Competitive City Council Races Des Moines 1995-2024

*Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends.

Update: 03/12/2022: At the Thursday March 10, 2022 I said I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of competitive elections in Des Moines over the past ten years. I was wrong. Make that twenty. And three of those winners resigned.

Some quickees…

See Part II for a broader analysis. But for now…

• Twenty one (22) elections over forty four (45) years. Seventeen (18) competitive races. And I was beyond generous using a 15% margin as being (cough) ‘competitive’.
• But then factor in five (5) resignations, which means five (5) appointments.
• And three of those appointees were ex-Councilmembers who were later re-appointed to other positions.
• But only two new faces were brought into the Council via the appointment process.
• And then we’ve had cases such as 2009 where an incumbent (Dave Kaplan) ran for re-election in another seat against another incumbent (Susan White), in order to open up an uncontested seat for Melissa Musser to run unopposed.

And yet…

During every election in Des Moines, you’ll hear someone say:

How lucky we are to have such a wonderful variety of great candidates in a town our size!

So how do we make sense of all this?

Well, the two important numbers you cannot see in this table are

• Thirty eight (38) ¹unique competitive candidates (UCC).
• Twenty five (25) ²unique winning candidates (UWC).

They sound like new divisions of MMA but they matter. But before we get into them, I’m gonna give you a series of factlets (I know, I know, you hate the factlets. You’ll like these.)

Factlets

• Most people run one non-competitive campaign and are never heard from again. [We’ll get into that in another article]
  • Alexander Szabo was the only other applicant (against Luisa Bangs) for the 2015 appointment. He lost, then ran against her for the same slot that autumn and, as happens with people who run against appointees, got smoked. But just looking at his application, it is sad that he did not try again.
• A number of people run multiple intentionally non-competitive  campaigns. These are campaigns that have no expectation of success and thus never succeed. I call them ‘civic duty campaigns’ because the candidates feels that it is an intrinsic civic good to have an opponent. But since they don’t actually campaign, they pad the system, making the number of choices appear greater than they actually are.
  • Eg. Tad Doviak.
• All successful candidates in competitive elections have run multiple times. There are no ‘one and dones’.
  • Almost always they run, win and keep going (Traci Buxton).
  • Or (much rarer) lose, improve, and eventually win (Anthony Martinelli).
  • Or (rarest of all) win, lose, then win again (Dave Kaplan).
• Contrary to what you might think, it is actually rare for candidates to run multiple campaigns and then succeed in a competitive race.
  • Anthony Martinelli got totally wiped out by Matt Pina in 2017 and then prevailed in 2019.
• A significant number of people run one or more unsuccessful competitive campaigns, but then succeed by running unopposed.
  • Rob Back ran three times in competitive races, but only won on the fourth try; unopposed.
  • Harry Steinmetz ran a competitive campaign and then succeeded in 2021 running unopposed.
• All appointees run when their time comes and all are re-elected. And anyone who has been appointed tends to be among the longer serving CMs.
  • Jeremy Nutting: appointed in 2013, then re-elected twice, neither time in competitive races.
  • Dan Sherman lost in the closest election in City history in 2001 (20 votes!) then was re-appointed in 2003 to replace Wasson, which gave him that ‘appointment bump’ and was unopposed in 2007.
• Most people who run successfully the first time run unopposed
  • When Position #5 incumbent Dave Kaplan decided to challenge Position #7 incumbent Susan White, it allowed Melissa Musser to unopposed for Position #5 in 2009 and then again in 2013.
• It is very rare for a first-time candidate to run in a competitive race and succeed
  • Traci Buxton in 2017 was outspent two to one by Harry Steinmetz.
• Most incumbents lose as soon as they face a competitive race, especially if they initially got in via appointment
  • Luisa Bangs: appointed in 2015, re-elected in 2015,  lost in 2019, re-appointed to another seat in 2020.
• The number of people who win more than once with competitive races is very low. And these people tend to be the longest serving and most impactful CMs in City history. ie. they were the for realz politicians. Dave Kaplan was unique in that he won in 1997, then lost in a highly competitive race in 2001, then came back swinging in 2005.
  • Dave Kaplan
  • Bob Sheckler (Truly unique among Des Moines politicians. He faced multiple tough races, winning every one.)
• Put another way, between 2001 and 2020, only six people (actually five, I’m adding back Dave Kaplan) have lost, then come back to win. People who lose, tend to pack it in.
  • But in four out of six cases where they did stage a comeback, it was a rout or an uncontested election.
  • In one case, Dan Sherman was appointed two years after his loss and then attained an election victory after that using the ‘appointment bump’.
  • There have been eleven (11) even vaguely unique competitive losers (UCL)
  • Most people lose, and regardless of margin, are never heard from again. (Rob Back is a true outlier, ran four times, two vaguely competitive, and finally got in the last time running uncontested.)
  • Only two (2) people have lost, and then come back to win in strongly contested races.
  • People like Melissa Musser served multiple terms and never ran a competitive race. Incumbents actually have as good a chance of being defeated as anyone else when confronted with a quality opponent. It’s just that they rarely do.

