By CHUCK OFFENBURGER
JEFFERSON, Iowa, April 29, 2026 — Last August when 45-year-old Republican Adam Steen announced his candidacy for governor of Iowa, he identified himself by saying, “I am the faith guy. I’m the Jesus guy. I’m the ‘Make America Great Again’ guy.”
Each to our own in politics, but none of those claims would draw me to one of Steen’s campaign appearances.
But two other things I had learned about him since his campaign announcement made me want to show up last Friday when he had a midday “meet & greet” at the Welcome Center in Thomas Jefferson Memorial Gardens of Greene County.
One, this “Jesus guy” is also a “baseball guy,” and you know me and baseball. Second, my reading of the pulse of local Republicans is that Steen is leading the 5-way race for the nomination — at least in Greene County where his big signs stand in dozens of yards — so I wanted to see him.
Adam Steen leads the signage race in Greene County.
“June 2nd is going to be the most important primary election day in Iowa history,” Steen said as he began his remarks to a crowd of about 40 who filled the Welcome Center. “And I am the candidate who can beat Rob Sand (the state auditor who will be the Democrats’ gubernatorial nominee). I’ve worked with him five years, and he’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing. He says one thing and does another. I’m here to preserve and protect the culture of Iowa.”
Now, Sand is my man, as most of you know. When he campaigned here in Jefferson last August, I wrote about how “this new kind of Democrat” had wowed a crowd of 90 people — a real mix of Democrats, independents and Republicans. He did that, I pointed out, with “a fun, different kind of politics.” You can read that column by clicking here.
Yes, Steen, who the last five years had been the director of the state government’s Department of Administrative Services, has indeed worked with Rob Sand. He has observed Sand enough to recognize him as “a formidable candidate,” as Steen called him here.
But then check what Steen also said about how important it is that he wins the nomination instead of another of his four Republican opponents.
“If the wrong candidate is nominated, and Rob Sand is elected,” Steen said, “is that the kind of squish whom you want to stand up and be telling everybody what the culture of Iowa is?”
I was so surprised at hearing this that I walked up to Steen after his presentation, read him the quote, and confirmed that, yep, that’s what he said.
A squish?
Sounds like dugout talk, or lockerroom talk, doesn’t it?
In fact, let’s get back to baseball. Steen was born in Burlington, but moved to Indianola in early boyhood.
Adam Steen. (Photo from the candidate’s internet site).
“My story really starts in 2002, in Indianola,” Steen said. “I was a pitcher and I was good enough that I got a college baseball scholarship at Mankato State in Minnesota. In that D2 (NCAA Division 2), I could throw a fastball that would go right by those hitters.
“But then I signed a contract with the Philadelphia Phillies, and professional baseball was a different story. Those pro hitters would hit those fastballs right past me. By the time I was 23 years old, they told me, ‘Mr. Steen, the Phillies Family no longer needs you.’ I was released. My entire identity since I was five years old had been baseball, and then I was suddenly done. It took me down.”
His father was an investment banker, helped him find a spot in business, and he did all right at work. “But in what seemed like a very short amount of time, I felt like I had a hole in my heart,” Steen said. “I was 30 years old, living alone in a big house, and I was miserable. Then about 15 or 16 years ago, I got down on my knees and said, ‘Lord, I’m done!’ That moment changed me.”
He found the Lord, and found and fell in love with his wife Kasey “at a coffee house in Clive.” They married and eventually had sons Ryker and Maverick, now 10 and 8. They live in Runnells, east of Des Moines.
In those years of change, Adam Steen also started studying for the ministry and is now a certified Assemblies of God minister, although he decided not to pursued a pastorate.
Instead, “I needed to play and prepare for high levels of leadership,” he said. One way he did that was by joining two conservative Christian training programs — David Barton’s “WallBuilders” organization and Del Tackett’s “Truth Project.”
That helped him “spend 18 years as a business owner, an entrepreneur, an innovator and a problem solver,” Steen said. “I’m ready. I’m sharp. I’m ready to go.”
His move into state government five years ago certainly is interesting, if not revealing. He’d never previously served in government. The directorship of the Department of Administrative Services is a position filled by gubernatorial appointment, but Steen said he did not know Gov. Kim Reynolds — “except to wave at her, and she’d wave back, but she knows so many people she does that with everybody.”
The appointment came after he’d been contacted by Kim Borchers, of Topeka, Kansas, the well-known owner of the Bird Dog Recruitment and Consulting, Inc., firm. Borchers earlier served as a top staff member of former U.S. Senator and Governor of Kansas Sam Brownback, a conservative Republican who ran for U.S. president in the 2008 election cycle.
“When the recruiter first called me and asked if I’d be interested in running the ‘DAS’ in Iowa, I didn’t even know what the ‘DAS’ was,” Steen told the crowd here.
He asked how they’d decided to contact him, and “the recruiter said she’d heard about me from a friend of hers in Illinois, who’d heard about me from a guy who was in a Bible study group with me in Urbandale (Ia).”
Steen said he really gave little credence to the inquiry, until he told his wife Kasey about it and she suggested he ought to ask a few more questions. That led to his appointment to the position at the head of a 350-employee department with oversight of 20,000 people statewide working in the executive branch of Iowa state government.
Notably, he was a key leader in the reorganization and consolidation of state government departments and agencies, from 37 to 16. He won Senate confirmation of his appointments — narrowly the first time and by a 50-0 vote the second time.
“We became known as ‘the fixer’ department within state government,” he said. “I lead by bringing people ‘up,’ he said. “Because of what we learned in the realignment of all those state agencies, I’ve got a lot of ideas for my efficiencies in state government. I’m ready to rock ‘n’ roll immediately, right out of the gate.”
Steen knows cutting and chopping. (Photo from candidate’s internet site.)
I do wonder about how much more state government can and should be reduced, but Steen doesn’t.
“Government is awesome at spending lots of our money, and they screw a lot of things up,” he said.
He’s opposed to using eminent domain for a carbon sequestration pipeline; in favor of incenting industrial development of “small modular nuclear reactors” to create energy for use and for sale; in favor of giving “Education Savings Accounts” (state money) to parents who are home-schooling their kids; in favor of calling on churches to do more in the social services, and in favor of (did I hear this correctly?) giving public school students an hour of released time per day for Bible study at churches.
His own boys, by the way, go to public school. He said he and his wife are impressed with the teachers and distressed with a lot of the curriculum. He said he will encourage expansion of educational training in the trades.
Jeff Kienast, chairperson of the Greene County Republican Party, confirmed my observation that Steen is running strong here, although he noted that the party’s county central committee “won’t endorse a candidate before the primary.”
But “a lot of people here are liking him,” Kienast said of Steen. “What I think you’re seeing right now is the presence he’s had here. He’s been here like four times, going back to last August, then in October, another stop later in the winter and now. He’s out doing the job. He’s definitely in it for the long haul.”
And Steen said it right the first time — there’s some very formidable opposition ahead of him, too.
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