Zach Wahls -- The Young Man Who Stood Up

 

On January 31, 2011, Zach Wahls, at the time a 19-year-old engineering student at the University of Iowa, delivered some impassioned and articulate testimony before the Iowa House Judiciary Committee, which was considering an anti-gay marriage amendment to the state's constitution. Video of Wahls's speech went viral, because in it he confessed he was the child of lesbian parents and that no one could find any harm that had come to him as the son of a gay marriage. Wahls's words and demeanor were in fact a tribute to the raising those two women had given him. The Economist described his speech: "This is what it looks like to win an argument." Remind yourself of it to have an appreciation of this kid's power of persuasion.

Zach Wahls, now a 33-year-old credit union vice president and member of the Iowa Senate, has set his sights on Joni Ernst's US Senate seat, which she is vacating, and Wahls made a point of highlighting his viral fame from 2011 when he announced his candidacy. (You can watch his announcement video here.) He was and remains an advocate for LGBTQ rights, though he himself is straight with a wife and new baby. He jokes that though he doesn't fit any of the LGBTQ labels, maybe there should be a new category for "Queer-Spawn."

Wahls ran for his seat in the Iowa Senate in 2018, the Blue Wave year of Trump's 1st mid-term. Wahls easily won the seat in a safe Democratic district and faced no opposition in his reelection to a second term in 2022. He was voted the youngest Senate Minority Leader by his Democratic caucus for 2020-2021, but then got booted from that role by a caucus that wouldn't go along with some sweeping changes to policy which included firing a couple of people from the caucus operation. Getting crossways with his own caucus may hurt him in a Democratic primary, but that sort of trouble could also play very well with Independents. Iowa went for Trump in 2024 by almost 56%. The Cook Political Report still rates it R-plus Infinity -- "Likely Republican" -- even after Ernst's announcement.

So Wahls's declaration for the Senate seat on June 11th had no likely influence on Joni Ernst's bowing out. Some might want to suppose that Wahls's name recognition and youth might have spooked Ernst just a little. I don't know. I doubt it, but I can always hope. Stupid, blind, ever-deluded hope.

Now that J.D. Scholten has dropped out of the Democratic primary, Wahls would appear to be the frontrunner in a still crowded field of three other long shots and also-rans. The Iowa primary will be in June, and this is a race to watch.

Keep an Eye on Iowa

I noticed Iowa Democratic senatorial candidate Theresa Greenfield waaay back last August, mainly because her introductory video really impressed me. Apparently, it impressed a lot of Iowa Democrats too, because Greenfield won the Democratic primary for US Senate on June 2, and now she's polling ahead of incumbent Republican Joni Ernst, who was on no one's list of endangered Republican incumbents.

I believe Greenfield is out-farm-girling Joni Ernst, who liked to brag she could castrate a hog when she initially ran for the Senate. Turns out she can't even stand up to the biggest hog who ever planted his butt in the White House. Meanwhile, Greenfield is likable and relatable:

If 2020 is trending like it most certainly is trending, then Joni Ernst could wake up out of a job on November 4, with the US Senate back in Democratic hands.

Watching Theresa Greenfield in Iowa

Political storytelling via video production has come a long way very fast, and I've become a connoisseur of good Democratic candidate introductions. Theresa Greenfield is the Democrat challenging incumbent Iowa Republican Senator Joni Ernst in 2020.





When Ernst first ran in 2014, she produced her own viral video promise to use her hog castration skills to cut the pork in Washington, D.C. and "make 'em squeal." That line became so famous that her failure to stand up to Twitterman's use of professional lobbyists as acting cabinet secretaries and agency heads (what is the count up to now? 6? 8?) presents itself as a big, ripe target for Greenfield.

"The special interests and corporate lobbyists keep feasting like hogs at the trough," Greenfield says in the video above.

According to the Des Moines Register, "Iowa Democrats have faced criticism in recent years for failing to appeal to rural voters. In her bio-heavy announcement video, Greenfield made an immediate case to those voters." She's clad in jeans and plaid shirt throughout and argues a case for farm-girl authenticity.

Greenfield will have to compete in a crowded Democratic senatorial primary on June 2, 2020. Two other Democrats have already made announcements -- lawyer Kimberly Graham and businessman/failed congressional candidate in 2018 Eddie Mauro -- with additional others expected to step forward before all the dust settles.

Joni Ernst has plenty of money ($2.8 million banked) and high approval (57% positive), so it's going to take some heavy shoveling for any Democrat to muck out that barn.

Virginia Foxx Pants

Some things about the State of the Union ... you just couldn't make up. Virginia Foxx's fame-whore rush to get the president's autograph, despite what he stands for as opposed to what she stands for, despite what he just said in that speech, despite the embarrassing optics of her fawning ... well, it's cringe-worthy.

Even more gag-inducing ("Gag me with a dipper, y'all!") was Joni Ernst's #breadbag brag that she knows everything there is to know about being poor, so y'all should just cheer up about your low wages 'n' stuff, because she's made it to the U.S. Senate!

Someone on Facebook observed that fake poverty screams as loudly as does a fake Southern accent.

As does the hypocrisy of the Lady in Blue.

ADDENDUM
Yep. She pours acid out of that side of her mouth that isn't simultaneously drooling. From Carolina Public Press:

Rep. Virginia Foxx, who represents a portion of Western North Carolina in the state’s 5th Congressional District, slammed the president’s speech, declaring him “mired in the past.”

“The American people spoke loud and clear in November, but it’s evident from tonight’s State of the Union that President Obama wasn’t listening,” Foxx said in a news release. “Despite a rejection of his policies at the ballot box, the president continues to propose outdated, Washington-centered ideas that simply don’t work.”

Foxx, who was elected to a sixth term last year, decried the president’s proposals on tax reform and higher education, calling the latter a “top-down federal government boondoggle.”

Still, the congresswoman thought highly enough of Obama to ask for what appeared to be an autograph on the floor following his address, causing a buzz among social media users who spotted her on TV.