This week, we paused to remember September 11th, 25 years later. Kathie, Laura, and Ed each shared where they were that day. Kathie watched the towers fall live on TV, Laura was in London and saw the shock ripple through Britain (which lost 67 citizens that day), and Ed watched fighter jets and Air Force One crisscross an eerily empty sky over Iowa. It’s a reminder of how much the world shifted that morning, and how differently a new generation experiences that history.
On the political side, we dug into the GOP’s midterm convention in Dallas and Trump’s surprise pitch to send every American adult $5,000. Ed broke down why he sees it as inflationary deficit spending rather than a “revenue hit,” and Laura pointed out this is just the latest in a string of promised dividends (DOGE checks, tariff dividends) that haven’t materialized. Ashley Hinson, for her part, stayed carefully noncommittal when asked about it back home in Iowa.
We also talked Cy-Hawk weekend politics. Tailgate stops are now basically mandatory campaign stops, from Zach Wahls to Mariannette Miller-Meeks’ star-studded tailgate. We closed with Martin O’Malley’s visit to stump for Social Security solvency alongside Josh Turek, plus the news that Iowa’s caucuses are now officially locked in as first-in-the-nation for 2028.
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Auto-generated transcript below:
Dave Price: Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Iowa Down Ballot podcast. If you’re watching the video version of this, you can tell it’s a Cy-Hawk weekend — one of our contributors this week wants you to know what he’s proudly wearing. We’ll get to him in a moment.
We also have a somber remembrance this week: 25 years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. We’ll talk about that a little. A former presidential candidate came to Iowa — that seems to happen every week now — in this case it was Martin O’Malley, talking about Social Security. We’ll talk about whether we agree that Social Security will be a big issue for voters this November. Plus, President Trump wants to give you $5,000 — but there’s a big catch. We’ll cover that and more.
Let’s bring on our panelists. Mr. Iowa Hawkeye, demonstrating his pride — Ed Failor Jr., longtime Republican advisor and staffer. Hello, sir.
Ed Failor: Hello, how are you today?
Dave Price: We’re good. Laura Belin, our regular. Kathie Obradovich, our regular — not that you’re “regular,” you know what I mean.
Kathie Obradovich: Well, I have to say, I wasn’t prepared for the rivalry.
Dave Price: Oh.
Kathie Obradovich: Because I am, I think, the only Cyclone on the panel here. But Ed, hat tip to you.
Laura Belin: I’m neutral — I’m Switzerland on the Iowa/Iowa State game, because I’m a Michigan fan.
Dave Price: We pledge civility on this show, but Cy-Hawk may bring some other emotion out this week. We’ll see how Ed and Kathie coexist.
Ed Failor: I’m an elephant.
Kathie Obradovich: Cyclone.
Ed Failor: I’m always nice to the younger sibling who just can’t get by.
Dave Price: And for those watching the video version — Ed’s on the mend here. You good? You’ve got a big bandage on your forehead.
Ed Failor: Yeah, just a little skin issue — sun damage and all that. Had a small thing taken care of yesterday, and I’ve got to leave this on for a day and a half or two days. So yeah, I’m golden.
Dave Price: All good, good to hear.
Remembering September 11th
Dave Price: I thought this week we should address — we’re recording on September 11th. I know this drops on the weekend, but there were a lot of moments throughout Friday looking back 25 years. It’s one of those things where you realize your age a bit — neither of my kids was alive when the 9/11 attacks happened. I have a coworker in television who’s only 24, and when we were talking about story ideas for 9/11, I figured she wouldn’t know much about it firsthand. Kathie, do you remember what was happening in your life on September 11, 2001?
Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, I was still working for the Lee Enterprises papers. I remember the day vividly — I was getting ready for work with the TV on, half-watching while I got dressed, and when I turned it on, the first tower had already been hit. So then I’m glued to the TV, assuming at that point it was a terrible accident. I was still watching when the second plane hit the tower.
