page_title: Republican Party of Iowa
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Republican Party of Iowa / History
caption_attribution_description: Herbert Hoover photo portrait from 1917.
context_page_description: The Republican Party of Iowa is the affiliate of the United States Republican Party in Iowa. The State Central Committee is led by Chairman Jeff Kaufmann. The RPI operates the Republican side of the Iowa caucuses and previously sponsored the Iowa Straw Poll.
context_section_description: The RPI was founded on an anti-slavery platform in 1856 by citizens dissatisfied with the existing Whig and Democratic Parties. Samuel J. Kirkwood, abolitionist and later Iowa's Civil War governor, is credited as one of the principal founders. Summoned from his mill at Coralville and still coated in flour dust, Kirkwood gave a rousing speech at the founding meeting of the Republican Party of Iowa in February 1856 in Iowa City. Many people credited Kirkwood's speech and subsequent work with the success of the party in Iowa. Another principal founder was Edward Russell, an outspoken abolitionist editor who later turned the Davenport Gazette into an award-winning Republican newspaper and one of the largest dailies in Iowa. At the Republican State Convention in 1865, Russell introduced the resolution declaring negro suffrage in Iowa and carried it by a decisive majority. His more famous son, Charles Edward Russell, went on to found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
  Pro-Union sentiment during and after the Civil War helped the party to expand in importance. Between 1858 and 1932 the Republicans won every Iowa gubernatorial election, with the exception of 1890, when Horace Boies, a former Republican, was elected because of his opposition to Prohibition. In 1932 electoral frustration with the Great Depression and Prohibition led to the re-emergence of the Democratic Party in Iowa. Historically the party has held the Governor's office – 30 of Iowa's 41 governors have been Republicans.
  The only Republican President from Iowa was Herbert Hoover (a native of West Branch) who was in office from 1929 to 1933.
caption: President Herbert Hoover (1929-1933)
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