Iowa Politics with Jeff Stein -- Fri. Oct. 30, 2026

Stop the spam.

I'm Jeff Stein with today's Iowa Politics Report.

When two people have a breakup in their personal or professional relationship, if TV shows and movies are to be believed, one will hold up their smartphone and say to the other, lose my number.

So today, I have a message for all these campaigns that have been sending me unsolicited and unwanted text messages over the past month.

Namely,

lose my number.

Every one of these that comes in, whether against one candidate or for another, is reported by me as spam and the number is blocked.

But the professionals are wise to that game because I have only gotten a text from the same number twice.

I saw it come in and be blocked like a Patriot missile intercepting incoming attacks and yet here they come as many as three or four a day.

I don't use my personal smartphone that much, so I have a limited plan.

If you know me, you know I'm thrifty that way.

That means I only pay for a certain number of minutes, texts, and data.

So when these campaigns send me unwanted communications that count against my text allotment, well let's just say the text sends a message quite different than the one they intended.

Now I could be high-handed and say I won't vote for anyone who sent me a spam text, but they all do it.

There won't be anyone left to vote for or against.

My favorite though was the one saying that while a member of my household voted in 2024, I did not.

So I needed to make sure my vote was counted there in New Mexico.

So not only were they wrong on the basic facts about voting,

They think the phone number belongs to someone in New Mexico, a state I only briefly visited while driving through on a family vacation literally 55 years ago.

I know it's how they play the game sending those mass texts, but maybe that's why so many folks no longer want to play.

And that's the Iowa Politics Report for Friday, October 30 on Twitter, Instagram, Gitter, Threads and Truth Social at Iowa Politics.

I'm Jeff Stein on NewsTARG 1540 KXEL.