Honestly, it makes me tear up right now — I literally burst into tears when I saw it. The weeks afterward were just a blur. We were wondering whether the state capitol would be a target — Tom Vilsack was governor at the time — and there was a lot of discussion about Homeland Security and what could be at risk in Iowa: the water supply, the food supply. There was a lot of talk about securing Iowa’s food supply because of the sudden insecurity everyone felt. But yeah, I’ll never forget that morning, watching that plane hit the second tower.
Dave Price: I had a similar experience. I slept in that day and missed the first one — a friend called me, I flipped on the TV, and then saw the second one. Laura, what do you remember of that day?
Laura Belin: I was in graduate school, living in London, so my morning was completely normal. I watched the BBC noontime news and nothing was happening yet — the first plane hit a little before 2 p.m. in Britain. Somebody called me, and I turned on the TV a little after 2.
A lot of people don’t realize the 9/11 attacks were the deadliest terror attack in British history — at least 67 UK citizens were killed, mostly in the World Trade Center: some on the observation deck, some working at Cantor Fitzgerald, some passengers on the planes. No IRA attack in the UK ever killed nearly as many people. It was a massive story — for weeks afterward, if people heard my American accent, they’d say, “We’re so sorry for what happened to your country.” British media coverage focused a lot on the British victims too, but it was an unbelievable, devastating experience — people in Europe really felt the scale of the calamity.
Dave Price: Ed, where were you back then?
Ed Failor: I was at Iowans for Tax Relief in Muscatine when it happened. What stands out to me — the actual events were awful, obviously — but I remember going out into the yard just to catch my breath and look around. There was no air traffic. It was eerie. Then I saw jets, probably F-16s, come screaming west to east. I’m an Air Force veteran, I worked in ops, so I thought, “The president’s probably in the air right now.” Then they came screaming back. And then, at a much slower pace, another big plane came through — that had to be Air Force One, making its way from Omaha back to DC.
I remember thinking: the only things in the sky right now are our president and some fighter jets. That felt almost as profound, in some ways, as the tragedy itself — like, wow, the world’s changed forever. Nothing’s going to be the same. That’s what I remember feeling, watching those planes go back and forth.
Dave Price: I remember our television newsroom — everybody scrambling, rushing in without even being called, but not really knowing what to do. Like Kathie said — is the state capitol safe? The airport had shut down, so we had crews out there talking to grounded, confused passengers walking off planes. As a reporter, you’re processing what’s happening as an American, while also trying to figure out what the story should even be.
The technology was so different back then — today it’d all be social media and digital, but this was the early days of that. We interviewed all kinds of people and shot stories that never aired, because the networks were on 24/7 for days and there wasn’t room. Local TV was kind of stuck, still transitioned to the old world, rushing from place to place trying to figure out what to do — but feeling kind of useless.
Laura Belin: The BBC also preempted all other coverage — wall to wall, that day and the next.
Dave Price: Yeah, it was...
Kathie Obradovich: There were 13 people with Iowa ties killed that day, either at the towers or on United Flight 93, which people remember crash-landed in Pennsylvania after passengers realized they were being hijacked and brought the plane down. And here’s how small a world it is — two of the people who passed away that day had siblings still in Iowa whom I personally know. I grew up with one family in Ames, the Haviland family — one of the younger brothers of the man who passed away was a classmate of mine. It tells you what a small community Iowa really is.
Laura Belin: It really changed a lot of people’s lives. I remember soapbox speeches — Lindsey James said she decided to become a chaplain after 9/11 because she knew someone on Flight 93. And Nicholas Gluba, the Libertarian who ran for governor, decided to join the Marines after 9/11. A lot of people made huge, life-changing decisions because of what happened.
Kathie Obradovich: One of our current statehouse newsroom editors, Tim Lambert — he’s now editor of the Pennsylvania Capital-Star — Flight 93 actually crash-landed on family land of his in Pennsylvania. It sounded like the crash field spread over a multiple-mile area. We picked up an interesting story from Stateline where he talked about that experience. It’s still, I think, reverberating today in how it touched people all over.
