A Trip To Iowa
"Iowa Sky, Northwest IA 7-13" by inkknife_2000 (11.5 million views) is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
In his neighboring state, Daniel Nardini found people have more in common than politics.
Just a few days before the mid-term elections, my wife and I went to Clinton, Iowa. Clinton is 20 miles from where we live. It is right on the other side of the Mississippi River from the town of Fulton on the Illinois side.
We crossed the bridge over the majestic Mississippi River into Clinton to look for new shoes for me. We weren’t able to find any in my size, so we decided to get something to eat at a local McDonald's and ended up paying $25 for two Filet-o-Fish sandwiches, one Big Mac and two large fries.
Yes. It was NOT cheap.
As we sat in the lobby, we could hear the local radio stations reminding voters to vote for Republican candidates running in the state and national election. I should explain that Iowa is a very Republican state. There is no Medicaid for those who are low income families without disabilities, and abortion is not a protected right. In Illinois, where we live, abortion is a protected right and Medicaid does cover all low income families whether they have anyone with a disability or not.
But on that day, most of the conversations in the restaurant were not on the election. Most people were talking about everyday events, their families, their job situation,and the worsening economy. Nothing about who they would elect.
Interestingly enough, I saw few signs and billboards for Republican candidates in Clinton in this time period. In the 2016 and 2020 U.S. presidential elections, I saw all kinds of posters, billboards and paid advertisements for Republican candidates, and for Donald Trump especially.
Truth be told, many people seemed just totally uninterested in the mid-term elections even on a local level. I believed they were most likely going to vote for the candidates of their choice, and they were most likely going to be Republican. But there was just no real enthusiasm for the Republicans as there had been in previous years.
With the exception of four counties, Iowa is a solidly Republican state, and a deeply conservative one. Even though many people in Illinois have jobs in Iowa, the job situation in the area of Iowa near where we live does not have the best availability of jobs. Even then, the hourly wages for jobs in Iowa are lower overall compared to Illinois.
A few years back, my wife tried to find work in Iowa. Although I helped her try to find work in Iowa, I emphasized that a job in Illinois would be better because the wages are higher, and we could use our Medicaid benefits, which might not be accepted in Iowa (fortunately she got work in Illinois).
As we left Iowa, we were happy to cross the river back into Illinois (nothing against Iowa, mind you). Eventually I found the shoes I wanted in Sterling, Illinois.
It was a foregone conclusion that the Republican Party would keep control of Iowa, as the Democratic Party has kept control of Illinois. Both Fulton and Clinton, being right next to each other, cooperate with each other in regards to commerce, crime prevention, and infrastructure projects. But this cooperation does not always extend into the political arena due to the two states being in opposite political party camps.
Despite this, the one other important thing that the people in Illinois and Iowa share in common is that they want more jobs, an end to inflation and a better quality of life than they already have.
Someday we might go back to Iowa for another reason.
Daniel Nardini spent 22 years as a newspaper correspondent for Lawndale News and The Fulton Journal. He has published six books, including his eyewitness account of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, The Day China Cried. He is listed as an Illinois author in the Illinois Center for the Book.
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