4/23/2026 THE SIMON CONWAY SHOW Hour 1

I don't know that Mitch McConnell is running again. I haven't actually paid attention to him. He's such an irrelevance to my life. Susan Collins is. Makowski is. It's just, oh, it's such an appalling thing that we're witnessing here from Republicans. We know there's been issues. There was issues in Virginia, by the way. So Republicans were, I'm not saying it was rigged. The president has said it was rigged. I'm not going down that road. I haven't investigated it too far. We are going to talk to a friend of mine in Virginia later on today. But at the 11th hour, exactly 35,000 mailed in ballots show up. Not 35,162. Not 35,001. 35,000 exactly mail-in ballot showed up, pushed the result to the Democrat side and were supposed to not raise an eyebrow? I'm raising an eyebrow. I'm not beyond raising an eyebrow. I guess it could happen. But exactly 35,000 mail-in ballots show up. The president's already calling it rigged. But... That is, you know, I can't go that far. I haven't dug in enough. But I am definitely raising an eyebrow. I don't know about you. So now we have four Republicans who say, yeah, no, you don't have to prove you're a citizen. Nope. We don't need you to do that. Just that. Just that alone. You don't have to prove you're a citizen of the United States in order to cast a vote.

515-284-1040 text us 81530 send us a talk back because I'm really interested in what you have to say about this this is truly appalling so I think it's dead I don't know where you go from here that you can find a way to resurrect it if you can't get it done Through reconciliation where you only need 51, if you can't attach it to that, yeah, you're not going to get it with the makeup of the Senate the way it is. You're not going to get it. So, that is where we find ourselves today. The Save America Act is not going to be a thing. I do not know that even if the president found a way to sign an executive order. I'm not a lawyer, obviously, but I'm racking my brains as to how this would pass muster, get past a court if he were to go down that road. And I don't know that it would. I don't. So it would seem that there's going to be No Save America Act.

So when John Thune said, I don't have the votes. He really meant, not that he didn't have 60, he meant, I don't have the votes. I do not have 51. When we have 53, I don't have 51. That's what he meant. So you've got to ask, who we send in there? Who are we sending to our nation's capital that they cannot get that done? 515-284-1040, 284-10-40. Text us, 81530 back. Off and running on this Thursday, April 23rd, you are very welcome in. We're all across the Great State of Iowa, and this is the Simon Conway Show. All across the great state of Iowa, it is the Simon Conway Show. You guys are not happy. On the text line, this is typical. What's more important? Voting or buying alcohol. No, I'm just kidding. Voting or flying. Voting or buying tobacco. Voting or... entering, I think this just means to say, a federal building. Four of these things I must show ID for. One thing I do not. Well, you do in Iowa. You have to show ID to vote in Iowa. But this is not just about ID. It's about citizenship. Right? They tell you non-citizens don't vote. Well, 35 of them did in Iowa. Last election. That's little Iowa. Well, 35's not much. Well, that's 35 Iowans who basically had their votes cancelled out. It doesn't matter which way they voted, by the way. Their votes were cancelled out by those illegal votes. And don't forget, was it two cycles ago? Marionette Miller Meeks won by six votes. Maybe she won by 41 votes. I don't know. Maybe she won by 141 votes. I don't know. What I'm telling you is it matters. And what the Save America Act does, it's not just about showing ID where you have states that don't demand it. It is about proving you're a citizen, which is not hard to do. It's not a poll tax. All these things they throw out there. And people just regurgitate them. No, it's poll tax. Can't do that. That's illegal. It's not a poll tax. Prove you're a citizen. Me? I have two ways I can do that. I have a passport. I know not very many of us do. That's okay. I have a certificate of naturalization. Mrs. C has a passport. Mrs. C. has a birth certificate. Mrs. C. has a marriage certificate to prove that her birth name is not the same as her current name, which is on her ID. I know. If she'd have lost the birth certificate or the marriage certificate, she's never going to lose the marriage certificate. Goodness, no, that's like gold. But if she lost her birth certificate... That I have done. Right? 17 bucks gets your new one.

