By O. Kay Henderson (Radio Iowa)
The Iowa Senate’s new Majority Leader says the proposed Summit Carbon Solutions pipeline was “front and center” in conversations he had with his fellow Senate Republicans before they elected him as leader two weeks ago.
“We have moved forward on a whole level of other issues — education, taxation — and we’ve done that as a team,” Senate Majority Leader Mike Klimesh told Radio Iowa this afternoon. “This is a disagreement that we had, but I really believe that continuing the conversation is of the utmost importance to finding a solution.”
In May, 13 of the 34 Republicans in the Iowa Senate joined with Democrats in voting for new restrictions for carbon pipelines and other utility projects, but Governor Reynolds vetoed the bill in June. “The issue’s not going away, obviously,” Klimesh said.
Klimesh said the key is setting the rift aside and finding some sort of common ground. “Remembering how successful we’ve been when we’re together,” Klimesh said, “and to rebuild that internally.”
Klimesh said he honed conflict resolution skills while serving as Spillville’s mayor, off and on, for a total of 20 years. “Navigated Spillville through two of its largest floods. I was able to work with the county and the state and rebuild some bridges, do some infrastructure improvements, bought out four homes that had been flooded numerous times and the last time they were flooded, of course, it would have required them to rebuild a foot above the 100 year mark, which I would have had four homes on stilts,” Klimesh says. “And the most important thing you learn is when you have issues like that is people want to get back to normal and they want to get back to normal as fast as they can.”
Klimesh is a native of Spillville. After an injury ended Klimesh’s days playing football at Luther College, he got interested in radio, hosted a Saturday night classic rock show on the college station and wound up working at KCHA in Charles City. “My very first job out of college was working for Jim Hebel…and his claim to fame was he stuttered unless he was on the radio and I worked for him for about a year — on air, did play-by-play, sold advertising. You know small town radio, you do everything, right? You’re the guy talking, you’re the guy out knocking on doors,” Klimesh said. “…From there I worked at Featherlite’s corporate offices for about two years.”
Featherlite was the first manufacturer to make all-aluminum trailers to tow things like livestock and vehicles. Klimesh moved on and was the long-time plant manager of Graphics, Incorporated, in Calmar. The business, which had a printing press for small town newspapers for years, is now focused on digital printing. Klimesh said since he was in sales for so many years, he actually “loves” campaign fundraising and that’s part of his new job “to advance the priorities” of Senate Republicans.
“I’ll work as hard as I can every day. Not having a business to run anymore or a day job, it gives me unlimited time to put towards this job, which I think is necessary,” Klimesh said. “I think you need to be able to dedicate as much time as you can to working for Iowa and Iowans.”
Klimesh, who is 56, was first elected to the Iowa Senate in 2020.
