A quick glance at the results of last November’s city council election in Iowa City doesn’t show much. It reveals only blowout elections and unopposed candidates. A closer look, however, reveals a big win for the city’s major business org (the Downtown District) and a loss for working-class candidates.
Let’s take a closer look.
Working-Class Candidates vs. Business Candidates: A Different Frame
On the ballot, voters found only one candidate in District C, two incumbents facing off in District A, and then three candidates vying for two At-Large seats.
But we can trim this down a bit. There’s no point in discussing the C election. The At-Large race quickly turned into a run between two political newbies for the second seat. The first-place winner – Mazahir Salih- didn’t win by as large a margin as I expected. But she did win.
In practice, then, the ballot featured a race between Laura Bergus and Pauline Taylor, two incumbents running for District A, and a race between Josh Moe and Mandi Remington, two newbies to electoral politics. In both cases, we saw a working-class candidate (Taylor and Remington) lose to a member of Iowa City’s professional class (Bergus and Moe).
I think that division – between the working class, on one hand, and the professional class, on the other, says more about the results than any other framing of the race.
However, most followers of Iowa City politics – including Iowa City’s activist community – frame all this a different way. They paired Bergus with Remington and Moe with Taylor.
Why?
Here’s the thought: Bergus and Remington endorse modern ‘abolitionism,’ or the movement that sets as its goal the replacement of prisons and police with social services and systems of restorative justice. Moe and Taylor, on the other hand, aren’t into abolition. They support keeping or expanding police funding levels and footprint.
But I’m going to argue that the activist framing doesn’t work.
Explaining the Results, Part 0
There’s a quick and easy story to tell about why the activist framing fails.
‘Abolition’ wasn’t the only (or even primary) issue at stake. Yes, activists hit that issue pretty hard. But it didn’t stand out to most voters. They were far more worried about issues like housing and other local concerns.
And once voters look past ‘abolition,’ the candidates had more in common than not. All four of them, really, but especially Bergus, Moe, and Taylor. Among the four, only Remington offered glimpses of ideas to the left of standard Iowa City politics.
Part of the story, then, was just that local activists projected their own more radical ideas onto Bergus and (even more so) Remington. However, neither one seems to actually hold those views. I mention this only because it’s a routine mistake local activists make. And a cause of regular discontent with politicians who ‘sold out’ (e.g., the ‘Core Four,’ Mazahir Salih, Jon Green, et al.).
Explaining the Results, Part 1
But let’s set that aside. Let’s dig deeper.
The activist frame for the election poorly explains the results: Moe won in a blowout, and Bergus defeated Taylor in an even larger blowout. How in the world could activists explain one allegedly ‘leftist’ candidate winning big over a fellow incumbent and the other losing big to a political newbie?
I think most activists didn’t think too hard about it. They didn’t have much to say. But I did see claims roughly like this: Mayor Bruce Teague attacked Bergus in the press at the last minute. This kicked up a backlash against Taylor. Why? Iowa City voters are mostly leftists who like abolition. So, they noticed and Bergus won big. Remington, by contrast, didn’t benefit from all this. Moe pretended to be a ‘progressive’ in order to win.
To be blunt, this so-called ‘explanation’ is wrong from top to bottom. But I’ll try to list the most serious problems: Voters, aside from a few who follow closely, hardly noticed the Teague attack on Bergus. It had little impact. Bergus was already way ahead of Taylor before the attack (see the primary results). As for abolition, it’s unpopular in pretty much all cities. Especially police abolition. Most Iowa City voters aren’t demanding abolition.
Explaining the Results, Part 2
So, that’s a bad start. Let’s try again, using my frame this time.
Remington and Taylor stood out to voters as working-class candidates who carried strong class markers. Bergus and Moe, by contrast, stood out to voters as well spoken, articulate professional class members. Lots of Iowa City voters come from the latter group. But, even more than that, Iowa City politics favors politicians who appeal to them.
In terms of ideology, all four were broadly similar. They all identify and slot as some flavor of ‘liberal’ or ‘progressive.’ Sure, they don’t use the labels in the same way. But they all fall within mainstream Iowa City politics.
This gave a nice boost to Bergus and Moe.
Readers should recall that Iowa City is the kind of place where Elizabeth Warren won in the 2020 caucus. One of the very few in the state. How? Warren was the darling of professional class progressives. Iowa City is a hotbed of Warrenism.
By contrast, the division activists drew between Bergus and Remington, on one hand, and Moe and Taylor, on the other, didn’t register. Voters saw them as pretty much the same. Even the Remington non-profit coalition politics didn’t quite get to a contrast.
And so, the results clearly weren’t about incumbency, ideology, or attacks. Rather, under Iowa City’s politics lies a whole host of biases against actual working-class people and candidates. These biases, I think, cut strongly against both Remington and Taylor. They’re a large part of why both lost. And I think these biases present a challenge to any future candidate who wants to build working-class political power in Iowa City.
Iowa City Doesn’t Like Working-Class Candidates
Iowa City politics favor well spoken, erudite, technocratic, upper middle class liberals and progressives. That makes it tough for the working class. Both Remington and Taylor faced this and couldn’t overcome it.
For Taylor, I think it was all pretty clear. Bergus is a young, photogenic, well spoken and articulate lawyer who embraces progressive politics. She has a deep history in Iowa City and comes off as very smart and confident. That’s a tough package for anyone to defeat. By contrast, Taylor isn’t photogenic and doesn’t come off as smart during council meetings. She also has a reputation of just following the mayor (both the former and current mayor).
Against Remington, I think the biases got uglier. Lots of Iowa City found her, in various ways, ‘tacky.’ She carries lots of markers of a person from the working class: she looks a bit older than her age, she wears a lot of makeup, and her clothing isn’t great on style. She’s not a polished or even good public speaker. And her campaign signs are decked out in garish color and design.
All these things send class markers to voters. And Iowa City voters carry biases against them.
One of the tricks here, of course, is that no well-off liberal or progressive would admit these things played a role in their vote. I doubt many of them even know it’s why they picked Moe. But it was a thing. And I think it goes some distance toward explaining the results. And so, I think it’s silly to pretend that these things weren’t a factor in the race. Many of Remington’s campaign moves even looked like efforts to mitigate these issues.
A Note on Class Politics in Iowa City
Where does that leave us, then, as leftists looking to build political power as a working class? For one, I don’t think we should conclude that biases against working class candidates were the deepest cause or factor at play. As usual, biases served an underlying class politics.
I’ll conclude with a note on those class politics.
The Downtown District – a major business org in Iowa City – rated Moe and Bergus as its top picks. More generally, I think voters got the message that they were the most pro-business candidates. And not without a good reason. Bergus and Moe espouse pro-capital, pro-development policies. Bergus has stood out as the primary YIMBY on the council, and Moe will probably surpass her in the next term. Wrapped in social progressivism, these policies tend to win in Iowa City.
Activists, by contrast, suffered from a poor analysis. They just missed the class politics at play.
And so, these class politics explain a great deal about why Bergus and Moe won. But even on those issues, not a ton of ground separated the four candidates. Remington and Taylor didn’t run anti-capital campaigns, and neither laid out a real alternative.
As leftists, then, we face obstacles. Our challenge is to develop an actual Iowa City left. One that doesn’t just involve waving around slogans like radlibs or trying to chase ultra-progressivism.
We can add mitigating and overcoming bias against working-class candidates to our list of challenges.