That is not a poll tax. So this whole thing is ridiculous, but there's four Republicans that say, no, you don't have to prove you're a citizen. No. We don't need you to do it. Just say, I'm a citizen, and we'll let you vote. Mm-hmm. On the text line, what difference at this point does it make, H.R. Clinton? it's funny you bring her up funny you bring her up maybe we'll have a little mental health break here because you just reminded me of i have a piece of audio that i didn't get a round of playing for you yesterday Which I really want to play for you, so I'm going to do that at some point today. Maybe very, very shortly, because I have to go through some stuff first. Just talk amongst yourselves. Talk to Mrs. C. She's always fun. Let me do that. And let me come down here. And I'll just quickly do that as well. Because I need to find you this piece of audio, okay? which I have now found. Can you pop me up, please, Mrs. C.? This is Caitlin Bennett. If you don't know who Caitlin Bennett is, Caitlin Bennett goes into crowds and does video stuff online. And she went into a crowd and she read them, some of the things I played you by the aforementioned Hillary Clinton, and Kamala Harris, and she read them to left-wing people. So this is Caitlin Bennett talking to random people. Oh, did you pop me out? There we go. Okay. Here we go. Iran is a destabilizing, dangerous force in the Middle East. Do you agree with him on that at least? No. Okay, so the first voice is Caitlin Bennett, and she's reading these things. He would be able to totally obliterate them. That's a terrible thing to say, but those people who run Iran need to understand that. What do you think he meant by saying those people? White supremacy? His subhuman people of color. He's becoming very delusional and honestly showing a little bit of signs of dementia. This is something someone with dementia would say. Absolutely. Had Kamala Harris actually won the election, you think we would even be in this? Absolutely not. And they were not falling for this Iran stuff either. No. Hillary Clinton had just won in the first place. Maybe we wouldn't be in this mess. Yeah, I would go with that. If he had a kind soul, I think anyone can be beautiful, but he's not beautiful. He's not beautiful insider art. Out. He's a horrible person. Did you... You already know what the punchline is going to be, right? But the reaction to the punchline is just astonishing. Once again, not editing. Beautiful insider art. Oh, she's a horrible person. Did you vote for Hillary Clinton? Yes. Did you guys vote for Hillary Clinton? Yeah. We would not be in this position if she were president today. Or Kamala Harris. The man truly is insane. Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris said all of that, not Donald Trump. Really? Yes. That makes me very sad. Are you serious? Are you serious? Yeah. No. Yeah. That's ridiculous. Good for you. You never heard them say this, though? No, I haven't. That was a clue from...

2008 right here to it i don't you know what who can believe what we read did you go to the cops about me yeah i just wanted to see if you needed a permit i didn't mean to make you cry crying but it's shameful what's shameful about it there's nothing and that ended with a finger by the way you know i've played you some of that stuff and they're like oh you can't believe everything you read well what about everything you hear i've played you the audio of those quotes They were very mad at Caitlin Bennett. Very mad indeed, these liberals. You heard one say, oh, it gotcha. Well done. It's not a gotcha. You're asking people if they agree with these quotes. And you people are all going, well, not you people, the people in the video, are all thinking it's Donald Trump. Wasn't Donald Trump? Nope. Kamala Harris or Hillary Clinton. Let's go to the phones, grab a quick call. Rob is south of Des Moines. Hey, Rob. Hey, real quick. Threats with democracy. Let's start listing the threats. You're saying threats to democracy? Yes. Okay, we live in a republic, sir. I know that. Okay. Counting illegal citizens in the census gets you extra representation in states. Yep. We have obviously sanctuary cities, so the Democrats know exactly what they are doing. Yeah, I don't disagree. Listen, I don't disagree with you. It is... They're explaining what they're doing. Yes. No, no, no. Absolutely. The president has tried to not count non-citizens for the purposes of the census. And he's not finished with that yet, by the way. Right. So he's still going to try. Yeah, it's a threat. Democrats are absolutely saying what they're going to do. They want to put more Supreme Court people. They want to make statehood for, you know, you give people checks and you buy the votes. You vote for me and I'll take money from other people and give it to you. That's a hell of a... Hell of a way of doing it, and it's horrible. The bottom line is California probably has at least five. Some people say as many as 10 more seats than they should have because we count illegals. So let's say it's 10. So those 10 extra seats in the house, they get distributed elsewhere, right? And they get distributed to people and states that actually have citizen populations that really should benefit from it. The fact that California is counting their illegals and getting representation from it means they don't even have to vote. Absolutely crazy. 4.30, we're going to go to the news. Then we're going to talk a little property tax. Are we getting anything?

