2020 Election
Goodbye and Good Riddance
Steve King, Iowa’s most famous racist is shown the back door out of Congress
Republican voters in Iowa rejected Steve King’s rare breed of inept racism in Tuesday’s state primary, denying him the chance to run for a 10th term in office in November’s election.
Steve King has unashamedly asked why ‘white supremacy’ is an offensive term, claimed that rape and incest are the primary drivers of human civilization, and lamented the future direction of the nation under the guidance of “someone else’s babies.” Segregated from his overt connections to Neo-Nazi political entities in Europe, or his cozy relationship with them back home, these opinions are jarring.
He is an unashamed champion of the ‘Great Replacement Theory,’ suggesting that ‘whiteness’ must be guarded in American social organization or else it will be overtaken by others.
This is not a vacuum. And Steve King is a Congressman, not your average bigot. He directly represents the sentiments and needs of Iowa’s fourth district, and indirectly addresses yours and mine as voters from without. The continued assaults against our common decency that Steve King amplifies are horrid. His role in stoking white supremacy in Iowa and elsewhere has been tacitly accepted for too long, but this reign of ignorance may be quickly coming to a close on the heels of his primary defeat.
Trouble Ahead or a New Way Forward?
While King’s 10 point defeat shows signs of a changing electorate — just as Ocasio-Cortez’s victory over 10-term Congressman Joe Crowley did — it doesn’t necessarily signal a major shift in Iowa politics. For this we will have to wait for November. King’s challenger ran on a platform of efficiency. The primary criticism was not King’s racism, but his ineptitude in leadership. The Atlantic’s Elaine Godfrey suggests that his ouster was in response to “an even graver political sin: putting a safe seat in danger.”
By downplaying King’s moral bankruptcy, his challenger, Randy Feenstra, has kept his cards close to the chest. So too, has Iowan sentiments here been covered over. King’s defeat signals a willingness to accept that racial politics doesn’t play long term, but it doesn’t reveal local battle lines in the short.
As protest around the country rages over police brutality against black Americans, its important to keep this signpost in mind. Electing individuals like Steve King signals to the nation that Latino, black, and other Americans are somehow lesser. By giving a national platform to a voice like his, for twenty years America has signaled that bigotry is ingrained in the function and business of government.
We must continue to play watchdog to these more base leanings to ensure that others like Steve King are rooted out.
Feenstra is largely the same sort of conservative — politically — who espouses the general Republican platform as gospel. According to his campaign site, he is a defender of “Christian values, innocent life, the 2nd Amendment and Iowa taxpayers” in the Iowa State Senate. The campaign approach to focus on King’s lack of effectiveness, in hindsight was a smart one, and on this point I must concede. Steve King is certainly an ineffective leader.
He was removed from committee appointments over those white supremacy comments last year, and his already limited power on the Hill has been waning as more and more Americans begin to rally around anti-racist collective action.
King is a menace to Congress and the country, both in his personal beliefs and in his willingness to vote along party lines without question. He is a Congressional lapdog, but one with a wicked anti-minority bite. The louder we allow megaphones for white supremacy to become, the more entrenched it will become among hard-knocks, white Americans seeking solace wherever they can find it.
Feenstra is a known quantity, if elected he will vote red, possibly as instinctively as King has for years. This means voters are now tasked with an important choice: they can embrace a new face with the same politics — stripped of its racial bullhorn. Or they can bend away from the conservative agenda with the Democratic challenger J.D. Scholten.
Either way, Iowa sits on the precipice of American vision into the future — one that gives hate no quarter.
