Gov. Kim Reynolds completes a legislative session following a pandemic and heading into a reelection year in a fairly strong position.

She steered a big tax cut bill that involves shifting the cost of mental health services from property taxes to state revenues. It’s a big deal. It may make it more difficult for local government budgets by reneging on backfills from previous property tax cuts, but voters tend to blame the city council and not the governor when the parks aren’t mowed.

The legislature gave the teachers a 3% raise early in the session to keep the noise down. They imposed limits on protesting and photographing and voting to which most people did not pay attention. They threw a spitwad at elitists by entertaining the end of tenure at state universities (then froze appropriations). Of course, they moved to ban abortion in anticipation of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade and allowed us to carry concealed weapons without a permit.

Controversies over masking, we hope, will have faded into history by November 2022. Moderate voters may gloss over how the governor handled the pandemic in the early going, for instance by threatening vulnerable meatpacking workers. She was galvanizing the base while betting that homeowners in Clive don’t care that much for the plight of Guatemalans in Storm Lake with respiratory issues in April 2020. She probably was right.

For sure, her defense of handing over Medicaid to the private insurance industry — which resulted in the closing of at least 13 rural nursing homes — will be long forgotten even among those who cared. Fred Hubbell, a solid candidate with lots of cash, made that argument and lost.

Reynolds will campaign on tax cuts, family rights, flexible government and low unemployment.

She has to be favored to win at this point.

“Who do we have?” asked an old Democratic former legislator.

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more depressing stuff here.