Biggest campaign donations. Register and Business Record subscribers. Grad job market is ‘low and slow.’

12/3/2025

Elections were in full swing across the nation and Iowa in November. City council seats were up for grabs, with one race finishing incredibly close, and school board elections were interesting once again. But who is donating to these campaigns? And how much? 

Three Des Moines city council elections took place for Wards 1 and 2 and the at-large seat. By far, the closest election was for the at-large seat between incumbent Mike Simonson and Endi Montalvo-Martinez. Simonson narrowly won the race with 51% of the vote to 47% for Montalvo-Martinez.

Starting at January of 2025, Simonson received 181 contributions for a total of $170,016.02, putting the average contribution to his campaign just short of four digits at $939.32. The largest contribution came from Virginia Lauridsen at $10,000. He also had 11 contributions of $5,000. In addition, Simonson received $1,000 from a slew of legacy names in Iowa including former Iowa Governor Terry Branstad, Christine Lauridsen Sand, Connie Wimer and Jim Cownie.

Campaign donations for Montalvo-Martinez were quite the opposite. He received a total of $10,573 from 116 contributions, putting the average donation at $91.15. Montalvo-Martinez had three contributions at the top of his list that were un-itemized as of press time: $1,350, $1,289 and $1,102. The highest donations with names attached were $600 from Jorge Montalvo and $580 from Victor Martinez. Getting 47% of the vote was not a bad showing for a first-time candidate running against some of the city’s and state’s deepest pockets. 

In Ward 1, Rob Barron won with 61% of the vote against CeCe Ibson, who received 30%, and Dudley Muhammad with 6%.Barron received 427 contributions for a total of $63,407.99 at an average of $148.50 per donation. He received two donations of $5,000, one from Momentum Des Moines, an urbanist political action committee, and Fred Weitz. He also received $3,000 from Tim Urban, $2,500 from Laborers’ PAC and a $500 donation from Tom Harkin. 

Ibsen gathered 88 donations totaling $19,960. Her largest donations came in the form of two $2,000 donations from Michael Franken and Jordan Franken. She had four $1,000 donations from the Citizens to Elect Strope-Boggus, Kiernan Wagner, Johanna Chanin and Roberta Kahn. 

Josh Mandelbaum won his Ward 3 seat back, running unopposed and receiving 94% of the vote. Despite no meaningful challenger, Mandelbaum received 291 donations since the start of 2025 for a total of $74,283.32. His largest donation came from Fred Hubbell for $5,000. He received four $2,500 donations, one each from the Operating Engineers Local 234 Political Fund, Laborers’ PAC, Jill Mandelbaum and North Central States Carpenter PAC. 

In the Des Moines Public School Board races, incumbents Ryan Howell and Skylar Mayberry-Mayes won their respective seats, running uncontested. The two at-large seats were won by Sara Hopkins at 38.44% and Maria Alonzo at 38.30%. Marcus Coenen came in third at 21.33%. 

Howell’s largest donation came from Cheryl and Michael Giudicessi at $500. Mayberry-Mayes’ largest donation was from Vernon Johnson at $1,000. 

Hopkins received five donations more than four figures including $2,500 from Iowa – REALTORS Political Action Committee, $1,500 from James C. Conlin, $1,000 from the Laborers’ PAC, $1,000 from Tiffany Bomer, and $1,000 from Nicole Syverson.

Alonzo’s largest donation came from Araceli Jimenez at $1,056. She also received $500 from the Iowa Unity Coalition, which is “dedicated to building political power within our diverse and underrepresented communities at every level of government via in the policies that drive our state forward.”

The West Des Moines Mayoral race also happened in November between winner Russ Trimble and challenger M.J. Hoag. Trimble won the race soundly, 73% to 26%, but still racked in quite a few donations. 

Incumbent Trimble, facing a challenge from a political unknown in Hoag, received 339 donations totaling $119,550 in 2025, an average of $352.55. His largest donation was from Gerald Kirke at $5,000. His next-highest donation came from Galloway Holdings LLC, a commercial property management company, at $2,500. 

Hoag received 23 donations for a total of $2,140.44. His largest donation was $1,000 from Britt Gagne. The West Des Moines Democrats also threw their support to Hoag with a $200 donation. …

In the Des Moines Business Record’s Oct. 31 edition, the weekly newspaper reported its U.S. Postal Service statement of ownership, management and circulation. Paid subscription newspapers are required to do this so they can receive postal discounts and tax-funded legal revenue that independent, free publications like CITYVIEW do not receive. 

The report says the average total paid distribution for the Business Record is now 2,472 for the preceding 12 months and 2,272 for the issue nearest to the filing date. The average paid electronic copies for the preceding 12 months is 111 and drops to 94 in the issue published nearest to the filing date. That means, combined print and electronic paid distribution for the Business Record, according to their self-reporting, averaged 2,383 for the preceding 12 months and 2,366 for the issue published nearest to the filing date. Polk County has approximately 240,996 residential mailboxes and 15,098 business mailboxes, totaling 256,094 mailing addresses in the county. That means, assuming all the subscribers are in Polk County (which they are not), less than 1% of all address holders subscribe to the Business Record and about 16% of businesses do. 

In The Des Moines Register’s heyday of the 1960s, the paid Sunday circulation reached more than 500,000. That number is a far cry from what it is today. The average total paid distribution for the daily Register is now 15,080 for the preceding 12 months and 14,232 for the issue nearest to the filing date. The average paid electronic copies for the preceding 12 months is 9,564 and drops to 6,288 in the issue published nearest to the filing date. The combined print and electronic paid distribution for the daily Register, according to their self-reporting, averaged 24,644 for the preceding 12 months and 20,520 for the issue published nearest to the filing date. As of 2023, there were approximately 2,607,526 households in Iowa. We will do the math for you. About 1% of the households in Iowa subscribe to the daily Register. 

What remains interesting is that, despite having the Des Moines Register’s office located at 400 Locust, the statement of ownership, management and circulation states that the publisher is Kristin Roberts, and the editor is Michael Anastasi, both in New York. On the Register’s website, the executive editor is listed as Rachel E. Stassen-Berger, who was given the role in June of this year. …

Glassdoor, a website where current and former employees share reviews and ratings about their workplaces, reported its work-life trends for 2026. The report touched on several trends and happenings, such as AI’s impact, return to work policies, layoffs and more. Des Moines received a mention in the report, and it wasn’t good.

Glassdoor provided a table for “up and coming cities for new grads” that charted the relationship between annualized early-career wage growth and 2025 average early-career salary. Des Moines landed in the worst of its four labels, “low and slow.” Since 2020, it ranks Provo, Utah, as having the highest average annual growth at 7%, and an average salary in 2025 of $61,164. A scroll to the bottom of the table finds Des Moines, ranked 69th with 3.4% average annual growth and an average salary in 2025 at $59,842. Des Moines’ 3.4% growth rate was sandwiched between Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Birmingham, Alabama. …

There is some positive news for new grads, at least those who attended Iowa State University. ISU climbed five spots to rank in the top 10 of The Princeton Review’s 20th annual ranking of undergraduate schools for entrepreneurship studies. The ranking is based on a survey of administrators at nearly 300 schools in the U.S., Canada, Mexico and Europe that offer entrepreneurship studies. ♦