Kim Reynolds

Kimberly Kay Reynolds (née Strawn; born August 4, 1959) is an American politician serving as the 43rd governor of Iowa since 2017.

Reynolds was born Kimberly Kay Strawn in 1959 in St. Charles, Iowa.

She graduated from high school at the Interstate 35 Community School District in 1977.

Reynolds attended Northwest Missouri State University, taking classes in business, consumer sciences and clothing sales and design, without earning a degree.

She later took classes at Southeastern Community College in the late 1980s, and then accounting classes at Southwestern Community College between 1992 and 1995.

Reynolds served four terms as Clarke County treasurer beginning in 1994 and then served a partial term in the Iowa Senate from 2009 to 2011 without having earned degrees of higher education.

On November 4, 2008, she was elected to represent the 48th district in the Iowa Senate, defeating Democratic nominee Ruth Smith and independent candidate Rodney Schmidt.

In 2010, Reynolds endorsed a ban on same-sex marriage in Iowa.

On June 25, 2010, Republican gubernatorial nominee Terry Branstad publicly selected Reynolds to be his running mate as the lieutenant governor candidate.

The next day, she received the Republican nomination at the Republican state convention.

On November 2, 2010, the Branstad/Reynolds ticket won the general election.

Reynolds resigned her Senate seat on November 12 before taking office as lieutenant governor.

A member of the Republican Party, Reynolds served as the 46th lieutenant governor of Iowa from 2011 to 2017.

Reynolds was sworn in as lieutenant governor of Iowa on January 14, 2011.

She co-chaired the Governor's Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) Advisory Council, Iowa Partnership for Economic Progress board, and the Military Children Education Coalition.

She was also Branstad's representative on the board of the Iowa State Fair.

In 2012, Reynolds began taking classes in the bachelor of public administration program at Upper Iowa University.

She did not earn degrees from any of these institutions.

Reynolds was elected chair of the National Lieutenant Governors Association (NLGA) in July 2015.

In December 2016, shortly before Reynolds became governor, Iowa State University awarded her a Bachelor of Liberal Studies degree with three concentrations: political science, business management, and communications.

Reynolds served four terms as the Clarke County treasurer.

She became governor in May 2017 when Governor Terry Branstad stepped down to become the United States ambassador to China.

On May 24, 2017, Reynolds became governor of Iowa upon the resignation of Branstad, who stepped down to become United States Ambassador to China.

She is Iowa's first female governor.

Reynolds's elevation to the governorship created a vacancy in the office of lieutenant governor.

Reports indicated that Reynolds's selection of a lieutenant governor could be challenged in the Iowa Supreme Court.

An opinion from the Attorney General of Iowa indicated that "an individual promoted from lieutenant governor to governor, as was Reynolds, [did] not have the authority to appoint a new lieutenant governor."

On May 25, 2017, Reynolds announced that Iowa Public Defender Adam Gregg would serve as acting lieutenant governor; to avoid litigation, the Reynolds administration stated that Gregg "[would] not hold the official position of lieutenant governor" and would not succeed Reynolds in the event of her inability to serve as governor.

She won a full term as governor in 2018 and was reelected in 2022.

Reynolds shifted the Iowa Supreme Court to the right through her judicial appointments, has been a staunch supporter of Donald Trump, and has a close relationship with the Iowa pork industry.

In 2018, Reynolds proposed cutting $10 million from Medicaid, which cares for eligible low-income adults, children, pregnant women, elderly adults and people with disabilities.

Reynolds's proposed restructuring of the state tax code would represent a further reduction in income taxes, going beyond 2018 legislation (passed by Republicans in the state legislature and signed into law by Reynolds) that was the largest income tax cut in Iowa history.

Her proposed sales-tax increase, however, was largely opposed by state legislators.

In 2018, after the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), Reynolds called same-sex marriage a "settled" issue and said that she did not consider herself obligated to follow the Iowa Republican Party platform provision against same-sex marriage.

Reynolds has been a staunch supporter of Donald Trump.

She blocked two-thirds of requests from Democratic state Attorney General Tom Miller to join multi-state lawsuits challenging Trump administration policies or to submit amicus briefs in such suits; among the vetoed requests were proposals to challenge Trump policies related to immigration, asylum, abortion, birth control, environmental deregulation, gun policy, and LGBT rights.

Reynolds blocked Miller from including Iowa in a legal challenge to the Trump administration's repeal of the Clean Power Plan, an Obama-era regulation that restricted emissions of greenhouses gases (such as carbon) to counteract climate change.

In 2018, she acknowledged that Trump's trade and tariff policies were hurting American farmers (as agriculture exports declined due to tariffs imposed by other nations in retaliation for Trump's tariffs), but then claimed that farmers would ultimately benefit.

In 2020, she proposed a one-cent increase in the state sales tax (bringing it to 8 cents), offset by a phased reduction in the state income tax, including a cut in the rate for the top bracket from 9% to 5.5%.

Reynolds made campaign appearances with Trump during the 2020 presidential campaign; in the November election, Trump carried Iowa, but lost nationally to Joe Biden, who won both the electoral vote and the national popular vote.