By Isabella Senno
Johnson County Supervisor Mike Carberry is mulling a run for the governorship in 2018.
If Carberry decides to run, he would create a campaign centered on such issues as public-education funding, workers’ rights, and water quality.
Carberry said he has only been on the Board of Supervisors for two years, and for 10 years before that, he was a professional environmental advocate.
“I’ve always been a political activist all my life, since I was a kid,” he said. “There seems to be a war on workers, a war on women, a war on water. I think that this state needs progressive leaders who speak to the issues that are important to rural Iowans, to working Iowans, to impoverished Iowans. We need leadership that will return the focus to people and away from corporations.”
Potentially building a platform focused on these issues could garner him support if he decides to run, said Christopher Taylor, the head of the Johnson County Democratic Party.
“I think those all sound like issues that resonate with the majority of Iowans,” Taylor said. “I know education has been an issue that Democrats have tried to lean on for many years and would have a hard time making any headway with Republicans in the Legislature.”
Public education and its subsequent funding are issues that Carberry feels need to be urgently addressed at the state level.
“There is some serious mismanagement,” he said. “We are underfunding education at every level, including the regents’ universities … our community colleges, our K-12, our pre-K and early childhood, public education is completely underfunded, and Iowa used to be known as the education state, yet we’re starving our public education.”
Carberry pointed to two bills signed into law on March 30 that bar counties from creating their own minimum wages — which affected Johnson County and three others — and decrease coverage for workers’ compensation as key examples of the ineptitude he sees in the Gov. Terry Branstad-Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds administration.
“I was the supervisor that provided the third vote to raise the minimum wage in Johnson County to $10.10, so one of the things I’m running on is the war on workers in the state of Iowa,” Carberry said. “The Republicans war on workers is going very well, and one of the things I’m going to stand up for is fighting for workers.”
Pushing back against certain policies that have sparked protest in the days after their signing, such as the Feb. 16 restriction on public employees’ collective-bargaining rights, could win Carberry some points even across party lines.
“You see a lot of pushback with some of Gov. Branstad’s policies; I see it within [both parties], so I think if he plays his cards right and really pushes back against those policies that both sides of the political spectrum are pushing back against … he’ll gain traction in that area,” said Kyle Apple, the vice president of the University of Iowa College Republicans. “When you look at the minimum wage, I think that’s somewhere he could gain a little bit of traction, especially in some of the larger cities.”
Carberry said he is passionate about improving soil and water quality, advocating for environmental policies that have labeled him “extremist” in some circles.
“Water quality is a huge issue. As a professional environmental advocate, I’ve been working on clean water issues since at least 2000 … and our water quality is just getting worse,” Carberry said. “Asking for clean water for our children and for our health, I don’t believe that that’s extremist. That’s mainstream.”
As a self-described “Berniecrat,” Carberry was heavily involved in the Bernie Sanders campaign during the 2016 election, introducing Sanders three times at various events and acting as a surrogate for environmental issues such as the Dakota Access Pipeline.
“I make no bones about it; I’m a progressive, left-leaning liberal Democrat, and I was the highest elected official in the state to endorse Bernie Sanders,” Carberry said.
According to Politico, Trump won the state by about 150,000 votes last November, and this vocal endorsement of, and alignment with, Sanders and his policies means that any potential campaign by Carberry may have difficulty gaining momentum within non-Democratic demographics.
“Anyone who is that open to socialist ideals has no place in Iowa, no place in the United States in the political system. The 2016 election made it very clear that Iowa wants nothing to do with liberal policies, and Mr. Carberry embodies the failed policies of the left,” Apple said. “ [If he decides to run], I hope Mr. Carberry gets the Democratic nomination for governor, because Democrats like Mr. Carberry elect Republicans.”
Carberry plans to decide on whether to form an exploratory committee this month and will continue to see how the process unfolds throughout the next six months or so. He said that should he continue with the exploratory committee, he would be able to decide whether he will run for office next fall.
He is holding conversations with several key Democratic leaders across the state about. Carberry is up for re-election for the Board of Supervisors in 2018 and a person cannot run for two political offices at once. The decision to move forward with a campaign would be a large step for Carberry.
“If I decide to run for governor, that means I don’t run for my county supervisor seat. I love Johnson County, I love the people of Johnson County, this is the greatest place to live in the Midwest, and I would be sacrificing that position, but maybe for the greater good and the greater good is the needs of the people of Iowa and of the state of Iowa.”
