WASHINGTON — Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds will deliver the Republican response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address on March 1, GOP congressional leaders announced Tuesday as they look outside Washington to appeal to voters in a midterm election year.
Reynolds is the 43rd governor of Iowa and has served since May of 2017. She was the first governor in the country to require schools to open for full-time in-person learning.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell praised her for fighting COVID-19 “without forgetting common sense.”
“The President and his team should take notes,” McConnell, R-Ky., said in a statement.
Reynolds pushed back against mask and vaccine mandates amid the coronavirus pandemic. She was chided by the Trump administration’s White House Coronavirus Task Force for ending mask mandates while Iowa was seeing a rapid increase in cases and deaths. Defying science, Reynolds sometimes spoke skeptically about the effectiveness of masks in halting the spread of the virus.
Republican lawmakers have chafed at requirements designed to prevent the spread of COVID-19, such as government mandates that certain workers get a vaccine, saying the edicts violated individual American’s civil liberties.
Many Americans have grown weary of pandemic restrictions and states around the country are easing restrictions as cases begin to drop and as the large majority of people become vaccinated.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said “disastrous decision-making in Washington” has been offset by real leadership in states across the country, citing Iowa as an example.
“She handled COVID by choosing freedom over lockdowns and personal responsibility over mandates — leading to real economic recovery from the pandemic,” McCarthy, R-Calif., said of Reynolds.
Reynolds became the first woman to serve as Iowa governor. She was elected in the narrowest victory in modern Iowa politics in 2018 beating Democrat Fred Hubbell by three percentage points, 50.4% to 47.4%.
She has governed as a conservative supporting a ban on same-sex marriage. She was a vocal supporter of President Donald Trump, appearing at Iowa rallies, and said on a recent Iowa Public Television program that she expected he would endorse her when she formally announces plans for reelection.
