‘Trump is speaking our language,’ says resident of Eastern Iowa county that has turned to Republican support in recent years

Editor’s Note: This story is the third in a series that looks at how and why Iowa voters moved away from Democrats and lined up behind President Donald Trump and other Republicans.

Bonnie Mitchell and Cathy Bailey work side-by-side to archive and research Jackson County’s history in the building that once held a global small engine company.

Mitchell, as the Jackson County Historical Society’s curator and director, is especially quick to rattle off the county's history.

The county is bordered by bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River to the east and cave networks, soaring rocks and hiking trails to the west.

Residents and political leaders have watched local politics become steadily redder, too.

In 2018, Republican Carrie Koelker defeated eight-year incumbent Tod Bowman, a Democrat, for the state Senate seat representing Jackson County.

When Bowman was first elected in 2010, Jackson County had a slate of Democratic county elected officials, he said.

In 2022, two county-level elected officials lost their seats to Republican challengers. A statehouse candidate who made his anti-abortion stance key to his campaign, defeated a centrist Republican in the 2022 primary for a seat representing the northern part of the county.

More than 70 percent of Jackson County Republicans backed Trump in the 2024 caucuses, among the wider margins in the state.

Now, nearly all county-level officials, state lawmakers, and members of Congress that represent Jackson County are Republican. The exceptions are the county recorder and a state senator, Mike Zimmer, who won a special election to Senate District 35, which includes Maquoketa, in January.

“The entire makeup of our county politics has changed,” Bowman said. “And I would probably say it really trickled from the national level down to the local level. And Trump certainly inspired, or motivated, a certain group of folks to be more involved, just to vote in first place. And I think he was able to successfully put the fear of certain issues into people's minds.”

Darla Chappell, co-chair of the Jackson County Republicans, said Republicans liked what they saw in Trump. He had star power, business acumen and spoke to working-class people and concerns.

“He reaches out to the working-class people, which Jackson County is made up of,” Chappell said. “We're made up of rural and factory workers and hard, hardworking people that want to pay their own way. And they liked what they saw in Trump. He was up forward, but he also took the time out to talk to them, one-on-one, or at least with his rallies, to where people could be there and see him, to where he was real.”

Chappell herself got more involved during the Trump era after she retired.

“People weren't happy with the way things were going, and so they wanted a change. And they saw that the Republicans were the people of the working class,” Chappell added.

In Jackson County, according to the U.S. Census' American Community Survey five-year estimates, education, health care and social assistance agencies are the largest employers of people 16 years and older in the county at 22 percent, just two percentage points lower than the rest of the state. Manufacturing industry makes up 16 percent, which is a slightly larger share than the state's 14 percent.

About 18.4 percent of Jackson County has a bachelor's degree or higher, compared with about 32 percent of Iowa.

Median income in the county is $71,605, only slightly lower than the state's median of $75,501.

Building on civic engagement

Brandon and Heather Moore own a dairy farm, a meat locker and a local store where they sell their own produce, as well as other food, coffee and ice cream.

The Moores try to be a home for civic discourse in Jackson County. In their store, which is lined with coolers filled with cheese from their dairy farm, they’ve hosted both Democrats and Republicans running for office. They put both Trump and Harris signs in the yard ahead of the 2024 election.

As a family, they have mixed political opinions. They see politics and government decisions as much more nuanced than national news outlets would like to portray.

They hope to highlight the middle 80 percent, where most people can agree, the Moores said, not the vocal 10 percent on the fringes.

Asked what they believe attracted county voters to Trump, Brandon Moore said he thinks it’s a combination of perceived business sense and people being fed up with politics and government as usual.

“I like Trump and a lot of my friends do, and a lot of farmers — your regular old school Joe Blow farmer you think of — did and it’s because he really didn’t want to be politically tied. He was Republican, but he was not from a government background. He is a businessman. Right or wrong, different, if it’s true or not. But that was the appeal,” Brandon Moore said.

“He didn’t come from a government institution,” Heather Moore added.

“He’s a business person, so he should know dollars and cents,” Brandon said.

“Should,” Heather replied.

Brandon Moore said in his circles, people seem to be happy overall with Trump’s trade policies.

In agriculture, however, an industry that relies on foreign workers, some have been less pleased with Trump’s tough immigration policies impacting foreign workers’ ability to work.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s National Agriculture Workers Survey, close to 70 percent of cropworkers were born outside the United States.

At an Ottumwa meatpacking plant, the temporary protected status of more than 200 workers was revoked, making them ineligible to work in the United States.

“He’s trying to reverse some of that, but you already scared people, so it’s going to take a little time to get the flow of people going again,” Brandon Moore said.

Grassroots organization harnesses energy post-election

Since Trump was elected to a second term, a new organization in Jackson County has taken root, called Operation Grassroots Maquoketa. It formed as a nonpartisan group organized in part by Lori Schnoor and Anne Peterson in an effort to learn more about the potential impacts of swift-moving federal policy changes and more generally how the government worked.

To their surprise, 30 or 40 people showed up to their first meeting.

