Matthew P. Thornburg is an associate professor at Misericordia University who studies elections. His mother’s side of the family hails from Greene and O’Brien counties, and he maintains close ties to Iowa and its politics.

The use of eminent domain to build carbon capture pipelines is a uniquely controversial issue in Iowa politics. Unlike most issues in the state, which fit neatly into the red vs. blue paradigm of modern U.S. politics, CO₂ pipelines put Iowa’s Republican establishment on the wrong side of most voters in the state and divide the Republican Party base. The issue remains salient in Des Moines as potentially competitive primary and general election contests loom for governor of Iowa in 2026.

Among recent developments in the governor’s race, U.S. Representative Randy Feenstra (IA-04) has reportedly raised millions of dollars for his bid for the nomination, and has rolled out a slew of endorsements from other Iowa GOP elected officials. Feenstra is no stranger to the pipeline issue. The Summit Carbon Solutions pipeline most heavily affects his district in northern and western Iowa. His 2024 opponents all emphasized the issue: Kevin Virgil in the Republican primary and Democrat Ryan Melton and Libertarian Charles Aldrich in the general election.

Feenstra’s perceived indifference on the CO₂ pipeline offers an opening for rivals in the upcoming Republican primary for governor.

PRIMARY ELECTION

Primary elections are notoriously unpredictable due to the lack of party labels anchoring voter choices. Issues, candidate characteristics, and identities fill this vacuum and matter more in these contests. If the pipeline issue plays a role in the 2026 gubernatorial election, it most likely will do so in these intra-party primaries.

While the controversy did not seem to hurt Iowa legislators much in the 2024 primary races (all incumbents were renominated), elected officials in the Hawkeye State surely know of the bloodbath in neighboring South Dakota, where the CO₂ pipeline controversy contributed to the defeat of fourteen Republican state legislators in 2024.

While Feenstra prevailed in the 2024 primary for Iowa’s fourth Congressional district, his opponent Kevin Virgil surprised most observers by winning almost 40 percent of the vote with a shoestring campaign against a two-term incumbent. Did the CO₂ pipeline play an outsized role in Virgil’s vote share?

While I do not have exit poll data available, I use official election returns to shed light on this question. It stands to reason that the eminent domain issue would be most salient for those in the proposed path of the Summit Carbon pipeline—currently the furthest advanced carbon capture pipeline project in Iowa. Property along this corridor will potentially be seized through eminent domain, and that is where a property rights, anti-pipeline message is most likely to stick.

I mapped out the pipeline’s path (including the additions Summit proposed in early 2024) and identified the voting precincts in Iowa’s fourth Congressional district crossed by the proposed corridor. The Summit route crosses 78 out of the 462 precincts in IA-04 (16.9 percent). Precincts in the Sioux City and Sioux Falls media markets have a greater share of “pipeline precincts” than elsewhere (20.2 percent of Sioux media market precincts are pipeline ones, versus just 14.7 of precincts in IA-04 that are outside the Sioux markets). These markets are home turf for Feenstra, presenting an interesting test of whether incumbency can overcome a major political issue.

I examine the percentage of the vote Feenstra received in each precinct in the 2024 Republican primary. Comparing pipeline to non-pipeline precincts, Feenstra won an average of 59.8 percent of the vote in non-pipeline precincts compared to an average of 54.4 percent of the vote in pipeline precincts. In other words, a straightforward comparison of the pipeline precincts to precincts in the rest of the district finds Feenstra did 5.5 points worse in the path of the pipeline.

I ran a second analysis taking into account the differences between individual counties in Feenstra support to make sure the finding wasn’t based on regional differences across IA-04 (i.e., in statistics language, I used county fixed effects). The difference diminishes slightly, but I still find Feenstra did 3.9 points worse in precincts lying in the path of the Summit pipeline, even when accounting for differences among counties. This pattern is similar for precincts lying inside and outside the Sioux media markets.

	Sioux media markets	Outside Sioux media markets	District overall
Pipeline precincts	48.3%	59.8%	54.4%
Non-pipeline precincts	54.2%	63.3%	59.8%
Difference	-5.9%	-3.5%	-5.5%

Precinct Averages by Location in Sioux Falls and Sioux City Media Markets

To use the language of statistics, this difference is statistically significant—meaning there is only a very small chance (about 1 in 100) that it is due to coincidence and random noise.

It’s possible that pipeline precincts may be different from non-pipeline precincts in some other way that affected support for Feenstra and Virgil in the primary, in which case the “effect” of the pipeline location may not be as strong in reality. Still, taken with the results from South Dakota, the analysis suggests there is plenty of potency for the issue to affect a Republican primary election. Former State Representative Brad Sherman and State Representative Eddie Andrews are also seeking the Republican nomination for governor and have emphasized their support for private property rights.

GENERAL ELECTION

I wrote about the effect of the pipeline on Feenstra’s vote in the 2024 general election in this post, published last November. After conducting a similar statistical analysis, I found that in IA-04 precincts lying in the proposed path of the Summit Carbon pipeline, Feenstra underperformed by only about one percentage point compared to the rest of his district. While the pattern was consistent enough that it’s unlikely it was just coincidence or noise, it’s a very small effect. Much of this overall underperformance was driven by a significant underperformance in pipeline precincts located in O’Brien County, which is Virgil’s home county.

While criticism of his position on the pipeline made little difference in Feenstra’s 2024 general election performance, there are reasons to believe the issue may have more impact in a 2026 gubernatorial general election. Governor Kim Reynolds’ veto of an anti-pipeline eminent domain bill in June ensured the issue will remain salient for the next governor. Candidates of both parties should expect tough questions about their position. Their response, especially compared to their opponents in the general election and primary, will cast a long shadow over their campaign.

In addition, partisanship often plays a diminished role in state elections compared to Congressional and presidential ones. With Republicans in firm control of the Iowa legislature, some independent and Republican voters may be willing to cross over to allow divided government—support any Democratic candidate hoping to win the governorship needs. Democratic Governors Andy Beshear of Kentucky, Steve Bullock of Montana, and John Bel Edwards of Louisiana pulled off such surprise wins in recent years, as did Republican Governors Larry Hogan of Maryland and Phil Scott of Vermont.

In particular, Bullock and Hogan exemplify the difference in partisanship between federal and state contests. Both governors were exceedingly popular in states that would be regarded as politically unfriendly, only to lose campaigns for the U.S. Senate by double digits only a short time later. The difference in their fortunes came from emphasizing intra-state issues as governor versus getting caught in the national partisan headwinds of U.S. senatorial elections.

The unpopular CO₂ pipelines may provide such an intra-state issue for Democrats. While it is unlikely that the staunchest GOP pipeline critics on the party’s right flank will cross over for a Democrat for governor in large numbers, the analysis here suggests the issue matters for people directly affected by the proposed Summit pipeline.

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Editor’s note: Counties in tan and pink are part of the Sioux Falls or Sioux City media markets.

Iowa’s fourth Congressional district covers the blue counties on this map.

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Top photo of Randy Feenstra was originally published on his political Facebook page.