Will political parties themselves become a target in the Great Populism Wave?
by NATALIE FERTIG
Data Centers. Big Ag. Political Parties.
I went to Iowa at the end of September to follow Christina Bohannan, a former state representative in her third attempt to flip Iowa’s 1st Congressional District, as she crisscrossed rural Iowa on a multi-county tour.
In full disclosure, I planned to write about the populist groundswell in Iowa — a story the New Yorker dropped as I ran through the Chicago airport to make my connecting flight. It’s good; you should read it.
Instead, this newsletter will pull on a different thread from Iowa.
Over cups of coffee and plates of cookies, Bohannan — in her utilitarian raincoat, jeans and sweater — asked rural voters across the political spectrum about healthcare costs, tariffs, new housing construction and the niche policy issues their towns or businesses face. But between five campaign stops and nearly 200 miles, nothing made Iowans sit up straighter, clap harder, or talk over each other more than Citizens United.
Campaign finance reform is a niche issue — this is not the high cost of eggs — but its salience amid rising cancer rates and high diesel prices is proof that voters are frustrated not just by a handful of current policies, but at a political system they feel fails to work for everyday Americans.
DISPATCH
The mood in a room changes when Christina Bohannan talks about Citizens United.
“If you said to me, you’re only going to be able to do one thing when you get in Congress … that’s what it would be,” she repeated multiple times throughout the day I followed her around her highly rural 1st Congressional District: “To overturn or pass a constitutional amendment to end Citizens United.”
“Citizens United is the biggest thing,” one Iowan muttered in response over a bowl of soup at a cafe in Oskaloosa, about an hour outside Des Moines. A similar statement received cheers from a crowd of more than 50 in a Sigourney library, and breathed life into a small business meeting. In 2,000-person Sigourney, someone in the crowd yelled “Amen!”
“Transactional government is becoming more evident, more talked about,” said Joe Maxwell, co-founder of nonpartisan activist group Farm Action Fund. He says that compared to two or four years ago, people are “a lot more open to overturning Citizens United.”
Generally a villain to elite liberal arts college graduates, Citizens United is shorthand for the 2010 Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. FEC that changed the way money influences politics by removing limits on how much money corporations could spend on political campaigns. The most prominent politician to champion overturning Citizens United was Elizabeth Warren, who took 3rd in the 2020 Iowa Caucus.
“It was seen as elitism because only people like Elizabeth Warren … were talking about it,” Maxwell pointed out. But increasingly as of late, the vast amount of money in politics makes rural voters view the system as a tacit understanding among the “haves” — corporations and people with political power — while the “have-nots” are left behind. “People are hurting worse now,” Maxwell added. “They have been betrayed by the one thing [Trump] they thought was going to save them. They’re very open.”
The anti-party sentiment was strong on Bohannan’s rural tour. The first questions she fielded at a Sigourney meet-and-greet were about her allegiance to her own party.
“Many of us are looking for good reasons to vote for you,” said Marty Lucas, 68. “Year after year after year, we hear the promises, promises, promises. And it’s all performative; as soon as it hits Washington, and nothing happens.”
Lucas pushed Bohannan to abandon Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, whose leadership he finds lacking. Bohannan instead laid out the requirements she has for any potential majority leader, should she win and Democrats retake the House. They include support for a prohibition on lawmakers lobbying post-Congress and a stock trading ban with more teeth.
As she spoke, raised hands went down. “You kind of covered it,” the next man said when she pointed to him: “The stock trading thing.”
Overturning Citizens United inspires a unique level of passion in rural Iowa. But while that 16-year-old court decision may not find the same recognition everywhere, the idea it is built on — that politicians serve the people who fund their campaigns before they serve the voters who elect them — faces widespread anger across rural America. At a town meeting about a proposed data center in Pennsylvania last month, I heard similar frustrations over the amount of money that tech companies and developers gave politicians.
In fact, both political parties can boast similarly dismal approval ratings in America right now: 55.5% of voters hold an unfavorable view of Republicans and 53.8% of voters hold an unfavorable view of Democrats, according to a current Real Clear Politics average of polls conducted from mid-August through September 21.
In Iowa, that’s inspired candidates in both parties to separate themselves from their national brand: Bohannan tells crowds that the Republican vs. Democrat battle “feels a little old and tired” while Republicans like Rep. Ashley Hinson (who is running for Senate) criticize President Donald Trump’s trade policies, as well as his use of taxpayer dollars to fund TV ads.
But voters like Marty Lucas say the proof will be in what happens after November.
I caught up with him after Bohanan’s Q&A. Clad in a green, plaid flannel shirt (with suspenders underneath, he noted), Lucas told me that he’s a Democratic Socialist and has voted for Republicans before in local elections. A retiree, he still farms 200 acres of alfalfa “for therapy.”
Standing between the refrigerator and a table stacked with an ungodly amount of homemade cookies, Lucas and his brother Don explained they want Democrats in Congress to cut off funding for the Iran war and to Israel, investigate the Epstein files and do more on antitrust and corruption.
“What we’ve seen from the Democratic Party for 25 years is a whole bunch of performative, we say all the right things, and then nothing happens,” Marty said. “The corporate Democrats have sold us out.”
Politicians like Bohannan must push for change, he added, or face primary and third-party challenges in the future. “If we don’t start seeing results immediately, then we start working hard at a grassroots level to make the changes necessary so that we can hold them accountable,” he said.
The next evening in Cedar Rapids, a Republican said something similar.
“We’re lifelong Republicans,” Randy Krug told me after he and his wife attended a rally for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Rob Sand. Krug said he’s disappointed in the way current Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds has refused to stand up against her own party in recent years when policies didn’t benefit Iowa. “She’s got a rubber stamp for them,” he explained.
The Krugs are not fans of President Trump but still identify as Republican and plan to vote for a few GOP candidates at the local level in November. But they are so frustrated with the unwillingness of their GOP-led legislature to push back on federal policies, they’re willing to vote to flip the governor’s mansion.
Gubernatorial candidate Rob Sand, whom they support, is doing everything he can to separate himself and the Iowans who come to his rallies from the national political parties.
If you’re tapped into Iowa politics, you’ve by now read about Rob Sand’s town hall schtick. In city after city, he criticizes politics as run “by two private clubs” and invites Republicans, independents and Democrats to cheer for each other. Then, together, they sing “America the Beautiful.”
Reading about this and seeing it in person are very different.
A man in the back of Cedar Rapids’ Veterans Memorial Building & Commission led the crowd of about 1,000 people on a crisp September night in singing the first verse, with a deep “O beautiful…”
Before the impromptu choir reached “spacious skies,” a short woman in the second row popped up from her seat. Then a man in an American flag shirt across the room stood as well.
Like a microwaving bag of popcorn, the crowd gradually stood in greater numbers. By the time they reached “America, America, God shed his grace on thee,” virtually everyone was on their feet. As the song ended, many eyes were wet.
“Doesn’t that feel better?” Sand said to the nodding crowd. “Anybody sick of politics?”
Most Iowans, including GOP gubernatorial candidate Zach Lahn, are spouting a populist message this year — railing against corporate monopolies and promising to make the system more fair for everyday Americans. But there’s a reason the Democratic state auditor is drawing big crowds, and a recent Marist poll put him 12 percentage points ahead of Lahn in a state that Trump just won by 13 points. It’s because the corporations Sand is campaigning against, first and foremost, are the Republican and Democratic parties.
Reposted from https://nataliefertig1.substack.com/p/its-2026-and-these-voters-want-to