Next, they invited a state senator to explain how a bill becomes a law. More than 100 people showed up. Even more people showed up to a "No Kings" rally. And they organized a press conference with hospital administrators and health care sector employees that use Medicaid on a regular basis to help explain how they use it and how they would be gravely impacted by cuts to Medicaid.

"We're so polarized and so I think there's just a lot more energy because of the different beliefs people have," Schnoor said. "It's hard to describe, we just want to be able to get information out there and share, do educational programs to help people make better-informed decisions."

Perspectives from Jackson County voters

The Dog Days of Summer festival in downtown Maquoketa was in full swing on a hot night Aug. 7. Iowa City band Dogs on Skis' classic rock covers had kids dancing and toes tapping under lawn chairs while a special guest, the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile, stood sentry.

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Tom and Alice Daurelle came out to hear the music that Thursday night.

For the Daurelles, their faith guides their decisions and their politics. Ahead of the 2016 caucuses, they backed Ted Cruz, who was popular among the religious right. But after Trump coalesced support to win the nomination, they quickly rallied around him. They see Trump as a flawed person who God is working through to lead the country and arouse patriotism.

The Daurelles say abortion is their single most important issue.

They got involved more in politics in order, they said, to bring the spiritual faith back to the area.

“After Obama got through, people were sick and tired of that. Part of what Obama did and the Democrats are doing is taking God out of the equation,” Tom Daurelle said.

“We’re hardworking people that just want to have good things,” Alice said. “They want government to hear them, and I think that was a big part of it. People really got out because they were like, ‘We’re not being heard.”

Tom Daurelle said part of Trump’s attraction is that he “doesn’t talk around things, he goes straight to the point and he tells us exactly what he’s thinking.”

In one example of a niche issue, Trump opposes wind turbines, a position that resonates with a contingent of Jackson County residents who have protested such turbines.

“You know you’re aligned with someone who’s speaking your language,” Tom Daurelle said. “And Trump is speaking our language.”

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He described Jackson County as a county that used to be considered the “east coast of Iowa,” which he compared to how people perceive the east coast of the United States to be much more liberal than the middle of the country.

The Daurelles also feel that it’s easier to talk about their politics since 2012. Tom Daurelle said sales people come into his office — where it’s clear to which political side he leans — and they are willing to freely discuss politics with him, even if they don’t agree.

Jim Westoff, who grew up in Maquoketa and returned after living in Delaware for 12 years, does not feel the same way.

He described himself as a progressive Democrat and lamented the way the county and state has shifted the past 12 years. He sees Republican positions opposing abortion, targeting immigrants and cutting funding to Medicaid and SNAP as immoral.

For him, that support doesn’t jive with the people he knows and meets who are kind, gracious, generous and welcoming.

“You can't carry a garbage bag without having four people trying to help you,” Westoff said.

But more recently, he’s been more careful about sharing his opinions until he knows how others feel.

”You’ve got to worry about who’s around you because you don’t want to get into a shouting match at the downtown concert,” Westoff said.

Jamie Popper, of Maquoketa, moved to town about seven years ago for a job. In the past year, she started her own online dog training materials business and said Iowa has lots of state and local resources and support for starting a small business.

Popper, who voted for Kamala Harris in the most recent election, said she’d prefer to live in a more progressive community, but things like the group Grassroots Maquoketa, a pride flag flying at a church, downtown music events, and a thriving arts scene are signs for her to stay.

"There are little pieces of it that feel more progressive, more inclusive and less divisive," Popper said.

Recalling balance of power

Bowman, the former state senator, describes himself as a fiscally conservative Democrat. He pushed to raise Iowa’s gas tax to lessen the project burden on Iowa’s property tax base and local cities, which bond with interest to pay for infrastructure. Bowman said although the measure received bipartisan backing, he wonders if that contributed to his election loss in 2018.

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“We certainly have fiscally conservative folks in our area, and I kind of put myself in that same category, fiscally conservative, Democrat,” Bowman said. “Certainly taxes, that was an issue that was important to my constituents. Probably heard more about abortion and gun rights than you may hear in a lot of Democratic elected officials’ districts. I was the most rural Democratic senator in 2018 when I lost re-election."

But the other thing people really care about? Economic stability.

“What do people care about? They care about jobs," Bowman said. "They care about, you know, do their kids have opportunities to get good jobs? Are there good schools? Is it safe to live in your area? Things of that nature are top ticket."

For most of Bowman’s time in office, Republicans and Democrats shared control of state government. From 2011 to 2016, Democrats controlled the state Senate while Republicans held the governor’s office and the majority in the statehouse.

Bowman remembers that as a time of consensus-building.

“We had to work together. They don't have that issue today, and they believe, rightfully so, they basically have been given the reins of government power by the people, and there comes a lot of responsibility with that. So if things go wrong in Iowa, you know, who are they going to blame?” Bowman said.

He said now, local politicians must contend with the branding of national politics.

“People have these impressions of exactly what every Republican’s like and what every Democrat’s like, and they shouldn't pigeonhole people quite the way they do, but they do that because that's what they're left to deal with when they don't know who this person is.”