Will the ‘overreach’ finally help Iowa Democrats?

Tourists will stop for a scenic overlook. Sports fans love the drama of overtime. A metric ton of Halloween candy makes us feel overweight. Ugh.

But Iowa Democrats and their allies are pinning their Statehouse hopes on “the overreach.”

Did majority Republicans who run the Golden Dome of Wisdom, now redder than a Turkey’s wattle, go too far as they shoved through their agenda during the two-year General Assembly? A fair amount of stuff they approved, according to polls, is not popular.

Democrats hope the overreach will prompt voters to restore more party balance at the Capitol as a shield against future extremism. Sort of like, you’re drunk with power, Republicans. Go home.

Republicans have governed as if their majority will last 1,000 years. And the last two legislative sessions have been very overreachy.

Perhaps biggest among the GOP overreaches was passage of a six-week abortion ban upheld by four conservative Supreme Court justices. The law denies access to abortion to nearly all Iowa women, who may not know they’re pregnant at six weeks.

True, there are exceptions, for rape, incest, fetal abnormalities and to save the life of the mother. But non-politicians who know what they’re talking about, including physicians and people who help rape victims, will tell you the exceptions are vague and leave plenty of room for women to be harmed, or worse.

And how about those Education Savings Accounts, which use public dollars to provide financial aid to private school students? We have yet to see polling that suggests Iowans wanted this to become law.

What we do know is ESAs are going to get very expensive. In Fiscal Year 2026, when the law will allow any and all private school families to qualify, the cost of the program is estimated to cost nearly $345 million annually. The program’s cost has blown through previous estimates so it could cost more.

Gov. Kim Reynolds argued vouchers are needed to help lower-income families access private education. Now, with the influx of state dollars, the schools are raising tuition. So much for the affordability argument.

While we’re on the subject of schools, maybe you’ve heard about the book ban. Thanks to a new law, school districts must take books from the shelves that depict a sex act.

Legislators were targeting books by LGBTQ authors and stories about discrimination faced by people of color. They showed off some illustrations of sex from a few LGBTQ books, hoping to shock the citizenry. They falsely claimed these works are accessible to grade school kids.

But instead of simply banning books lawmakers don’t like, school districts removed hundreds of books from school libraries for fear all sex acts would get them in trouble. “The Handmaid’s Tale,” Slaughterhouse 5,” and “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” are among the titles removed in some districts, according to a list compiled by the Des Moines Register.

Teachers in grades K-6 are forbidden from even mentioning the existence of LGBTQ people. A little rainbow flag might land a teacher on the carpet before the school board.

Lawmakers also called on the Department of Education to redesign Iowa’s history and social studies curriculum. Legislators passed their own lesson plan, courtesy of the conservative think tank Civics Alliance. The group sees history education as “a recruitment tool of the progressive left.”

The new curriculum will bring back rote memorization of people, places and dates. There will be more Western Civilization, less other civilizations. Slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow and the Civil Rights movement don’t make the cut. Teachers can still discuss those subjects, right after they plow through all the new requirements.

One thing history teaches us is politicians writing curriculum is a bad idea.

Reynolds decided, for dubious reasons, to smack around Area Education Agencies, opening the door for private companies to take over some services. She didn’t get all she wanted, but the AEA system has been harmed, nonetheless.

Republicans loosened child labor laws and provided non-economic damage caps when doctors or trucking companies are taken to court. They toyed with legal protection for Bayer and its top product, Round Up. They gave the heave-ho to diversity programs at the state’s universities, again, hunting indoctrinators.

And all the tax cuts. So many tax cuts, which have denied needed funding for schools, universities, mental health care, state parks and environmental protection.

So lawmakers spent much of their time fixing institutions that didn’t need fixing and creating bureaucracies that don’t need to exist.

But is this overreach?

The clear answer is yes. But as I wrote last year, Republican voters are more interested in sticking with their team than punishing the GOP for approving unpopular bills. Democrats tend to punish politicians for making bad policy.

That’s why Democrats talk about the overreach. Surely the voters have had enough of these policies. Republicans tend to shrug and vote red.

If Democrats manage to shrink the GOP House GOP majority and maybe grab a Senate seat to break the Republican supermajority, that’s what success will look like. The release of the Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll showing Harris with a 3-point lead over Donald Trump is feeding a wave of optimism among Democrats.

The odds remain daunting, but I’m saying there is a chance. We’ll find out on Tuesday.

If that doesn’t happen, the overlook for Democrats will be into the abyss.

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