Democratic candidate for Governor responds to “Condition of the State” address

DES MOINES, Iowa (KCRG) - Deidre DeJear, the leading Democrat running for governor, responded on Tuesday to Governor Kim Reynold’s “Condition of the State” address, citing a “clear need for new leadership.”

DeJear stated the following:

“I firmly believe we have an opportunity to move our state forward. We’ve seen the politicization of so many issues in the last five years of this administration. And none of that has served in the best interests of Iowans. We also heard a lot of numbers tonight. But numbers can be misleading.

Here are some numbers we didn’t hear tonight:

We used to be #1 in education. In the past two months, superintendents have had to fill in for teachers. Schools closed when there weren’t enough bus drivers. We will do better when we put our teachers and administrators first, and Reynolds’ one time $1000 bonus won’t solve the problem.
We have a childcare crisis in Iowa, and it’s not just parents and children who are hurting. Enrollment in childcare is still 2,000 less than pre-pandemic levels and providers need more than stopgap measures to ensure they can keep their doors open.
Iowa ranks 45th in the nation for broadband access. Her only mention on how we improve broadband was based on the Biden broadband allocation.
Iowa ranks 44th in the nation for mental health workforce availability. And yet I was the only candidate for governor to show up to the NASW town hall on mental health last week.
We are in the middle of a workforce crisis and tens of thousands of people are out of work. And yet there are more job openings than available workers. The solution is not cutting unemployment benefits for those who need it most.
While COVID continues to spread rapidly across our state, our schools and communities are in desperate need of more testing. But our governor sent back the $95 million in federal funding.
On average, RNs in Iowa earn about 22% less than the national average. We are in the middle of a healthcare crisis and a healthcare workforce crisis.

These numbers, daunting as they may look, should not give us reason to give up hope. What they show is a clear need for new leadership to govern our state. This is the moment where we get to elect the people who understand what we’re capable of and are willing to move Iowa forward to live up to its potential, so that we can once again be a leader in this country.”