Amendment Two
There are two state constitutional amendments on the Iowa ballot this election cycle. We talked about one of them, concerning voter eligibility, yesterday. Today, the second of the two amendments…which could apply to our current situation.
Current constitutional provisions provide that if the governor cannot serve, then the lieutenant governor takes over. After that, it’s the president of the state senate.
Back in 2017, when then-Gov. Terry Branstad stepped down to become our nation’s ambassador to China, then-Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds automatically became governor. That left a vacancy for lieutenant governor, so she appointed Adam Gregg to the post.
Except that she did not have the power to make such an appointment, nor was there a provision whereby she could submit a name for legislative approval. Then as now, the provision is that the office is left vacant until the next election. So Adam Gregg had a title of lieutenant governor, but until he won election to the office in 2020, he was in essence merely a staff member assisting the governor with no path to succession.
In case you think that sounds odd, recall that the United States had a similar provision for a vice-president; after President Kennedy was killed in office, then-Vice President Johnson succeeded him—but there was no one in the vice president’s role, so next in line would have been the Speaker of the House. That provision was changed so that when Spiro Agnew resigned as vice president, President Nixon could appoint Gerald Ford, subject to Congressional approval…and when Ford became president, he could appoint Nelson Rockefeller, subject to Congressional approval.
Here in Iowa, it sort of hadn’t come up before. But now we again have a vacancy in the office of lieutenant governor. So the state constitutional provision set forth in the second of the two amendments on the ballot would establish a process for filling the office of lieutenant governor, with full succession rights—essentially, again parallel to the federal government approach.
Two items, with wide ranging potential impact…as always, relegated to the back of your November 5th ballot.
