In Iowa, a Pipeline Fight Shows What the People Can Do

Ben Jealous
Ben Jealous

In Iowa, a Pipeline Fight Shows What the People Can Do

By Ben Jealous


It is easy to be cynical about politics these days. More than cynical. The rise of political violence, fueled by partisan division and anti-democracy extremism, continues to leave Americans of every race, religion, state, and political stripe horrified.


But every so often, something remarkable happens that reminds us who really holds the power in a democracy.


That is what just happened in Iowa.


Imagine a private company wants to build a potentially dangerous pipeline through your backyard and the government decides your rights as a property owner matter less than the profits of said company. And it uses eminent domain – the power to seize private land for public use – to take control over part of your land as a gift to the company. For four years now, farmers and other landowners, environmentalists, Indigenous groups, and Iowans from all walks of life have come together to fight this outrageous idea.


Eminent domain is supposed to be reserved strictly for projects that are in the public good. The carbon capture and storage (CCS) pipeline being pursued by Summit Carbon Solutions in Iowa does not serve the public good. It serves corporate profits. And the people of Iowa – Republicans and Democrats alike – have said no. Loudly. Repeatedly.


This year, that fight reached a new peak.


After years of stonewalling by the GOP leadership of the Iowa state Senate, the body finally allowed debate on legislation to curb eminent domain abuse. Why? Because 12 Senate Republicans joined with Democrats and refused to pass a state budget until the bill got a vote. That has never happened before in Iowa’s Senate. It was a political earthquake.


Those 12 Republicans put their careers on the line. Senate leadership retaliated. Bills were reassigned. One senator, Mark Lofgren, even went public, saying in a letter to constituents that he was being “bullied” by his own leadership for standing with the people.


In the Iowa House, which had passed similar bills in previous sessions, the vote this year was more than lopsided: 85 to 10 in favor of the bill. That reflects the popular movement that has grown across the state over these past years.


The broad bipartisan coalition that has organized and built that movement was energized by recent passage of a similar bill against eminent domain for pipelines in South Dakota. The bill Iowa lawmakers passed was not a total ban on carbon pipelines, like South Dakota enacted. But it was a strong bill nonetheless – imposing new insurance requirements, limiting liability for landowners, and giving more people the right to participate in the permitting process. Governor Kim Reynolds vetoed it.


Her veto was not just a rejection of a bill. It was a rejection of democracy. Of bipartisanship. Of the voices of hundreds of Iowans who spent week after week at the Capitol, sharing their stories, pleading for fairness.


It was also a gift to Summit Carbon Solutions – the parent company of which is owned by one of Iowa’s biggest political donors, Bruce Rastetter.


The backlash has been swift, perhaps especially among Reynolds’s fellow conservative Republicans who backed the bill. State Rep. Bobby Kaufmann said Governor Reynolds "failed the state...& her legacy now is spitting in the faces of landowners & being Bruce Rastetter's errand girl."


Rep. Steve Holt, another conservative Republican and chair of the House Judiciary Committee, summed up Reynolds’s legacy in one word: “betrayal.”


The people of Iowa are not backing down. They have already vowed to keep fighting and many expect to bring an even stronger bill next session. And voters are lining up to hold accountable the politicians who stood with corporate interests instead of their communities.


This is what democracy looks like. It is not always clean. It is rarely fast. But when people come together – across party lines, across urban and rural divides, across race and class – they can take on the most powerful forces in our country and win.


That is the story in Iowa. And it should give us hope.


When we organize. When we listen to each other. When we put people over party and principle over politics, we win.


Governor Reynolds’s veto will not be the final word. That will belong to the voters and the still-growing movement that will be back in the state capital next year – bigger, stronger, and even hungrier for victory.


The use of eminent domain for pipeline projects now promises to be the defining state political issues in Iowa in the near term. State senators who stood with their wealthy corporate benefactors over their constituents – and perhaps the governor herself – will likely face challenging primaries.


The fight in Iowa is not over. But it has already changed the state’s political landscape. It has already proven that we can overcome partisanship. And it has already shown that no corporation, no matter how powerful, is stronger than a united people.


That is a lesson all of us would do well to remember.


Ben Jealous is the Executive Director of the Sierra Club and a Professor of Practice at the University of Pennsylvania.

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