This is the Simon Conway show. All across the great state of Iowa, it is the Simon Conway show. Quick reminder, you've still got about 20 minutes to get the word family. family to the website of whatever radio station you happen to be listening to right now. And if you get a call back within 20 minutes, it may say no information, may say blocked, may say it comes from a place where you don't know anybody. Just pick it up. If it's us, you want a thousand dollars. And that might be a good thing. It might help you pay your property taxes because it seems to me that our legislature is not going to deliver very much. Talking to us about that right now is Representative Carter Nordman. You're very welcome. How are you, Carter? Cool. Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't hear you. Try it again. I'm good, Simon. How are you? I am good. So, look, the governor spent the best part of a year traveling the state. She came up with all kinds of suggestions in her condition of the state, such as a restricting total revenue growth for local taxing to 2%, a senior tax freeze. For residents age 65 or older with homes valued under 350,000, moving property tax assessments from every two years to every three years, TIF reform, local government consolidation. Boy, do we ever need that. How many taxing authorities do we have? Home ownership support for first-time buyers, etc., etc. How much of that have we got? Well, Simon, as we've said time and time again, these conversations are ongoing and they are very deep right now. As you know, the House passed our version yesterday off of the floor. And there's the governor's plan and the House plan are pretty similar. The Senate plan is different, but again, those conversations are ongoing. But if I can, Simon, I'd just like to run through what we are proposing, why we think it is significant. One of the biggest things is that 2% cap. The local governments, what we have found, are growing at a significant rate. And when you look at the curve, it's almost vertical how quickly they are rising. And so what our goal is is to try to bend that curve, try to even it out, and make the system predictable and sustainable for Iowans. That is going to be the most important part about reforming a property tax system. But we also know that there needs to be immediate relief for Iowans.

And so we're looking at a few things for immediate relief. First, we're going to triple the homestead exemption, and then we're going to use $175 million to buy down the education levies. I think that is significant. When we look at the runs that we have seen, it's going to be about $435 million in savings just next year alone. You see, that sounds like a big number car. I'm sorry to interrupt you. I'm going to let you go through this. I promise you. But hey, $435 million. Great. What does that mean to me? Is that like three bucks? What does that mean to me? You see, you're talking to big numbers. The big numbers mean nothing to us out here in the cheap seats. We need to know what that means to us. Yeah. Well, let me tell you this, Simon. I'm a property taxpayer, too. I hate property taxes. I don't want to pay property taxes. But we have to have them to provide essential services for our cities and our counties. No, we don't, actually. That's actually not true, Carter. I have to push back, Simon. I have to push back. No, we can abolish property taxes. There's actually a proposal out there from someone who is running for governor from Eddie Andrews. I love Eddie. I get along with Eddie great. I love working with him, but it's not a sustainable solution. It's a great talking point, Simon, but we are not Florida. And again, as much as I would love to abolish property taxes, if there is a real proposal out there to abolish property taxes, count me in. But until someone brings me a proposal that can also pay for our police fire and EMS, Um, I don't, it's not realistic. We have to, we have to live in reality. Well, um, I, I, I, we don't need to be Florida. You know, there's parts of Florida that don't get much in the way of tourist tax, right? Well, Florida has a tremendous, uh, amount of tourism. Yeah. Is where they would shift the burden to. There's big chunks of Florida that doesn't get that. But anyway, carry on. Please carry on. The proposal that they have down in Florida is shifting it to the tourism revenue that they bring in. So it would be distributed to the entirety of Florida when it just be to the tourist portions. But again, we're looking at... making sure that this becomes a more sustainable system. And it is, there has to be some accountability at the local level, too, and them wanting to lower their budgets and them wanting to lower property taxes. In a perfect world, the legislature has nothing to do with property taxes. These are local decisions happening at your local level.

