(KIWA Archive photo)
Statewide Iowa (RI) – Iowa law requires candidates in party primaries to win with at least 35 percent of the vote. If that threshold is not met, the winner is to be chosen at a nominating convention. Doug Gross, the Iowa GOP’s nominee for governor 24 years ago, narrowly cleared that 35 percent hurdle.
Sheldon native Bob Vander Plaats, who is now CEO of The Family Leader, finished third with about 31-and-a-half percent. Sukup, a businessman from Sheffield who’d been a state legislator, got nearly a third of the vote. Gross won with 35-point-88 percent.
There was another tight race in 2022. Republican Steve King finished first in a four-way Primary, but with just 31 percent of the vote. In a district nominating convention, King narrowly secured the nomination. If none of the five candidates running for the Republican Party’s nomination for governor wins 35 percent today, the party’s nominee will be chosen by delegates at the GOP’s state convention June 13th.
Back in 2014, State Senator Brad Zaun of Urbandale finished ahead of five other Republican candidates for a seat in congress, but since Zaun won just under 25 percent in the Primary, a nominating convention was held — delegates picked the Primary’s fifth place finisher. Two years later, as a member of the Iowa Senate, Zaun proposed run-off elections if a candidate failed to reach that 35 percent level in the Primary.
That was Zaun back in 2014 before the Iowa Senate passed his bill unanimously, but the House didn’t vote on it.
