By Emerson Cram, Iowa City
Johnson County Democrats, we are at a crossroads. We have a once in a lifetime opportunity to elect a slate of progressive candidates to the Board of County Supervisors. V Fixmer-Oraiz, Jon Green, and Mandi Remington are the principled community leaders we need in the face of intricate and multiplying crises. As we witness fallout at nearly all levels of government, we need leaders who are aligned with the progressive values that we espouse, and we need the leadership willing to implement bold ideas to address long-standing systemic problems. The race between incumbents Fixmer-Oraiz and Rod Sullivan has turned especially contentious, in ways that should give us all pause. Let us remember that this is an election that literally nobody asked for. But the stakes of this primary could not be higher.
We need to sit with the differences that matter. By his own hand, in official meetings of county business, his politics blog, or other informal channels, Sullivan engages difference (of opinion, of disagreement, of process) as something to be dampened or worse yet, as a threat to his point of view or even person. Those occasions happen most often when confronted by someone perceived as more junior, who he sees as acting out of place. By contrast, Fixmer-Oraiz welcomes difference as a collective strength. Even if you meet V with disagreement, they will listen carefully and evaluate how your perspective sheds light on something they may not have yet considered.
The difference is crucial. How many young future leaders of Johnson County have we lost because they were consistently dismissed? And by contrast, since Fixmer-Oraiz’s first election, how many new relationships have seeded between underestimated community members and the supervisor’s office on South Dubuque Street? And how have we all benefited from commitments to our neighbors’ improved quality of life? The point is: when a supervisor’s words denigrate people, we all lose.
For more than six years, I have worked with both Fixmer-Oraiz and Sullivan on research projects in which they are mutually invested: interpreting the Johnson County Historic Poor Farm. And in that time, I’ve respected and worked with the differences each brings into their respective roles with this work. I’ve shared my research and knowledge of the histories of disability in Iowa and the broader Midwest. I am no stranger to difference and generative disagreement; it is an occupational hazard. And as a principle of democratic engagement, the process of disagreement with respect, curiosity, and learning are as vital to life as the water and the soil beneath us. So, it was with this context of knowing Sullivan that his “Salvo” on April 30, targeting both Fixmer-Oraiz and Supervisor Remington, stunned me beyond belief.
From his recap of the April 22, 2026 supervisor meeting, you’d think his colleagues committed some felonious misdeed of grand proportions. Something so unforgivable as to call them both “unfit for office.” Under “Budget Games,” Sullivan ends his summary of proceedings with the following: “in voting to take this action, Supervisors Remington and Fixmer-Oraiz have demonstrated that they are unfit to hold office.” I am not here to litigate individual votes. Rather, we all need to pause and reflect on what it means when a supervisor of senior status levies such an accusation about two of his more junior colleagues.
The phrase “unfit for office” comes from a loaded and heinous history. Hearing it used now in county politics so brazenly takes my breath away. Unintentionally or not, Sullivan invokes a legal criterion. “Fitness” is a means of deciding if someone is legally competent, meaning, a judge’s determination if an individual has the mental capacity to make decisions on their own. Because Sullivan has a background as a social worker, he knows that such declarations of mental fitness can be (and have been) used to justify the loss of a person’s autonomy, inclusive of the right to own property and to make personal decisions, and at times, involuntary institutionalization. In its most insidious use, “unfit for office” also invokes a deeply moralizing message for those who in the United States — until only fairly recently — have been legally excluded from holding public office. Finally, to hear this term used against two openly LGBTQ public leaders is chilling because of coordinated federal and state efforts to make stigma great again. Specifically, they use “mental fitness” as a precursor to delegitimize the voices and autonomy of queer and trans people.
I imagine Supervisor Sullivan would defend himself and say he used this phrase as an off-hand comment because it keeps showing up in the news cycle, and that he doesn’t endorse these associations. If that is the case, public apologies and self-correction are viable forms of repair. Reflection of language choice matters especially if he wants to be a role model to young men learning about self-conduct in public settings. I would love to believe in a world where, in retrospect, Sullivan regrets his behavior and takes accountability because he realizes that his comments were caught up in the heat of the moment. While he may disagree and have his own goals and priorities, he can simultaneously appreciate the efforts of his colleagues, instead of claiming disagreement is grounds for public admonishment. I would also love to believe it’s possible to make a commitment to choose words with care in the future. Surely part of Sullivan knows of the unintentional damage words can do — not only to one’s colleagues, but to people in this community. Asking for leaders to be fully cognizant of the impacts of the words they use truly does feel like asking for the bare minimum. Thankfully, in this primary we have someone who believes we are worth more than crumbs.
That person is V Fixmer-Oraiz. As a community planner, V works in ways that undoubtedly create feelings of friction down at South Dubuque Street. That’s what one might feel when processes of change are afoot. Witnessing V at work is a gift: they create spaces to ensure you hear otherwise dismissed voices at the table, naming problems often imperceptible to those who’ve never walked in those shoes. V asks big questions: how do the systems designed centuries ago fail us all, and how are they especially acute right now? V builds bridges: they sit with discomfort, listen, and connect experiences or patterns. When someone makes a blanket statement about how pressing issues like gun violence or criminal justice need to be engaged, V starts from a place of curiosity to question if we have all the possible solutions on the table. And if not, what do we need to do instead?
V embodies the style of leadership we need because they are a community planner committed to community. We need leaders at the table who can turn disagreements into process, who can listen to seemingly opposing perspectives and identify where they align. We need leaders at the table who bring those alignments into the creation of coalitions. Those coalitions seed ideas and grow new generations of community leaders committed to Johnson County’s resilient future. We need leaders at the table who recognize that our collective strength depends on a way of doing politics that refuses to pit the most vulnerable against each other. We are at a crossroads. Vote for V Fixmer-Oraiz.
