Count me in as a temporarily disappointed and former Iowan. I thought Iowa City was a great place to grow up and was quite proud of the state and especially the university. I was fortunate to travel quite a bit as a child, it didn't take long to realize lots of people are largely ignorant of Iowa (flyover state). I traveled a lot internationally and always enjoyed informing people a bit about Iowa.
I could even rattle off a nice list of fairly progressive firsts to counter the concept that Iowa was some backwards, ultra conservative Southern type state.
Turns out I still have a list on google docs, here's just a few:
1851: Iowa became the second state to legalize interracial marriage… a century before the rest of America.
1857: The University of Iowa became the first state university in the nation to open its degree programs to women.
1873: The Iowa State Supreme Court ruled that African Americans are entitled to equal treatment in public accommodation.
1884: The Iowa Civil Rights Act was passed. It prohibited discrimination in public accommodation. It was one of the first civil rights acts in the nation.
1953: Iowa was the only state to defeat a McCarthyistic legislative measure to impose a teacher’s loyalty oath.
1970: The University of Iowa became one of the first universities in the U.S. to allow a student GLBT group. It was also one of the first universities in the U.S. to add sexual orientation to its non-discrimination policy.
2007: Iowa became the second state to allow full marriage equality for gays and lesbians. One gay couple was married before the judge put a stay on his ruling in Varnum v Brien until the Iowa State Supreme Court could rule on the case.
I don't have any of these cited, and I don't remember how I compiled them.
Anyways, I was proud of Iowa/being from there, I would tell people maybe someday I'd move back to raise a family.
These days, I think about how Iowans voted out the Supreme Court judges who were the ones who legalized marriage equality. I was disappointed by the margins that Trump would go on to carry Iowa twice. The kinds of people Iowa was sending to DC - Steve King - and the people that were running the state and the kind of things they were pursing.
Iowa has gone from purple to hard red, Missouri is more of a peer. If this 15ish years ago, that wouldn't really be a bad thing. However, the Republican party of today is much different, with Trump and all the conspiracies, etc.
So I think what happens is former Iowans who may have grown up in a purple Iowa, see the change to red, and have difficulty reconciling that with what's happened with the Republican party.
It's essentially: The Republican party went crazy and Iowa became more attracted to them: wtf?
That's when people come in with the brain drain theories and how young and educated people are moving out of state to urban areas.
TLDR - High and talking Iowa.