens about as often as Iowa football scores more than 60 points in a game.

Indeed, the last couple of decades solidified what had already appeared by the 1980s: the Democratic Party runs Johnson County, in effect, as a one-party state. Democrats hold every partisan office in the county. Republicans haven’t won a partisan local election in four decades. And that’s not going to change soon. Just as Democrats stand little chance of taking power statewide, the local GOP is doomed.

This creates curious effects in local politics, where Democratic voters combine anger toward state government with complacency toward local government. They might get worked up about city politics from time to time – a city pool here or a zoning issue there – but they merrily vote for the person with the “D” next to their name in county races and call it a day.

So, that’s JC politics in a nutshell. Democrats always win. And Democratic incumbents almost always win, usually easily.

But then there’s that third name: Mandi Remington. She soundly defeated the third incumbent, Royceann Porter.

Let’s talk about why.

Why Did Mandi Remington Win?

Remington defeated an incumbent, which, again, is the story here. I’ll start by talking about how rare this is. And then I’ll lay out the top reasons she won.

When Do Incumbent JC Democrats Lose?

‘Rare’ isn’t ‘never.’ As I said, even Iowa scores 60 points sometimes. And much like Iowa scoring 60 points, a JC Democrat losing a primary as an incumbent also last happened in 2018. Incumbent Mike Carberry lost to moderate Democrat Pat Heiden in 2018.

It’s tough to generalize from n=1, but I see two features in the Carberry loss. That loss combined two things: a.) a perception that the incumbent leans to the left of the party; and b.) a personal scandal involving the incumbent.

Regarding (a), it was arguably more about perception than reality. Carberry banged the leftist drum, but it seemed to me that he voted like a regular liberal Democrat. Turning to (b), Carberry had a personal incident involving harassment of a county employee. It became a scandal in the context of the #MeToo era.

Consider the contrast between Carberry and Jon Green. Voters also perceive Green as a leftist (more accurately, in the case of Green). Like Carberry, Green faced a primary challenge from his right (Seth Zimmermann). Unlike Carberry, Green had no scandal. And Green won fairly easily.

So, that’s our starting point. Incumbent Democrats win, unless they’re leftists with scandals. To test this further, all we need is a non-leftist with a scandal.

This takes us to last night’s election, and why Mandi Remington won. I’ll complete this list in descending order of importance.

Reason 1 (most important): Royceann Porter was a very bad incumbent.

Let’s say a word about Porter.

In terms of JC politics, Porter counts as a non-leftist (i.e., a conventional moderate to liberal Democrat). She got her start as a local activist with a good track record. She co-founded a local org called Black Voices Project, and, on the whole, she was good for local politics and the community. But as a politician, she lines up at the moderate end of the Democratic Party, drawing her support from more moderate union elements, business interests, middle and upper middle income homeowners across racial lines, and social moderates and liberals.

But those things aren’t why Remington defeated her. Those are just the things that establish her as a proper test case for our under developed theory of when Democratic incumbents lose in JC primaries.

Rather, she lost because she’s really bad at the job of county supervisor. She’s easily the worst officeholder in the county today. Here’s a brief list of why she’s so bad at the job:

Incidents like these are sufficient to show that Porter lacks the temperament and skill set needed to serve in public office. But it’s not even the worst of it. She also attempted to lobby Iowa City’s city council to interfere with its contracts and to try to remove a political enemy from a city commission.

These things get into issues of potential abuse of office and even potential legal liability. It’s all quite remarkable, really. And it was enough to drag Democratic voters out of their complacency and get them to remove Porter, even in a one-party state.

Reason 2 (important, but a bit less so): Remington campaigned effectively and broadly.

Remington was no doubt a hard working campaigner. She pitched her message broadly to the entire county, and she almost certainly hosted more candidate events than any of the other four.

Remington organized her campaign around her extensive resume, her competence, and her willingness to listen to voters. She ran a ‘positive’ campaign focused on her history as an activist, an activist herder (with CCAN), her extensive committee service, and her connections with JC Dem power brokers.

