Francis Boggus is an experienced community development professional in rural Iowa communities and former Democratic State Central Committee member from Council Bluffs, now living in Des Moines. 

Recently, a friend who’s deciding whom to support in Iowa’s Democratic primaries sent me this video from the Des Moines Register’s “Storytellers Project” series in 2023. In the video, State Senator Sarah Trone Garriot (who is now running for Congress in Iowa’s third district) describes the first wedding she performed to marry a pair of Satanists.

I’ll be clear: I have no personal issue with Satanists. Like many other Iowans, I believe their First Amendment rights should be protected just like anyone else’s. I am no stranger to marriages that might be looked down upon—I was in an interracial marriage in the 1980s, and one of my daughters is married to a woman. Marriage equality across race, religion, and sexuality must be protected.

What bothers me is the tone Trone Garriott used when talking about working class people, whether they be in West Virginia or Iowa.

As Republicans have made gains with working class and rural voters, Democrats have gained a reputation for being out-of-touch and elitist. Call us latte liberals or coastal elites– whatever is said, it’s become clear that Democrats are struggling to connect and persuade working class and rural voters.

Trone Garriott made this couple the butt of the joke, from their smell (“cigarette smoke and unwashed clothes”) to what they were wearing (“jeans and a Carhartt jacket” and “camouflage pajama pants and slippers”). That does us no favors.

In Iowa, we have seen longtime deep-blue strongholds like Ottumwa, Fort Dodge, Burlington, Marshalltown, and more swing to become redder and redder since 2016. Even with the gains Iowa Democrats have managed to make in affluent suburbs like Waukee and Ankeny, right now there is no real path to winning as an Iowa Democrat without making inroads with working class and rural voters.

The attitudes expressed in this video make that a bigger challenge. We can’t talk down to working folks and rural voters and then expect them to vote for us because of a policy proposal. They’ve already tuned us out.

Every Iowa Democrat I know is concerned about electability in 2026. We all see a critical opportunity this cycle not only to put a check on President Donald Trump and the GOP in Congress, but to start rebuilding power for Democrats in our state after years of erosion. With competitive races for governor, Senate, Congress, and state legislature, we’re all focused on putting up a strong ticket.

It’s not an exaggeration to say this is a make-or-break year for Iowa Democrats, and we don’t want to take any chances. Republicans have already found that Satanists in our state can be used to animate their own base and divide ours.

For all Trone Garriott’s talk of electability, national Republicans will have a field day with liabilities like this. I appreciate the senator’s broad lesson about love and tolerance, but we all know that’s not how Republicans will use this story. If she is our Democratic nominee, the GOP and their dark money allies will exploit this and attack her and Democrats up and down the ballot.

We can’t afford to nominate candidates who begin the general election with vulnerabilities that the GOP will exploit to hold this crucial seat and make it even more difficult for us to win back working class and rural voters.

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