Dave Price: For sure.
RNC Midterm Convention & the $5,000 Idea
Dave Price: Far different subject — this week in Dallas, the Republican National Committee held a midterm convention. We’re used to seeing these every four years in presidential cycles, but this was a mid-cycle one. We’ve had a lot of unusual things happen this midterm cycle — redistricting, and now a midterm convention, and only on one side; Democrats didn’t do their own version.
Ed, when you heard this was happening — with your strategist brain — what was your first thought? Was this a Trump-the-showman move, or what?
Ed Failor: My first thought was: I hope it’s not tying up too much candidate time, because they need to be raising money and talking to constituents — that was my very first thought. On the other hand, as a group cheerleading exercise to get people fired up and get attention, I can understand it. But honestly, my first reaction was hoping everybody was still out there raising money and doing their thing. A week in Dallas is cool, and if it gets attention, good for them — but that was my honest first thought.
Dave Price: And that’s because of how many years you’ve spent as a campaign staffer, right? You know how important that time is.
Ed Failor: Well before 9/11, yeah.
Dave Price: Laura, is it a problem that Democrats didn’t do one too? Do Republicans get all the attention, or is this overhyped?
Laura Belin: Sort of. My initial reaction was: wow, Republicans are really worried about GOP base turnout. I can’t think of another reason to do an event like this other than being worried about firing up loyal Republicans. Historically, as long as I’ve been following things, Republicans have had higher turnout than Democrats in Iowa midterms — but it does seem like this concern about an enthusiasm gap is real.
I don’t know how many Iowa candidates went down there. I know Zach Mitchell went, and Ashley Hinson did too, though not for the whole week. There are pros and cons to Republicans tying themselves more closely to Trump — with his approval underwater, that might not help broadly, but it should help with base turnout.
Dave Price: Kathie, you had a staffer talk to Ashley Hinson when she got back — she was only in Dallas on Wednesday, then flew back for events on Thursday, including one at a childcare facility in Carlisle (I think the same place Governor Reynolds visited a couple years ago). Your writer asked her about Dallas, and specifically about Trump’s idea during his speech of giving every American adult $5,000 — contingent on Republicans holding the House and Senate, with a requirement to spend it in the U.S.
Kathie Obradovich: Right, no going to Canada to spend it.
Dave Price: Hopefully not. Good point. But you had a story about how Hinson responded — pretty noncommittal, really.
Kathie Obradovich: I’d say very committed to being noncommittal. She said she doesn’t support anything without taking a good look at it, but didn’t rule it out either. She rolled it into being willing to look at anything that helps affordability for middle-class, hardworking families — her reason for being at the childcare center was to talk about childcare costs. She classified Trump’s idea as something worth considering if it helps families feeling the pinch, and left it there. She was also fairly noncommittal about whether Trump should come campaign for her — said sure, she’d welcome it, but had no plans for anything imminent.
Dave Price: Ed, you led Iowans for Tax Relief back in the day. Hearing the president’s comments, and later analysis suggesting this could be a $1.2–$1.3 trillion hit to the Treasury — as someone who I assume still believes in fiscal conservatism, is this fiscally responsible?
Ed Failor: I’ll start with this — it was just words. I haven’t seen a bill written. So who knows. But putting on my economics degree hat: it’s not really a “revenue hit,” it’s an expenditure of money we don’t have. We’re $40 trillion in debt, and this would add $1.2–$1.4 trillion. Either they’re putting it on the credit card, or they’re giving people their own money back — those are really the two ways to look at it.
My concerns: first, the redistribution-of-wealth aspect — never a fan of that. But the bigger concern is how inflationary it would be, pumping $1.2–$1.4 trillion into the economy. That should be a real concern. And it compounds the $40 trillion debt — we’ve gotten to a point where we don’t even comprehend what these numbers mean anymore. It should worry people both that the money’s coming at all, and how inflationary it could be.