Let’s recap…

• Forty two (42) elections over the past 20 years.
• But only twenty four (24) ¹unique winning candidates. The UWCs.
• And only ³seventeen (17) of those unique winning candidates (UWCs) ever faced even a single competitive race. (In fact, only one candidate, Bob Sheckler ever won multiple tough races.)
  
• There have been five appointees, after five resignations. But three of those were ex-CMs tapped to fill subsequent appointments which means  that only two new faces were brought on to the Council via the appointment process.
  

The Talent Pool

This is so important, it bears repeating:

Out of fortyT two (42) elections/vacancies the total unique number of competitive candidates/applicants over the past twenty years has been thirty eight (38).

Even if you include the people like Tad Doviak, who have run multiple ‘civic duty’ campaigns, you arrive at a number less than the total number of elections.

Over the past twenty years, the number of viable or even known candidates for every race has averaged less than one (1).

The overwhelming number of wins are either via appointment (and then an appointment bump), non-competitive races, or unopposed.

And one last new number: Out of the twenty four (24) unique winning candidates (UWC) only seventeen (17) ever faced a competitive opponent.

Moving towards a theory…

The lack of unique competitive candidates makes it difficult to draw many statistically valid conclusions, such as “what makes for a successful candidate”.  One would expect a fairly low number of UWCs if people are truly happy with their electeds.

But given the ongoing controversies in our local politics, coupled with the fact that there are so few competitive candidates does suggest a few things:

• Candidate quality is probably irrelevant
• Money may or may not be a factor (that’s for another day)
• Specific policy positions may be irrelevant
• Identity has been irrelevant

In other words, the data suggests a typical ‘small town’ election eco-system where people bitch a lot, but only a minority of people vote. And that leads to one other conclusion: the number of UCCs is probably not coincidental.

In any unconstrained market where there are limited choices, it is because the customers are generally satisfied with their choices.

Voters may be truly satisfied, or they may not be, but are unaware of other options for various reasons. However there are no constraints on who can run (no tests, not even a filing fee, the application takes about five minutes to fill out.)

For whatever reason, the 6,000+ people who vote out of the 19,000 registered voters make the decisions for the 33,000 residents. And those people have not demanded more choices.

*This is one of a series of analyses I update from time to time. It is far from perfect (eg. I need to update it to 1997 which was the first ‘modern Des Moines’ election, ie. after the final annexation of Woodmont/Redondo.) But as it is, it’s close enough to make some valid points.

¹The thirty eight (38) unique competitive candidates 2001-2020. Win or lose, these are the people who ran anything close to a competitive campaign. And I’m being pretty generous here: 🙂

²The twenty four (24) unique winners 2001-2020. The twenty four people who ever made it over the line:

³The eighteen (18) unique competitive winners 2001-2023. The eighteen people who were ever actually given a run for their money in any attempt and prevailed. (And just to be add to the fun: In almost every case, these individuals faced only one competitive race, either their first race or their last. If they faced a competitive first election, any subsequent races were a rout or went uncontested. If they lost in a competitive race, in every case (but one) they packed it in.