Kim Reynolds

Kimberly Kay Reynolds (born in 4 August 1959) is an American politician from the Republican Party. She is current governor of Iowa since 2017. Reynolds served as Lieutenant Governor of Iowa from 2011 to 2017 under leadership of Terry Branstad. After President Trump appoint Branstad as ambassador to China, she Succeeded him as governor.

In Feb/2022, Kim delivered Republicans' rebuttal to Biden's SOTU address. From AP:

Reynolds... painted the picture of a country hardly emerging from a crisis and instead in the grips of several as she hammered the president’s leadership notably on the world stage.

Reynolds depicted Biden’s year in office as having “sent us back” to fraught times more than 40 years ago as she made the case for the “alternative” approach of Republicans hoping to capture control of Congress in this year’s midterm elections. “Instead of moving America forward, it feels like President Biden and his party have sent us back in time to the late ’70s and early ’80s, when runaway inflation was hammering families, a violent crime wave was crashing on our cities, and the Soviet army was trying to redraw the world map,” Reynolds said.

Republicans.. compounding their withering criticism of the administration’s handling of the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan last fall. “Even before taking the oath of office, the President told us that he wanted to ‘make America respected around the world again and to unite us here at home.’ He’s failed on both fronts,” Reynolds said, speaking from the rooftop terrace of Iowa Historical Building with the gold-domed Capitol in Des Moines in the background. Reynolds... said “weakness on the world stage has a cost. And the President’s approach to foreign policy has consistently been too little, too late.” “And now Russia has launched an unprovoked full-scale military invasion of Ukraine, an attack on democracy, freedom, and the rule of law,” she said. The swipe goes right at what had been a perceived strength of Biden, who brought to the White House eight years as vice president and decades of service on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Reynolds’ defense of democracy... Reynolds used her 14-minute address to portray the United States as on the “wrong track” — mired in inflation, crime and moral decay, not emerging from the two years of the global coronavirus pandemic.

Instead, she blamed inflation and rising energy prices on spending by Biden and Democrats, who control Congress. “They plowed ahead anyway, raising the price at the pump by 50% and pushing inflation to a 40-year high,” she said.