But it has become so unsustainable. The legislature is having to step in and put guardrails up and say, look, you have to live within your means. You have to provide these services, and Iowans want these services. They want police. They want fire. They want EMS. They want roads. They want education. But it shouldn't come at a cost of an unsustainable increase year over year. And so I think our plan... does a lot. Yes, they are big numbers. From a home perspective, you're looking at hundreds of dollars of savings just in the first few years or for the first year. And that continues to compound. So we have to also be looking at the local governments and make sure that they're being accountable as well. And so one of the parts of our bill is more transparency on your tax notices. Right now when tax notices go out, they're hard to read. They're hard to understand. They're impossible to understand. I agree. And so what do we all do? We all go to the bottom line and see how much it's going to cost. That's what we do because they're impossible to understand. Here's something that's very easy to understand. There's three million of us, right? Roughly speaking. Correct. There's over 2,000 property taxing authorities in the state of Iowa. That, my friend, is insanity. I agree. So do something about it. We need to stop doing this. And I think we need to get radical. A lot of these decisions, Simons, are at a local level. And that is why I'm asking Iowans to get more involved at the local level. And that is why I think the transparency piece, while it doesn't get a whole lot of attention, is extremely important. I want Iowans to be able to see where their money is going, how it's being spent, and who is spending it. So they can show up at the school board meetings. They can show up at the city council meetings. They can go to their board of supervisors and say enough is enough. And so we've got to give Iowans the tools to be able to do that. The biggest problem is you went straight to the big talking point, right? The pushback point. Oh, if you want police, do you? You want fire. Yeah, well, we have to do this. And it's garbage. Nobody is suggesting we don't need police fire and EMS. Nobody is suggesting that we don't find a way to finance them. What we're saying is this system... doesn't work and you are driving people out of the state you are driving people out of their homes they cannot afford to stay in them some of these stories that i see make me literally cry there's a man who called us not that long ago who built his own house with his own hands he could tell you exactly where every two by four came from he's on my phone on my show he did that 40 years ago And he has to leave our state because house is paid for. He can't afford the property tax. It's insane. It's insane.

And that is exactly why we are proposing one of the largest, the largest property tax reform bills in Iowa history. That is why I've been working on this every single day during session and before session to ensure that we are lowering property taxes and creating a more sustainable system. Why will this be different than the mental health thing? You see, we had the mental health thing. We took that away from local authorities. Our property taxes were going to go down. Me and a whole bunch of other people saw our property taxes go up. Because they just worked their way around it. Why is this different? Well, Simon, you make a phenomenal point here. And this is why this bill is so different from any bill that we've done. This is a hard cap. There is no getting around this cap. It is going to squeeze local governments, and they are going to have to find efficiencies and lower their budgets. That's just the reality of this. The mental health portion of this, when we did that a couple years ago, we took mental health off of property taxes, and I believe 50% of counties continued to collect that money and spent it on something else. This is what I'm saying. Property taxes are local decisions. So why is this different? I'm asking you why this will be different than that? Because we're not giving them an option anymore. This is not if you want to do scenario. This is a hard 2% cap. During the mental health levy, we didn't mandate that the levy went away. 50% of the counties did say, yep, we're not paying for the service anymore. We're not going to tax. the people we represent. The other 50% said, oh, great, thanks State for taking this on as your burden. We're going to continue to collect these funds and spend it elsewhere. Those people should be held accountable at the ballot box, Simon. And I hope Iowans are doing that. But this is different because we are not giving them a choice anymore. I have a full board of calls here. I really do. There are people that are really mad. They want to talk to you about it. We're going to try and let them do it. But I've got to take a quick time out. I'm going to do that. And I'll really want you to think about it. We have 99 counties, which is cool. It's cute. And, you know, politicians running for office go, oh, look, I'm doing the full Chuck Grassley. We don't need 99 counties. We need 10, maybe, 15. Maximum, why can't we do something about that? You think about that and doing something to at least half the number of taxing authorities, which is over 2,000 taxing authorities that we have in Iowa for property taxes. We have to get rid of that. Otherwise, this thing's always going to be there. This is the Simon Conway Show.

