(Radio Iowa) – The Republican who competed against Kim Reynolds at the G-O-P’s state convention to be the party’s nominee for lieutenant governor in 2010 says Reynolds could wind up on a national ticket in 2024. If Donald Trump secures the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination, Bob Vander Plaats — president and C-E-O of The Family Leader — suggests Reynolds will be in the mix as a potential running mate.

“As a matter of fact, I think she’d be a great presidential candidate right now,” Vander Plaats says. “She has a lot of stock across the country of how she’s led during Covid, how she’s led through the racial unrest and a lot of other things. Iowa, in many ways, has been a model.” Vander Plaats made his comments during taping of tonight’s (Friday’s) Iowa Press program on Iowa P-B-S.

Vander Plaats is hosting two potential 2024 candidates at The Family Leader’s 10th annual summit next Friday in Des Moines. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former Vice President Mike Pence are scheduled to speak. Pence was called a traitor and booed by a crowd of conservatives in Florida last month. Vander Plaats says that won’t happen here next Friday.

“People like Mike Pence. He’s been a consistent conservative. He’s a man of faith,” Vander Plaat says. “He will deliver a message that our base will want to hear and I think he will be enthusiastically embraced at our Leadership Summit.” Vander Plaats suggests voters will ask Pence why — in his role as vice president on January 6th — he certified Joe Biden won the Electoral College and the presidency.

“Everybody’s going to have their own hill to climb,” Vander Plaats says. “That may be his, but that’s up to him to answer that, not up to me to answer that.” Vander Plaats has endorsed victors Mike Huckabee before the 2008 Caucuses, Rick Santorum before the 2012 Caucuss and Ted Cruz before the 2016 Caucuses. Vander Plaats says his early analysis of the 2024 race is Florida Governor Ron De Santis is an early leader.

“In politics, as you all well know, the spoils go to the risk taker,” Vander Plaats says. “…Would Governor De Santis stand down if Trump said: ‘I’m going to run again?’ I don’t know. I think De Santis knows this is his most opportune time to launch a bid for president.”

(Radio Iowa) – In-person visits will resume at the state’s prisons Saturday after being shut down for some 16 months following the COVID-19 outbreak. Department of Corrections director, Beth Skinner, says they are going to start out by allowing just half the normal capacity for visitors. “We know COVID is still around, there are variants around…so we want to start off slow and carefully watch the numbers,” Skinner says. She says they will still have online visitation available and may expand the in-person prison visitation if everything goes well.

“We’ll reevaluate that in a couple of months to see — making sure that the numbers stay stable — so we don’t have any spread of COVID in our prisons,” she says. Skinner spoke at the Board of Corrections meeting today (Friday) and says they now only have two COVID cases in the system. Skinner also announced a change she says the staff is excited about. “We are no longer requiring staff to wear masks, it is completely optional at this point,” according to Skinner. “There are exceptions in terms of when you are required to wears masks For example, in the infirmary.”

Skinner says the prison population has crept back up and is now 11-point-eight percent above capacity. She says it was 22-percent above capacity prior to COVID. Skinner says the population is expected to increase even more in the coming weeks. She says there are still around 350 people waiting in jails to be processed, and that number could increase as the court system gets back to full capacity. Skinner was asked about filling the open positions — and she says it has been a priority to find people to fill them.

“Our wardens have done a terrific job — we are actually working with DAS, the Department of Administrative Services as well — to figure out recruitment, some new strategies in terms of getting people in the door, new applicants,” Skinner says. The Iowa Board of Corrections voted today (Friday) to make interim warden Chris Tripp the permanent warden of the Iowa State Penitentiary in Fort Madison. They also approved Shawn Howard as the Warden of the Newton prison and Marcy Stroud as warden at the Mount Pleasant prison.