{"id":10027,"date":"2018-06-11T10:00:49","date_gmt":"2018-06-11T15:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/?p=10027"},"modified":"2018-06-11T21:43:10","modified_gmt":"2018-06-12T02:43:10","slug":"still-lost-in-younkers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/2018\/06\/still-lost-in-younkers\/","title":{"rendered":"Still lost in Younkers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"IF\"
\nApril 23, 2018:<\/strong> If you want to assemble a clothing collection, now’s the time; Lindale Mall in Cedar Rapids is having dueling down-to-the-walls sell-offs at Younkers and Sears. The upbeat tone of the “closing forever” radio ads is a little off-putting, though.<\/em><\/p>\n

It’s interesting how the Iowa governor’s race and the “retail apocalypse” cross paths this year.<\/p>\n

Gov. Kim Reynolds (advantages: incumbency, hair, heir to the ‘Stache) worked as a waitress at Des Moines’ downtown Younkers<\/a>, back when there was a notion that a big-city department store could have a dining area. (Even the Waterloo Sears did, at first.)<\/p>\n

Fred Hubbell (advantages: money, height, hair) was chairman of Younkers<\/a> when it was a part of Equitable of Iowa, and both were based in Des Moines. While the Hubbell name is big in history and real estate \u2014 the diagonal road leading northeast from Des Moines is named Hubbell Avenue after the candidate’s\u00a0great-great grandfather \u2014 it’s Des Moines-centric enough that he may get more mileage from his labor and activist group connections.<\/p>\n

The common thread between them, then, is Younkers \u2014 one as labor, the other as management, with a party-swap twist. But while they’re touting their old connections, the chain itself, long divested from its Iowa roots, is having its name blotted from mall directories everywhere in bankruptcy. That itself could have an effect on the governor’s race as jobs and options are lost in Iowa’s midsize cities \u2014 by August, Ottumwa will be down to a Wal-Mart and a Kohl’s.<\/a>\u00a0(Although, realistically, the bigger issues will be things the Legislature did, like passing a tax cut while giving schools a 1% increase.)<\/p>\n

Iowans are very, very reluctant to evict incumbents from the governor’s office, a guest columnist points out<\/a> in the Register<\/em>. (That goes for House members as well… except in wave elections<\/a>, as I pointed out in 2012.) But this is a new race for Iowa in other aspects as well. Reynolds is the incumbent, but has never been at the top of the ballot; Iowa has practically zero experience with interim replacements. A female<\/em> governor seeking to stay<\/em> at the top is new, of course. There have only been two other women to be a major party nominee, Roxanne Conlin in 1982 and Bonnie Campbell in 1994.<\/p>\n

Iowa is going to have a governor’s race (an expensive<\/em> governor’s race<\/a>) like never before. The 1st Congressional District has, by at least one metric, the most vulnerable Republican<\/a> in the country. Voter sentiment in northeast Iowa’s Democratic-until-Trump counties<\/a> will be the key for not just those races but as a national bellwether for 2020<\/a>. It’s going to be impossible to watch “Jeopardy” live after Labor Day, and probably earlier, without drowning in mud.<\/p>\n

UPDATE: For once I had a post slightly ahead of the news cycle.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

April 23, 2018: If you want to assemble a clothing collection, now’s the time; Lindale Mall in Cedar Rapids is having dueling down-to-the-walls sell-offs at Younkers and Sears. The upbeat tone of the “closing forever” radio ads is a little … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-iowa-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10027"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10027\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10039,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10027\/revisions\/10039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}