JEFFERSON, Iowa — A farmer in Western Iowa, the state’s most conservative region, is warning 2020 Democratic hopeful Elizabeth Warren her left-wing populist platform could be a political liability, even though he thinks that’s an unfair characterization.
Ron Rosmann, 69, whose family farm in Harlan, Iowa, hosted a Warren visit Thursday, warned the senator she was losing the messaging battle against Republicans.
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“The press right away brands you as a socialist, and I know how that goes over in rural areas. With healthcare and all that, they’re going to say, ‘Well, you know, socialism was in my early lifetime associated with communism.’ We know why we grew up with all that kind of thinking, and rural people have long memories,” Rosmann said.
As an example, he cited their distaste for former President Franklin Roosevelt’s “social programs” and earlier referenced GOP talking points about the Green New Deal, which skewer New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s fact sheet about the nonbinding resolution. The fact sheet states that they are pushing for a net-zero carbon emissions goal because “we aren’t sure that we’ll be able to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes that fast.”
Warren, in response, defended her campaign, including its calls for “Medicare for all” and generous student debt forgiveness programs.
“I didn’t hear it as a concern about the actual policies. I heard it as a concern about the name-calling. And that when you hear the actual policies, folks say, ‘Oh, no, I’m in favor of that,'” Warren told reporters afterward. “I think this is really about the truth wins out, you get out and talk about what you really fight for, what you really stand for. It matters.”
Rosmann had earlier complained that Republicans and other rural Americans in the area, which lies near Iowa’s western border with Nebraska and is currently represented in Congress by Republican Rep. Steve King, “seem to vote against their own self interest all the time.”
Warren told the farmer, who runs a 700-acre organic grain and livestock property, she knew there was “going to be name calling in a lot of different directions.”
“But I believe the truth will prevail,” she said at the time.
The former Harvard Law School professor and President Trump political foil, 70, is surging in popularity, according to polls conducted after the Detroit debates and her vigorous defense of her liberal agenda amid attacks from more centrist contenders. While currently drawing an average of 16.3% support in Iowa, per RealClearPolitics data, her national figure is slightly lower at 15.5%, reflecting, in part, how the caucus nominating process drums up energy from the party’s left-leaning faction.
Interest in the Oklahoma-born, public school teacher-turned-lawmaker’s candidacy was evident at a town hall Thursday in Jefferson, Iowa.
Margot Tollefson Conard, 69, of Stratford, Iowa, was one of the 250, mostly white people who gathered at the RVP 1875 historical furniture shop, Tollefson Conard’s first campaign event since the 2008 cycle. The retired statistician told the Washington Examiner she identified with Warren as “an older woman” with “many life experiences,” as well as her liberal positions on income inequality, climate change, and women’s rights. “I think Warren has more support than Hillary Clinton did among younger people,” she said.
Josh Hall, 24, a cleaner from Carroll, Iowa, told the Washington Examiner he was tossing up between Warren and Sanders because “the country’s ready for party change.” Although skeptical others in the state agreed with him, he remains optimistic a shift is on the horizon. “That might be an age, demographic thing. But they say more people are coming into Des Moines and stuff, you know, slowly but surely,” Hall said, alluding to Iowa’s capital.