Remington has a background in the local activist scene, and she drew on this background for support and volunteers. But she also appealed to liberal to progressive Democrats who take a more technocratic approach to politics and find the activist scene distasteful. She did so by creatively fusing together a positive coalition of liberals, progressives, non-profit-ism (see my post on anarcho-liberalism), and clean government types.

This is the part where I have to take a “mea culpa.” I thought this sort of campaign was a good way to run for an open seat but not the way to defeat an incumbent. Remington clearly has a solid resume, but I thought she needed to directly criticize Porter’s behavior in order to beat her.

She bet against that, and she won. Good for her. Others, myself included (podcaster Justin Comer deserves a great deal of credit here), helped bring Porter’s conduct to light. But Remington stayed away from that, and it worked for her.

Rampant white liberal guilt stands out as an underlying issue here, and it’s one Remington successfully navigated. JC Dems lean rather white, liberal to progressive, and highly educated. It’s a recipe for Big White Liberal Guilt, and Porter took great care to remind voters of the fact that she’s the county’s first black woman supervisor.

Rather than confront this head-on, Remington campaigned around reassuring voters she’s not ‘too far left’ or ‘too working class.’ It paid off for her.

Reason 3 (less important, but still a factor): Johnson County Democrats have moved to the left.

Historically, the JC Board of Supervisors has been dominated by conservative and moderate Democrats. Usually ones who hail from the rural or small town parts of the county.

However, two underlying changes in the electorate have undermined this. First, the national realignment of the Democratic Party has made it much more a party of liberals and progressives than it once was. And, second, the changing geographical distribution of county Democrats means that voters in Iowa City are relatively more influential and voters in rural Johnson County relatively less influential.

The 2016 election of Trump accelerated these forces.

Consider, for example, the 2020 Democratic primaries, where Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders dominated the vote. An electorate that supports candidates like Warren and Sanders would be open to politics a bit to the left of Porter.

Remington’s biggest supporters lean heavily on this one to argue that the voters preferred her policies to those of Porter.

While there’s a bit to this, and I do think the voters have moved to the left, this is a mixed truth, at best. For one, Remington finished behind a candidate well to her right (Green-Douglass). More importantly, though, she lost a city election less than a year ago, by a wide margin, running on a similar platform. And the city boasts an electorate further to the left than the county electorate.

The previous factors – a very bad incumbent and the breadth of Remington’s coalition – stand out as larger factors than the composition of the electorate.

Reason 4 (not very important, but enough to make the list): Bob Conrad and Porter split the conservative and moderate vote.

I can do a more in-depth analysis later if readers would like. But my first impression is that “Big Sign Bob” drew most of his support from rural Johnson County and the suburban parts of Coralville and North Liberty.

Reader might remenber a post from a few years ago where I compared Porter’s electoral coalition to Jon Green’s. In that post, I showed that her strongest areas (relative to Green, and among Democratic voters) are in the suburban parts of Coralville and North Liberty.

Bob Conrad (and also Green-Douglass) won some of those votes last night.

However, this is the lowest factor on our list because of the margin of victory. Yes, Conrad took some votes that would’ve gone Porter’s way. But it wouldn’t have been enough to make up the gap in votes. Had Porter lost by less than a couple hundred votes, this probably would’ve been the biggest reason.

A Ray of Light In a One-Party State

I went into this election thinking that voter complacency in a one-party state would dictate the re-election of all three incumbents. Even the incumbent who’s clearly bad at her job. I thought the forces of White Liberal Guilt would’ve reinforced this and carried Porter to victory.

But JC Dems stepped up to the plate. They did their due diligence and voted for the challenger. And they get credit from me for that. I’m surprised and impressed.

And so I conclude that incumbent losses aren’t just for leftists with scandals. Not anymore.

Image Source: Photo taken by the author in the author’s neighborhood.