DES MOINES — Governor Kim Reynolds is meeting with leaders in Perry today after Tyson Foods, a company from which she’s accepted at least $5,000 in campaign contributions, announced it’s closing a pork plant there, laying off more than 1,200 people, and leaving the community in further shambles.
Reynolds accepted a $5,000 donation from Tyson Foods on October 6, 2022, Democrats say, a month before her last bid for reelection.
Reynolds has a history of doing bidding in Tyson’s favor. In 2020, Reynolds refused to hold a Tyson Foods plant in Waterloo accountable after a massive COVID-19 outbreak. She even sent in the Iowa National Guard to keep the plant running, which helped the company hit record sales in 2020 and 2021. After she put all of that effort into keeping the Waterloo plant open, more than 1,000 Tyson workers were infected with COVID-19 and at least six people died. Plant managers were also later suspended and then fired for betting on whether their employees would get the virus.
Then, in 2021, Tyson Foods received $540,000 in incentives from the state to upgrade its facilities in Columbus Junction.
“Kim Reynolds and the Iowa GOP have consistently prioritized the Tyson corporation over the Iowans that work there,” said IPD spokesperson Paige Godden. “Reynolds’ trip to Perry to take advantage of a photo opportunity after she accepted money from Tyson and helped them pad their record profits is a slap in the face to Iowa workers.”
Perry is the site of a recent school shooting that took the lives of multiple people and let the town in ruins. Now the town’s biggest employer is shutting its doors.
Reynolds slaps Iowans in the face a lot. She really doesn’t care.