Steve King loses Republican primary race to Randy Feenstra, ending King's decadeslong political career

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Iowa's Sen. Joni Ernst and Reps. Steve King, Cindy Axne and Abby Finkenauer likely face competitive races in 2020. Des Moines Register

Republican voters ousted U.S. Rep. Steve King on Tuesday, delivering an end to the two decades of controversy he brought to his heavily conservative district.

The Associated Press has called the 4th Congressional District primary race for state Sen. Randy Feenstra of Hull, who had the backing of many state elected officials and national Republican groups. Feenstra won with 45.7% of the vote to King's 36%, a margin of just under 8,000 votes, according to unofficial results from the Iowa Secretary of State's office.

Feenstra vastly outraised King and spent heavily on television advertising targeting King as ineffective since he was stripped of his committee seats by Republican leaders in January 2019.

"I said from day one that Iowans deserve a proven, effective conservative leader that will deliver results and I have done that in the Iowa Senate being in the Iowa Legislature for the last 12 years. And I promise you I will deliver results in Congress," Feenstra said in a Facebook Live video on Tuesday night.

King, a nine-term representative from Kiron, was first elected in 2002.

In a Facebook video posted Tuesday night, King said he had called Feenstra to concede the race, but struck a critical tone towards the outside groups that donated to Feenstra's campaign or advertised on his behalf.

"I pointed out that there’s some powerful elements in the swamp that he’s going to have an awfully hard time pushing back against them," King said. "He assured me that that’s what he would do. And I’m thinking of those super PACs that came in in this race and how powerful they are. I don’t think he or anybody has any idea how powerful they actually are."

Feenstra also defeated Jeremy Taylor, a former Woodbury County supervisor and state lawmaker from Sioux City who received 7.8% of the vote; Bret Richards, an Army veteran, educator and former businessman from Irwin who received 7.4% of the vote; and Steve Reeder, an Arnolds Park businessman, who received 3.1% of the vote.

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U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Kiron, speaks to the Westside Conservative Club on Wednesday, Aug. 14, 2019, at The Machine Shed in Urbandale.  (Photo: Kelsey Kremer/The Register)

King was stripped of his committees last year following remarks he made to the New York Times about white nationalism. All four challengers used King's removal from those committees as evidence that they would be more effective in Congress while still sharing King's conservative values.

King has denied supporting white nationalism and has said those comments were taken out of context for political reasons. He's described the backlash as an orchestrated campaign against him.

King has long faced criticism for his incendiary comments. He has long been a strident critic of legal abortion and illegal immigration, and has made remarks that Republicans have decried before.

Last year, during a meeting with the Westside Conservative Club in Urbandale, he questioned whether there would be any population left were not for "rape and incest."

In 2018, King had a meet with members of a far-right Austrian political party associated with neo-Nazi movements while on a trip funded by a Holocaust memorial nonprofit. 

Ten years earlier, King said terrorists would celebrate a Barack Obama presidency and that al-Qaeda "would be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on September 11 because they would declare victory in this war on terror."

Generally, his comments sparked outrage and Republican distance but little action.

King noted Tuesday night that his opponents in the race generally did not criticize him for those past statements. Instead, they focused on his effectiveness in Congress.

"Of all of the four opponents that I’ve had in this race, not one of them has raised an issue with a single vote I’ve put up or a single statement that I have made, and that’s pretty interesting when you think of nearly 18 years in the United States Congress that no one’s disagreed with the positions that I’ve taken," King said.

But national Republican officials were not so shy in criticizing King's past statements after his loss on Tuesday night.

"Steve King’s white supremacist rhetoric is totally inconsistent with the Republican Party, and I’m glad Iowa Republicans rejected him at the ballot box," GOP Chair Ronna McDaniel said in a tweet.

► More: Learn about the Iowa district that re-elected Steve King year after year

Sen. Randy Feenstra, R-Hull, speaks during debate on a tax bill in the Iowa Senate, Saturday, May 5, 2018, at the Statehouse in Des Moines, Iowa. (Photo: Charlie Neibergall/Associated Press)

Feenstra amassed significant support from state elected officials and national Republican-aligned groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Right to Life and the Republican Jewish Coalition. Meanwhile, prominent Iowa Republicans like Gov. Kim Reynolds and U.S. Sens. Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst opted to stay out of the race rather than supporting King as they had in past elections.

King described his loss as "an effort to push out the strongest voice for full-spectrum constitutional Christian conservatism" in Congress.

"What I regret is these tactics may get legs and be used against the next most effective, then the next, then the next," he said.

Barbara Hovland, an Iowa Republican State Central Committee member and chair of the Cerro Gordo County GOP, said many grassroots activists she talked to during the campaign did not appreciate the Feenstra campaign's attacks against King in mailers and other advertising.

"I've never seen a Republican primary where the attacks were constant, whether they were truthful or not. I've never seen the amount of mail from someone in a primary," she said.

Hovland, who did not endorse in the race, praised King for doing as well as he did despite being outspent by Feenstra's campaign.

"When you look at the dollars per vote and divide it up I think the King camp did pretty darn well with the funds that they had. They just didn’t have the funds for the commercials and mailers like the Feenstra camp had," she said.

Hovland said she expects Republicans in the 4th District to rally behind Feenstra in November, but she said she'd like to see where King's path takes him next.

"I don’t see him giving up politics in Iowa so it would be interesting to see what he chooses to do next," she said.

The 4th District, in conservative northwest Iowa, has long favored Republicans. King won in 2016 with 61% of the vote — a 22 percentage-point margin over his Democratic challenger. That same year, President Donald Trump won the district, besting Democrat Hillary Clinton by nearly 30 percentage points.

But this year, King knew the race would be tight.

"I have some concerns. There is no question the race is tightening up," King told the Sioux City Journal last month.

In 2018, King defeated Democrat J.D. Scholten by just 3.4%, his smallest margin of victory in a general election. Some of King's opponents had said they were concerned Republicans could lose the seat if the incumbent was the nominee.

Scholten is running again this year and was unopposed for the Democratic nomination, which he won Tuesday. He will face Feenstra in November.

On Tuesday night, Scholten took credit for King's primary loss and said he was gearing up for November.

"There’s not a dime that Randy Feenstra won’t take from special interests and corporate donors like Ag corporations and hedge fund billionaires. Iowa’s 4th District deserves real representation and accountability from someone who puts people — not corporations and the 1% — first," Scholten said in a statement.

Stephen Gruber-Miller covers the Iowa Statehouse and politics for the Register. He can be reached by email at sgrubermil@registermedia.com or by phone at 515-284-8169. Follow him on Twitter at @sgrubermiller.

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