Editorial: Election notes

Our thanks go out to friend Tom Lane, who lost his seat on the Alta City Council in the Tuesday election. Lane has been a force for good. He led an effort to protect residents from eviction at Westview mobile home park. That led him to run for city council. Lane placed behind three other well-known and well-liked candidates but that takes nothing away from the service he has provided to his neighbors. No doubt he will continue to be of service, because that’s who Tom Lane is.

It is noteworthy that three Storm Lake school board incumbents ran unopposed. That indicates a certain level of satisfaction among the public. People are not asking to ban books or hassle teachers. Interesting that in the Des Moines suburbs, where statewide elections sometimes are decided, progressive candidates won over the Moms for Liberty (the ones who want to ban books and hassle teachers). Polls indicated that voters lined up with Gov. Reynolds’s backwards views on education, but elections tell us that suburban voters and those in Storm Lake are interested more in academic achievement than sexual peccadilloes.

In Ohio, Kentucky and Virginia, abortion rights prevailed at the polls. In Virginia, voters did not buy Republican Gov. Glen Youngkin’s argument that 15 weeks is a nice middle ground, instead handing control of the legislature to the Democrats. This bears watching in Iowa, where the governor pursues a ban on abortion at six weeks. Youngkin looked invincible a week ago. Wednesday morning the tables had flipped. Gov. Reynolds and the legislature promise to maintain their hard-right course, which could bite them in statehouse and congressional races next year. Also, the national vote Tuesday indicates that news of President Joe Biden’s political demise has been greatly exaggerated. The Democrats had a pretty good election night nationally. Locally, it looks like cultural wedge issues are not of that much interest in school board elections. Reading, writing and arithmetic are big. That’s a relief.