New Republican Minority Leader Has Goals, Says He’s Realistic

An amendment to Iowa’s constitution to ban gay marriage and a move to reduce property taxes will be among the top priorities of newly elected Iowa Senate Minority Leader Ron Wieck.

Wieck, a Republican from Sioux City in his second term, was elected by party colleagues last week to replace retiring Sen. Mary Lundby.

Republicans, holding only 20 seats in the 50-seat Senate, have little power to wield. Their new leadership will determine what actions they will take to use what little power they have in influencing policies — and to maneuver to regain seats in the 2008 elections.

In an interview with Iowa Independent this week, Wieck discussed three main areas of focus that he will use to achieve those goals. Those three issues: property tax reform, health care reform and a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

“We have to be realistic and we have to remember that we’re in the minority. To believe that we are going to pass major legislation as Republicans in the minority next year, we’d just be fooling ourselves. Our primary function, our primary goal during the next session will be to do everything that we possibly can to regain the majority,” Wieck said.

“There will definitely be a process of contrasting Republican and Democrat values in the state of Iowa,” he said. “And we’ll be prepared to talk about the property tax issue. Realistically, you can take the property tax issue on another level, and that level is that if we don’t do something about spending, particularly the spending in the last session, we’re never going to get to do anything about property taxes in the state of Iowa. We’ll continue to see high property taxes. I happen to be on the property tax interim study group that met last winter at the capitol, and I heard in the entire day of discussion and testimony nothing about an effort to cut spending so that we could truly do something about taxes. All I heard was a way to shift and look for revenues in a different place so property taxes could be reduced. That doesn’t increase the ability of Iowans to retain money in their pocket, it simply is taking out of a different pocket to meet the demands of government.”

Republicans see the recent ruling in an Iowa court striking down the state’s marriage law as an opportunity to bring Democrats to their side — or as an issue to defeat Democrats on Election Day.

“One of our priorities would include a marriage amendment,” said Wieck, discussing what he calls “the issue with the judge legislating from the bench and overturning the marriage law. We’ll have a bill asking for that. You know, I really believe there are some Democrats that believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman. They continue to stand with the rest of their party on that issue, but we know for a fact that there’s been a number of times when some of the Democrats in the Senate have said that if the courts overturned the law, they’d re-think it. And so we’re going to be calling on those people to re-think the issue and cross the aisle on that issue and vote with us.”

Wieck, who came out of the closed-door leadership election with a victory over Sen. Paul McKinley of Chariton, said that the Senate Republicans will be united in their efforts. He said that he is planning some committee re-assignments to better utilize the skills of Republican Senators.