All across the great state of Iowa it is, the Simon Conway show, in the middle of a conversation with Representative Carter Nordman. He is the person running the property tax bill through the house. He did that. I'm giving him a hard time. I make no apologies for it, Carter. I like you, by the way. But people are really, really, really angry. Because all the way, since the very start of this, people have said they're not going to do anything significant. Let me just bring a couple of callers on just so you can get a feel for what I'm talking about. is in Bell Play. Lyle, you're on with Representative Carter Nordman. Lyle. Hello, I'm I? Yes, you're on. Okay, thank you. You know, I've been watching this thing for an awful long time. There's a lot of problems. Chuck Grassley was a young man. Okay, let's not go back to Chuck Grassley. Let's go to right now. Right now, what does it mean to you if they don't do anything? Well, like I said, when I started out, we had country schools, we were local, we shared the road report, repaired, we had a poll tax, and everybody kept wanting more and more and more all the time. They didn't want to do their share of road grading, so we put that back on, and everything got a little easier as time went on. What? Lyle, you've got a representative on the phone with you. What do you want them to do? Well, number one thing, I think he's right about local decisions. They make the local decision. Let's get the appeal process back here where we can pack every county courthouse with people who are in the Senate. They send us all the way to Washington, and we don't have time to do that. So we have no appeal. What would it be like if we had to go to Washington, D.C.? All right, there you go. You heard that. He wants an appeal process. Well, I think Lyle is completely right on the appeal process. One of the big things is these assessments that keep going up. Now, with a 2% cap, Simon, the assessments matter much less. Your assessments could go up 10 trillion percent next year. The local government under this proposal can only bring in 2% additional revenue. But what we have in our bill is that if it goes up by more than 10% over 2 years, 5% a year, it is on the government to prove why, not you. So we're completely flipping the script there. The government needs to prove why they are raising your assessment, not you. What can we do about reducing the 2000-plus charging authorities, property tax charging authorities we have in the state of Iowa? What can we do about getting rid of at least half of them? Yeah, and I don't disagree. I think we have too many taxing authorities, Simon. I don't disagree with that at all. What I will have to go back to, though, is that those are local decisions. Those can be done currently. I'm not going to advocate to getting rid of our counties. I think the counties are the lifeblood and the identity of many of these people. But when you are looking at these really tiny cities with a couple people in them or maybe townships or whatever it might be, those are decisions that they have to make with their county level. What services can they share? How can they be more efficient? Does it need to be its own entity? Can it be combined?

signed with the counties. Those are decisions that have to be made at the local level, not the state. I'm not going to come in and make a decision about all these different local governments, and I only represent three counties. What's my place to go tell someone in northeast Iowa that their township shouldn't exist? That has to be their decision. Does it, though? You see, it's crazy. You know, California has 58 counties, for example. There's millions and millions and millions of them. We've got 99 counties. They're all charging money. It's insane. And that, Simon, and that is why I think this 2% cap is so important because it gets rid of the notion that, or really the problem with the amount of taxing entities, it's going to force them to have to find more efficiencies together. You know, I'm talking to some of my cities in my district, and, you know, when they say, you know, we're kind of scared what you guys are doing up there. So we've started to talk to the school and the city and the hospital, and we found out that we could get rid of multiple contracts with snow removal. We can combine them all. We could combine our HR and IT departments. I'm like, well, why haven't you done that already? And the answer is... Well, we really haven't had to before because we've never been forced it. Let me go to Polk City and bring Audrey on with you. Audrey, I need you to be quick. We're running out of time. Thank you, Representative Carter Nordstrom, for the cap on spending because my attendance at the city council meeting and the school district meeting is a meeting that they pretty much decided what they're going to spend. um and so all right thank you i'm sorry the music starting uh kata is this going to be significant truly i think it is all right well well this property tax cut history and we'll grab you back once uh we will grab you back once uh you guys with the senate agree on something and we'll see what it means to us this is the simon conway show