Kim Reynolds had to follow a legend. When Terry Branstad stepped down as Iowa governor to serve as ambassador to China in 2017, he was the longest-serving governor in all of American history. In the way of lieutenant governors, Reynolds had taken the lead on a few scattered issues, but little was known about her own agenda.
She’s turned out to be one of the nation’s most ambitious governors. There’s an old saying in state government that governors can get anything they want, but not everything they want — but Reynolds has come close, says David Oman, a former state GOP co-chair. “In the ranks of Iowa governors, she is already a historic governor,” he says.
Reynolds has clearly benefited from the state’s shift to the right, with Republicans holding legislative supermajorities, but it’s also clear she’s running the show on many issues. Case in point: In 2022, legislators rejected her proposal for a $55 million private school scholarship fund. Reynolds went after GOP legislators who opposed the idea in primaries that year, unseating the House Education Committee chair, along with several others. It was controversial, but it worked. Almost as soon as the Legislature met last year, Reynolds signed a private school scholarship bill with a price tag seven times larger than the rejected version.
Plenty of governors have signed tax cuts in recent years, but Reynolds has pushed through a flat tax and other cuts that have driven the top personal income tax rate down from 9 percent to 3.9 percent — and she’s still hungry for more. She signed a six-week abortion ban into law last year. It was initially held up but has taken effect thanks to a state Supreme Court ruling in June.
“Gov. Reynolds really lays out a very aggressive and bold and conservative agenda,” Jack Whitver, the state Senate majority leader, told Governing last year. “She’s not afraid to stick her neck out and go big and bold and put her reputation or her favorability on the line.”
Reynolds, 65, had served for years in county government but was a little-known junior legislator when Branstad tapped her as his running mate in 2010. She narrowly won a full term on her own in 2018 but was re-elected in 2022 by nearly a 20-point margin. She received some blowback earlier this year for favoring Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis over former President Donald Trump in the GOP caucuses. It doesn’t seem to have done her any lasting damage. Politically, Reynolds has been an astute operator, helping to drive some of the last remaining Democrats from statewide office.
Last year, Reynolds pushed through a bill that reduced the number of cabinet-level agencies from 37 to 16, giving the governor more authority over hiring and firing in the process. In May, she signed legislation reducing or eliminating 83 state boards and commissions. “Government should be consistently reviewing and improving our systems and the quality of services we provide,” she said.
Reynolds has shifted the ground substantially when it comes to the state’s biggest revenue source and its largest spending item, along with countless other programs. “If someone’s writing the history of Iowa governors, you have to put her on the list of people who’ve pushed through some incredibly big policy changes,” says Christopher Larimer, a political scientist at the University of Northern Iowa who has written just such a book.
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