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FORT DODGE, Iowa – Zakeer's coffee team still loves Steve King. They voted for him again and again and do not believe he is a bigot. They say the media and Republicans in Washington are giving him a rough contract.
But here is the problem: these strong supporters of Mr. King, whose words seeming to support white supremacy have been scathingly reprimanded by his own party leaders, are also convinced that his 16 years of Congressional career, representing northwestern Iowa, are over.
"I think he died in the water," said Pat Reed, a retired history professor in a purple sweatshirt from the University of Northern Ontario. Iowa, in reaction to the news that House Republicans had this week deprived Mr. King of his duties on the Agriculture and Judiciary Committees.
"I think he's done," said Ross Nemitz, owner of Ross's Appliance Center in Fort Dodge, a small colonial town in the heart of Mr. King's district, full of agribusiness companies.
Every rural community in Iowa has its Zakeer's, a café with a table of early-morning regulars – a Greek choir speaking in a collective voice. dramas on the local and national scene
Zakeer's men have been dining together for over 20 years. They keep records of attendance and play a game of chance to see who takes the coffee note. (On Wednesday, the loser was an outside journalist.)
For Mr. King, 69, losing the chorus to Zakeer's spells. A copy of The Des Moines Register on a table showed the title at the top of the page, "House rebukes King," which eclipsed the story of Governor Kim Reynolds' speech on the state of the State.
King was also the main subject of WHO, a conservative radio station that broadcast much of its vast corn and soybean fields, spread across 29 districts, whose black furrows covered a layer of snow .
John Kilmer, a retired truck. The driver who listens from an adjacent table and who voted for Mr. King mid-term said that he now had to resign. "They deprived him of his committees and he just takes up space," he said.
And it is not just voters who think that King's career is coming to an end: Republican leaders are already considering going beyond it. and is busy recruiting and raising money for leading challengers by 2020, he is not resigning.
million. King says he's not considering looking for "another job," as Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate majority leader, has suggested this week. He pushed back Wednesday in a letter of fundraising to supporters, writing that "the uncontrolled left has been allied to the Republican" NeverTrumpers "and is doing everything possible to destroy me."
He attacked the New York Times, which published a quote from him in an article last week that led to the storm storm in Congress.
"White Nationalist, White Supremacist, Western Civilization – How Has That Language Become Shocking?", Mr. King told the Times The comments he says now have been taken out of context.
Some long-time supporters in King's fourth district said that even though the nine-term congressman remained underhanded, he was likely to return as his main opponent, with two candidates this week entering the race. which an expected legislator of the Republican State, Randy Feenstra, and others are expected.
The Fort Dodge Messenger, which had approved in November Mr. King on his Democratic challenger, JD Scholten, published Wednesday evening an unusual correction calling on Mr. King to resign.
"It is now clear that our approval was a mistake," wrote the editorial board. "We should have reflected look more closely at the way King made scandalous statements. "
There are many reasons why Mr. King was re-elected several times, despite years of white identity politics and humiliating comments about Hispanic immigrants, which he compared to dogs, anti-drug and anti-drug mules "with calves the size of a cantaloupe".
Perhaps the most basic reason is the deeply conservative character of his district, where Republicans almost always triumph: President Trump won with 27 points. Mr. King's conservatism on abortion and gun rights is in harmony with the majority of his constituents, as is his outward reputation defying the formation of the party.
Some supporters have said that the reprimand of party leaders in Washington and Des Moines would only increase his appeal and returns on those who hope he quits Congress.
"Now that they have removed him from the board, I have seen people dig their heels and say, No, the Congressman King is the one who One of us, the Congressman King is a pro-life, pro-conservative and conservative man, just like us, "said Jacob Hall, who heads a group of activists, the Sioux County Conservatives. .
Hall disputed the idea that Mr. King's latest comments on white supremacy would move many votes one way or the other.
"There is nothing that can hear a Congressman King say that this will change his mind about him, whether they are a supporter or a critic", has he said, "Our decision is made in the fourth district."
But the results of the mid-session in November question this view. Mr. King has barely won a victory of three points, after winning 23 points two years earlier.) His support slumped late in the race after endorsing a Toronto mayoral candidate with neo-Nazi ties and meeting party members. Austrian right-winger accused of trivializing the holocaust The chairman of the House Republican's election committee reprimanded him a week before the elections, calling him a white supremacist.
Many Republican officials Iowa fear that if Mr. King is elected in the November 2020 poll, he leads high voter turnout, threatening other Republicans, including Senator Joni Ernst.
"It is clear that subsequent ballots are a handicap," said Dean Nealson, former Republican president of Story County, the country's largest and most democratic. Mr. King's District
Ms. Ernst may be vulnerable even if King does not show up for the race, after stepping away from him this week alone, along with Iowa senior Senator Charles E. Grassley and Governor Reynolds. Everyone had spent years kissing Mr. King because they needed his conservative electoral base.
"Grassley, Joni Ernst, Kim Reynolds, they could have taken a stand on this subject a few years ago," said Troy Price, president of the Iowa Democratic Party. "It's terrible; it's a lack of leadership from them. "
The opponents of Mr. King, and even some of his supporters, have long been frustrated by the impression he gives to non-Iowans who think that his 16 years of office prove that his voters are racists.
"It embarrasses me," said Amy Presler, 48, a Fort Dodge librarian who grew up on a farm as the youngest of 10 brothers and sisters. do not want the people of the nation and the world to think that Iowans is behind him and supports this kind of conversation, we do not do it. "
King's racist remarks over the years have mostly been about immigrants He was several years ahead of Trump in his call for the construction of a border wall, the demonization of migrants as violent criminals and any plan to legalize Dreamers as a form of amnesty
Mike McCarville, formerly Mayor of Fort Dodge, said The many Latin Americans working in the packaging, construction and agriculture sectors in the region said that the country-born Iowans could be "two-faced" ".
"All farmers will complain about all Hispanics," he said. but they hire them and we can not do without them.
"If they did what they wanted, while bringing them in and sending them back, our economy would stop," he added.
On Monday, after the House Republicans removed King from office, Lorena Lopez, publisher of the Spanish-language newspaper La Prensa du district, received a plethora of texts and emails from readers. . "Every Latino knows how he was, his negative comments especially against Latinos," she said.
The response of the Latin American community, she said, was simple: "There is high time. "
Back at Zakeer's The coffee crew said that King's loss of committee duties meant that the fourth district no longer had a seat at the congressional table.
" No matter. how much you can love the guy, if that person can not represent you well because he was stripped of his powers … "began Mr. Nemitz, the home appliance retailer.
Reed, the teacher retired, finished his sentence: "There is not much left to be there."
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