I live in Iowa City. Among other things, it’s (by far) the most liberal part of a purple state. Look, Iowa’s a lot more red than it used to be. But I grew up in Indiana. We’re still doing better here in Iowa than over there. And we’re doing better in Iowa City than anywhere else in Iowa.
Living in a liberal oasis of sorts affects our local politics. For one, the GOP is basically a non-entity. All serious politics at the city level takes place within a political space we might describe as ‘to the left of Joe Manchin.’ Within that broad space, we have all flavors of Democratic, leftist, independent, and even libertarian factions.
City Politics
Despite the lack of partisan debate, we see plenty of disagreement. The city council includes members ranging from pro-business fiscal conservatives (Susan Mims) to progressives (Mazahir Salih). Even though neither of those two council members is running for re-election, the range won’t change much this fall. As far as I can tell, both voted for Joe Biden. As did all four of the candidates on the ballot. And, while some in the Iowa City activist scene might disagree, both Mims and Salih fit snugly within standard Democratic Party views. The city council has no GOP and no socialist presence. It won’t after this election, either.
And so, much like Bloomington, Indiana – my previous town – Iowa City displays what we might expect from a one-party state. There’s plenty of debate, but almost all of it concerns various tactical questions. We fight about how to fund local orgs, how to balance the interests of small business with those of the community, whether our funding is more or less progressive, whether to behave with fiscal restraint or liberalism, and so on. But just about everyone checks in as a social progressive, and almost all promote clean government and oppose corruption.
Special Issues for Iowa City
I find a few special stumbling blocks to local action. First, there’s the poorly kept secret that the GOP state legislature hates Iowa City and goes out of its way to remove Iowa City’s authority to do things. But that’s probably less of a problem than some think. For one, when the city council wants to, it can often work around this. But, two, most of the things the state bans cities from doing are things our city council wouldn’t have done anyway. The state bans us from enacting rent control, makes it difficult to defund the police, and so on. Our current city council wouldn’t do those things even if it could.
I’ll move on to consider things more internal to Iowa City’s structure.
Iowa City’s Structure
Second, given its mass of highly educated, wealthier residents – see, for example, the fact that it was the only place in the state where Elizabeth Warren did well in the Iowa Caucus – issues of decorum, respect, and language dominate our politics. And they do so to the almost total exclusion of mass, participatory, class politics.
When we do see class politics in Iowa City, it comes in the form of wealthy people using backdoor channels to pressure local politicians. And they’re very good at shrouding all this in friendly, decorous language.
In short, there’s an irony here. Many Iowa City leftists use the language of class politics to do things that aren’t class politics: promote non-profit and NGOism, engage in advocacy work, promote narrowly targeted programs, and so on. Meanwhile, the Iowa City business community uses benign language to engage in all-out class warfare against working-class people.
Go figure.
Iowa City’s Form of Government
Finally, the biggest problem with the city council – frankly, its core dysfunction – is that it operates as a council-manager system. I’ve written about this before and won’t dwell on it here. But the gist of it: our city council functions more like a non-profit board of directors than like the city council of, say, New York or Chicago. City council members work part-time for the city. The city manager (i.e., the city executive director) and his staff run the show.
It’s not a hopeless situation. And I don’t think the left should totally avoid engaging with local politics due to this. Some readers might even know that I’m currently the chair of our Housing and Community Development Commission! So clearly I do not totally oppose participation. But it carries special challenges.
Iowa City Activism and Local Politics
Since I arrived in 2007 – and many years prior – Iowa City has always had a vibrant local activist scene. And, really, more than one scene. We’ve had anarchist groups, socialist groups, direct action groups, feminist and/or anti-racist groups, IWW activity, solidarity networks, tenants unions, and so on.
For the most part, those groups don’t participate in local electoral politics. In some cases, it’s because they’re centered on the university. But most actually aren’t. In the rare case where activist groups do leap into local politics, they show mixed results at best.
Conversely, many non-profit and advocacy groups do participate in local politics. But they don’t typically bring an activist or democratic model to that work. They do lots of great advocacy work. Sometimes they succeed in mobilizing the community. But the basic model centers on class collaboration, a donor base of wealthier progressives, and advocacy rather than solidarity. Their models range from the non-profit world to Alinskyite community organizing.
These groups make Iowa City a better place to live. But they’re not building toward any kind of leftist future.
Iowa City Leftism vs. Liberalism and Progressivism
I might, then, say a word about some of the tensions between Iowa City leftists, on the one hand, and liberals and progressives, on the other. The basis for the tension is, to put it at its most basic level, mistrust. At times warranted and at times not.
Leftists see Iowa City liberals and progressives as, for the most part, people who want to live in a pro-business, socially progressive liberal bubble that doesn’t challenge the city’s basic structure of power. Some leftists throw the word ‘shitlib‘ around a lot to describe them.
Liberals and progressives, in turn, see leftists as idealistic, moralistic scolds and wielders of purity politics. They think leftists place doctrine over getting things done.
I assume most readers know which side I think gets it right more often. Liberals and progressives often do a lot more grandstanding and talking than getting things done. Especially when it comes to economic and racial issues. It’s hard, therefore, not to see a lot of the charges they level against leftists as psychological projection.
But even I’ll admit that the liberal and progressive side isn’t always wrong about the left. Oh, it’s mostly wrong. But I do spend a fair bit of my time trying to nudge fellow leftists away from moralism and talk of ‘human rights‘ and toward class interests and class politics.
Iowa City’s Political Center
From all of the above, I might, then, sketch out a quick note on Iowa City’s political center of gravity. Here’s what Iowa City’s political center looks like: solidly Democratic, driven by small business and/or upper middle-income folks, progressive on social issues (esp. gender, race, and sexual orientation), fiscally moderate, anti-leftist, anti-class politics, anti-tranformative change, pro-business (especially downtown), and grounded in the gospel of class collaboration over class conflict.
For leftists, many of the things on the list are pretty bad. And I agree. But I also grew up in rural southern Indiana, where some of the things on that list would qualify one as a communist. Again, go figure. I’d rather live in Iowa City than there.
Among the 7 members of the city council, no one really falls outside of the above description. A few council members show perhaps minor deviations in one or two areas. But they share far more in common. At least two city council members – Laura Bergus and Bruce Teague – appear to tick literally every box of the Iowa City political center. If you want to imagine Iowa City politics in the form of a person, imagine Bergus or Teague.
For at least the near future, Iowa City politics will likely continue to rotate around that center.
