The Fight for Iowa’s White Working-Class Soul
“Finkenauer, despite expressing support for a public option and emphasizing the need for affordable college, is perhaps best recognized throughout the district as a union ally. The Republican-led state legislature, in February 2017, voted to dramatically reduce collective-bargaining rights for some 180,000 public employees. Conservatives celebrated the move as a win for taxpayers and managers in local government, but Finkenauer gave an impassioned floor speech condemning the bill. ‘You had a lot of union guys who had voted Republican who just saw their rights gutted, their health-care rights, their wages, all of it,’ Finkenauer tells me. Several local and state-level union leaders remembered this moment, and eagerly offered her their support when she announced her candidacy in May last year.”