Prichard, Brown easily hold on to legislative seats

By James Grob, jgrob@charlescitypress.com

The Democratic Party took a beating in Iowa in Tuesday’s election, but Rep. Todd Prichard, D-Charles City, managed to survive the onslaught.

“We went backwards as a party, which was really disappointing,” Prichard said. “But I take it as a compliment that people are willing to cross party lines to vote for me.”

Statewide, the Democrats lost six seats in the Iowa House, as the Republican Party increased its majority to 59-41. Prichard, the House minority leader, is currently the only Democrat in the Legislature who represents a rural district.

“States that went for Trump went Republican up and down the ballot, and that was the national mood,” Prichard said.

In his local race for the District 52 seat against Craig Clark, a Republican from Rockford, Prichard received 53.7% of the vote to Clark’s 46.3%. In Floyd County, Prichard received 56.7% of the vote. Iowa House District 52 consists of Floyd, Chickasaw and the eastern third of Cerro Gordo counties. Prichard was unopposed in the 2018 election, and this will be his fifth term since winning a special election for the seat in 2013.

Prichard said the many negative ads and direct mail attacks that Republicans ran against him during this campaign just didn’t ring true.

“People know me better than that,” he said. “They know I try to work with people to make the state better, I don’t play partisan politics.”

Sen. Waylon Brown, R-St. Ansgar, who easily won re-election over Osage Democrat Deb Sharper, agreed with Prichard’s campaign philosophy.

“I was happy with the way our race was run. We kept everything positive,” Brown said. “If we can’t run and win on our track record as an incumbent, then that’s the way it is.”

He collected 65.5% of the vote to Scharper’s 34.5%, and won more than 60 percent of the vote in all seven counties. District 26 represents Mitchell, Chickasaw, Floyd, Howard, Worth and portions of Cerro Gordo and Winneshiek counties.

Brown said that winning a race with a negative campaign makes it more difficult to govern effectively.

“On the national level there’s enough negativity for everyone,” Brown said. “There’s so much with politics that’s relationship-building, and it’s walking across the aisle and finding individuals you can work with and have meaningful conversations with, in order to get things accomplished.”

Brown, a farmer and small business owner, has served in the Iowa Senate since 2016 after defeating incumbent Democrat Mary Jo Wilhelm of Cresco. He said that he has always believed that the best solutions come from compromise.

“The answers to our problems aren’t on the far sides of the political spectrum. The answers are somewhere in the middle,” he said.

Statewide, the Republican majority in the Senate remained where it was before, with the GOP holding a 32-18 edge.

“The Republicans have all the cards. They control all branches of the state government,” Prichard said. “We’ll work with them where we can, but it’s their show. We’ll see what their agenda is and what their legislative priorities are.”

Both Prichard and Brown said that the most important issue for the upcoming legislative session is handling the COVID-19 pandemic in Iowa.

“We need to do what we can to ensure that our economy is coming back at the state level,” Brown said.

He said the Legislature would have to take a hard look at their budgets, because he believes the next budgeting year will be challenging, with revenue lost from the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Take a look at the COVID numbers here in Iowa, and all over the world,” Brown said. “We’re definitely not out of the woods yet, and we need to take the steps we need to take to address that.”

Prichard agreed.

“We still want to get the state through COVID and get back to normal,” Prichard said. “We want to get back to work, school and business and get COVID behind us, and that will be everyone’s priority, on both sides of the aisle.”

Beyond that, Prichard said he will continue to focus on accessible health care, and improving education and infrastructure in Iowa.

“It doesn’t really change,” he said. “Democrats have always been the party of working people, and nothing in this election, or any other election, will change our focus on that.”

Prichard said that he hopes that, despite the Republican majority, that the two parties can find issues they agree on.

“I’m sure there are areas where we’ll disagree, but I hope we can all agree that rural Iowa needs help,” he said. “Rural Iowa needs better job training, better health care and better education. I hope that we all can focus on better meeting the needs of rural Iowa.”

Brown had a similar outlook.

“It has been my honor to lead and be a voice for Iowa’s farming and working families,” Brown said. “I’m excited to continue working to create family-supporting jobs, strengthen our schools, reduce the cost of health care and support agriculture.”