Dave Price: It was interesting — in some Republican reaction, if Biden’s spending caused inflation, this seems similar: pumping out a ton of money all at once, in theory, if this is even real. There’d have to be implications.
Ed Failor: Yeah, there’d certainly be implications — the inflationary nature is the worst part. It’s not pumping out money we have, it’s creating new money and adding it into an environment where inflation’s already an issue. We don’t want to make that worse. Show me a way to do it that’s not incredibly inflationary, and I’m on board.
Kathie Obradovich: It’s kind of funny that we’re taking this seriously — he’s made similar suggestions before that never materialized. I, for one, am not sitting by my mailbox waiting for a $5,000 check even if Republicans keep control of Congress.
Dave Price: It was $5,000 from DOGE that he talked about giving everybody. There was also a $2,000 thing.
Laura Belin: Right — I don’t think Ed needs to worry, because the chance of this happening is zero. Catherine Rampell, who writes about the economy, totaled these up: the $5,000 DOGE dividend, the $2,000 tariff dividend, the $1,000 in “savings” from ending ACA premium subsidies, and now this new $5,000 dividend if Republicans win the midterms. None of it is happening, whether Republicans win or not.
Dave Price: I was also paying attention to see whether our members of Congress would respond on their own — since Iowa’s delegation is single-party, that sometimes makes it easier to track. Kathie had a reporter talk to Hinson, but social media seemed pretty empty of responses from our delegation on this. If it were something they were excited about, you’d expect them tweeting, Truth Social-ing, Facebooking, sending news releases — I might have missed something, but I didn’t see a single response.
Ed Failor: I think Laura’s right — the odds of it happening are about the same as Iowa State’s chances of winning this weekend.
Dave Price: There it is, folks!
Politics and Tailgates
Dave Price: Since you brought that up, I’m moving this up my list. Remember Michele Bachmann’s split Cyclone/Hawkeye jersey?
Laura Belin: 2012.
Dave Price: Right, thank you. She got ripped for it, and for a while there was this idea that you shouldn’t mix politics and game day. But now it feels like every prominent politician is going to the game. I saw a release from Rob Sand, Josh Turek will be there, and Mariannette Miller-Meeks has a tailgate that basically every Republican in the state seems to be attending — she’s bringing in Markwayne Mullin, and I think Rick Scott too, if I remember right.
Ed, is it fine to do these things, or do people not want politics at their tailgate?
Ed Failor: They’ve been happening forever, in my experience. When I lived in eastern Iowa, I went to every game, and around election season these were always a thing. I don’t see the harm — you’re out there talking to constituents, showing you care about normal things. No downside that I can see.
Dave Price: You shotgun a beer, right?
Kathie Obradovich: I heard —
Dave Price: Turek said at an event this week that he hadn’t done that in maybe 20 years, so I’m not expecting him to shotgun one in Iowa City Saturday.
Ed Failor: Who knows, though, if he does?
Kathie Obradovich: For candidates to visibly take sides — like the split jersey — I think that’s more of a political risk. But actually being out there among tailgaters, some people are going to boo you. You’ve got a lot of potentially drunk people in a parking lot with lowered inhibitions, so a comment caught on camera is pretty likely. That’s a bit of a risk. Some events, like Miller-Meeks’, will probably be more controlled. But wandering through a parking lot — there have been some interesting photos over the years of presidential candidates interacting with tailgaters in various states of dress, holding up various things.
Dave Price: You can guarantee the drinks have been flowing for hours for some folks.
Laura Belin: It’s on my list to check in with the Iowa Democrats’ coordinated campaign — they call it Iowa Forward — since they have more than two dozen field offices. It used to be a rule not to send canvassers out knocking doors during Iowa or Iowa State football games, so you don’t disturb people. But I know they’re sending people out statewide every weekend, and I’m curious how they’re handling that now that football season’s underway.
