Republican candidate for governor Adam Steen touted his business experience and service in Gov. Kim Reynolds’ administration during a campaign event at Santa Maria Winery in Carroll Tuesday evening, Dec. 30.
Steen is seeking to keep the governor’s office in Republican control after Reynolds announced last year she will not seek reelection. Reynolds has served as governor since 2017. Lieutenant governor at the time, she succeeded then-Gov. Terry Branstad after he was named ambassador to China by President Donald Trump. Reynolds then won elections in 2018 and 2022.
Parties’ primaries to decide their candidates for governor will be June 2, and the general election will be Nov. 3. Iowa Republicans, under Branstad and then Reynolds, have held the governor’s office since 2011. Republicans currently also have large majorities in the Legislature.
Speaking to the nearly 30 people attending the Carroll event, Steen warned Democrats “smelled blood in the water” with Reynolds’ departure and would try to regain power in the state from the top down, starting with the governor’s position.
“Democrats will stop at nothing to try to get a Democrat into that office and stop a good movement, the conservative movement, the faith movement, the Christian movement that we have in this state, and we have to keep that out. We have to stand up and push back,” Steen said.
Steen set the stakes in the election saying, “Right now, if you look this state, if you look at this country, if you look at this world, you can have a lot of hopelessness, you can have a lot of fear, you can be distraught about a lot of things that are happening right now, but there is hope. But again it’s through the Lord, and it’s through people, it’s through people who are willing to speak truth to situations.
“Right now in this state and in this country and in this world we’re experiencing a battle of good versus evil. We need to call it what it is. This is a spiritual battle of good versus evil.”
He added, “But we have a state here that has hope. We have the ability to stand up right now and push back against evil.”
Nominated by Reynolds and approved by the Iowa Senate, Steen served as director of the Department of Administrative Services for five years before resigning last August to run for governor.
The Department of Administrative Services is the central support agency for state government, overseeing accounting, human resources, state procurement, information technology, facilities for the Capitol complex, fleet management and more.
Before leading that department, according to Iowa Capital Dispatch, Steen was the director of business development at Syverson Strege, a financial services firm, and had previously owned a management consulting firm called 25 Connections.
Steen said he sees the governor leading the state as a CEO and needing to know how to operate the state, understand the culture of the state and understand policies for the state. With his experience, Steen said, he would not need a learning curve for the governor’s job.
“I did it for so long, I know the players, I know the transition team, and I’m ready to operate from day one,” he said.
He added, “We need a governor, a CEO of the state who’s willing to call Iowans what they actually are. We are problem-solvers, we have hope, we have faith, we don’t give up when challenges come across us. We solve those challenges.”
Touching on some of his positions, Steen said he would be “the largest promoter of school trades this state has ever seen.”
“There are unbelievable opportunities in the trade industries right now,” he said. “We need more carpenters, we need more electricians, we need more welders, we need more HVAC, we need more people using their hands, using their minds. And you’ll see incentivizing of the trades industry like it needs to be incentivized.”
“We need to bring vocational studies and industrial arts into schools at a young age — seventh, eighth, ninth grades — get kids training,” he added. “You’re going to see me as an absolute champion for the trades industry. That is where businesses are going to be created, that is where jobs are going to be created, and that will spur economic development across the state.”
Steen also said it’s time for churches and communities to step up and “move government out of the way.”
“Having worked inside government for five years,” he said, “I can tell you right now the government is really good at one thing, and that’s screwing things up. We need the people to solve our problems. We need the government to get out of our way so we can do that.
“You’ll see me be an advocate for bringing families back to the dinner table. We need more families to bring their kids back to the dinner table.
“If you look at the mental health crisis that’s out there right now, it’s a bookend problem. We have a big problem in mental health right now, and it starts at the family dinner table. We need to get our kids back to the dinner table.”
Steen said he would advocate for groups such as Turning Point USA (conservative values advocate) having chapters in high schools, community colleges and colleges across the state.
“We need to be advocating for relationships, for having more children, for getting families coming together. It can be cool again,” he said. “The trades can be cool, families can be cool, church can be cool, but you need a governor who’s willing to say those things on a regular basis.”
Steen also said he “understands the importance of proper legislation that makes sense for all Iowans.”
Legislative items he highlighted include:
— Property rights. “The fact that carbon sequestration is being considered something we should use eminent domain on, I think it is evil,” he said. “I think it is egregious. You’ll see me protect your property rights. Eminent domain should not be used for a private business situation like that.”
— Abortion. “I’m a life-at-conception person,” he said. He said Iowa’s heartbeat law banning abortion after fetal heartbeat is detected was “phenomenal.”
“We moved the ball down the field. We need to move the ball further down the field,” he said.
— Budgeting. He advocates for zero-based budgeting.
“When you zero out your budget and force accountability, enforce transparency, you’ll find waste, you’ll find fraud, you’ll find abuse and you’ll find exactly why numbers continue to increase,” he said, “because we’re not taking a look at what we actually need from a service perspective. I don’t want to have to legislate that. I want local control to take that over and start to zero out their budgets so they understand where their money is going.
— Education. Steen said he would be a champion for school choice and the state’s education savings account program. He said Kuemper Catholic School, which he visited earlier in the day, has helped create a template of success.
“It’s amazing how that program has impacted this community and communities all across the state,” he said. “There are some refinements that can be done. I don’t know what, but there are some refinements that can be done because I’m a free-market capitalist, and when you allow competition to happen, good things happen, things change, things move, things grow.”
Steen said he’s not anti-public schools or public school teachers, noting his sons Ryker, 10, and Maverick, 8, attend public school, but he condemned what he sees as a globalized strategy to pour indoctrination into students.
“What I’m ‘anti’ about is the standards that are being pushed down, the ideology pushed down that teachers have to live with because that’s what they’re being judged and graded upon,” he said. “So we need to free them up, remove that and allow public schools to actually teach how public schools should be taught.”
Steen, an Indianola native who now lives in Runnells with his wife, Kasey, and their two sons, opened his program tracing his faith journey from a short-lived pitching career in the Philadelphia Phillies organization after he had played for Indianola High School and Minnesota State University at Mankato.
After he was released by the Phillies, his father, Thomas Steen, an investment banker who passed away in 2022, got him onto the road of a successful business career. Steen said his athlete’s mentality helped him become very successful working with businesses, figuring out how to help them grow.
While people thought he had the tiger by the tail, he said, however, he was border-line depressed.
“I had what I call a Jesus-sized hole in my heart,” he said, “so at 30 years old, 15 years ago, I hit my knees in my house and said, ‘Lord, I’m done doing things my way. I want to do things your way. I’m done living selfishly.’ I absolutely surrendered to the Lord’s will. I stood up. I felt my heart change. I knew at that moment that I was a different person. I was going to live with a different mission. …
“Fifteen years ago I felt the Lord wanted me to plan and prepare for higher levels of leadership whether it was in business or politics or whatever it was. So I took that very seriously.”
Steen said he’s a credentialed minister in the Assemblies of God Church network, although he is not a church pastor.
Other Republicans in the race with Steen are State Rep. Eddie Andrews, 4th District U.S. Rep. Randy Feenstra, former state Rep. Brad Sherman, and businessman and farmer Zach Lahn of Belle Plaine.
Running on the Democratic Party’s side are State Auditor Rob Sand and political strategist Julie Stauch.