We’re Number One!

Sometimes that's not a good thing

By Doug McReynolds

May 23, 2026

It is altogether satisfying for a crowd to rise up together and shout, “We’re Number One!”  Pride, solidarity, confidence, sometimes even love are all involved.  Quite the feeling.  It’s not being felt much in Iowa lately though.  Oh, we used to be Number One in high school girls’ basketball, and the Hawkeyes certainly had a good run at being Number One in wrestling (and the Cyclones before them) a few years back.  Caitlin Clark and Denise Long still make us all feel good.  Several high school baseball teams will soon be shouting “We’re Number One!” on ball diamonds in Cedar Rapids (classes 3A and 4A) and Carroll (1A and 2A).

We used to be Number One in the ACT scores posted by the graduates of our public schools, but that was forty-odd years ago under the supervision of a different governor (a Republican, Robert Ray, who would hardly recognize his party today), and a very different legislature.  Now we’re twenty-fourth, and the most cursory look at this year’s legislative record will reveal that the current legislature is infinitely more interested in our children’s sexuality than it is in their education. 

Still, Iowa remains among the national elite in multiple domains.  We are Number Six, for example, in the amount of nitrate pollution in our drinking water, and we are Number Ten in the overall rate of radon gas pollution.  (This latter statistic is somewhat misleading because Iowa is a smallish state, population-wise.  When it comes to the percentage of homes testing above that level of radon (4.0 picocuries per liter) flagged by the EPA as requiring mitigation, we are, indeed, Number One.

We’re Number Two behind Illinois in glyphosate use.  The product’s manufacturer, Bayer, has already set aside seven and a half billion dollars to cover the claims it knows are inevitable.

Nitrates, radon, glyphosate… maybe these contribute to Iowa’s ascendance to the position of Number Two among the fifty states in overall cancer rate.  And, given that current leader Kentucky’s own rate is in decline (down 1.5%) while ours continues to surge (up 3.4%), Iowa stands a better-than-fair chance of knocking off the champion and claiming that enviable Number One position within the next year or two.  Keep tuned.

Pollution, poison, cancer.  These are real problems, of course, affecting real Iowans, and they will require real consideration by real legislators and a real governor.  Iowans have the opportunity to elect such legislators and such a governor in November, but it is pretty obvious that as long as Republicans keep their majorities in the Iowa House and Senate, and as long as a Republican occupies Terrace Hill, we can expect the focus to stay on bathrooms and immigrant bashing.

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