Martin O’Malley and Social Security
Dave Price: I mentioned Turek — Martin O’Malley, the former Maryland governor and former presidential candidate, was in Iowa this week. Like with Michele Bachmann, I had to rely on Laura’s memory for the year he ran — 2016. Some of these campaigns are starting to blend together for me. O’Malley also headed the Social Security Administration under Biden for a while, and he was back in Iowa for a Social Security event with Turek, along with Shauna’s John Bauer — sorry, John Bowser Bauman — who’s come to Iowa on behalf of Social Security advocates so many times over the years. He did his flag-waving thing — I think originally from the ‘70s.
O’Malley’s point was that because of staffing cuts at the Social Security Administration under the Trump administration, Social Security will become more of an issue. Plus, the solvency date is now moving in the wrong direction — 2032 is looking like the year the fund would only have enough to pay out about 80% of benefits. You all talk to a lot of voters — is this like the national debt, where people say it’s a problem but it doesn’t really motivate them to vote, or is it a real factor?
Kathie Obradovich: I don’t hear people talking about Social Security much, except when the solvency date comes up in the news and sparks brief attention. The solutions haven’t changed — raise the retirement age, raise taxes, or uncap the payroll tax on income. Not much else. Josh Turek, unsurprisingly, favors lifting the cap so higher earners pay in on their full income instead of just the first roughly $180,000 or so.
So no, I don’t hear people talking about it much — I’d put it under the broader affordability conversation. I also think it’s interesting that people are conflating cuts to Social Security Administration staffing with cuts to Social Security itself. People’s checks haven’t changed, though they may be having more trouble getting through on the phone or resolving issues. But it’s a stretch to say benefits are being cut when what’s being cut is the agency that administers them — I wish people would be more precise about that.
Dave Price: Ed, back during George W. Bush’s presidency, some Republicans pushed investing a portion of Social Security funds in the markets to grow it faster and extend solvency. That idea faded — Democrats built public opposition, and Republicans dropped it. If you were advising candidates today, how would you approach this? Something’s got to give eventually, right?
Ed Failor: There’s a difference between advising a candidate and advising a sitting legislator who actually has to deal with the problem. I think Kathie’s right that it’s such a theoretical, non-concrete issue for most people that campaign-wise, I wouldn’t spend much time on it, because I don’t think many people are talking about it. If people start talking about it, then sure. As a sitting legislator, that’s a completely different question of how you actually tackle it. As a candidate, you address the issues that are actually moving people, and from the polling I’ve seen, Social Security isn’t in the top three to five issues.
Dave Price: Laura, final thought?
Laura Belin: I don’t think it’s a big voting issue for most people, but it fits well for Josh Turek — this was a stance Tom Harkin held back in the day, and Turek is running for Harkin’s old Senate seat with Harkin’s support. It’s also just an easy message for Democrats: millionaires and billionaires aren’t paying their fair share. It fits into that broader constellation of issues.
Dave Price: Alright, let’s bring it to a close. This weekend — Iowa State — Ed and Kathie largely kept it civil, so thanks for preserving the integrity of the show.
Kathie Obradovich: We’ll do our best. Now I’m annoyed I wasn’t prepared — I could’ve held up some kind of sign, and Ed’s way ahead of me.
Dave Price: Spencer can somehow edit this into the final product before it drops.
Kathie Obradovich: Hey, before we go — one quick thing. The Republican midterm convention also ratified Iowa’s first-in-the-nation status for the 2028 caucuses, so we should acknowledge that before we go. We knew this was coming — their committee had already recommended it — but it’s now official that the Iowa caucuses will be first in the nation in 2028.
Dave Price: Thank you for mentioning that. Alright, that’s a wrap for this week. Thanks to all of you for joining us. We appreciate you subscribing — please like, share, and subscribe to help us grow, and if you’re able to financially contribute to the show, that helps too. Have a great week ahead.
