Kathie Obradovich is a 1987 graduate of Iowa State with a bachelor's in Journalism and Mass Communication. She has been a reporter, editor and columnist covering Iowa government and politics for three decades. Her experience runs the gamut from her first job covering the night-cop beat for the Quad-City Times to covering the last five presidential caucus campaigns and the Iowa Statehouse. She was a panelist for the second Democratic presidential debate in November 2015. She joined the Des Moines Register as political editor just a few months before the 2004 Iowa caucuses. The Register's caucus coverage won national awards that year, and again in 2008. She's also been the lead editor for the award-winning Iowa Poll. In June 2009, she became the Register’s political columnist, the first woman to hold the position. In 2018, she was named the Register's opinion editor. Kathie grew up in Ames and she’s a lifelong Cyclone fan. She and her husband, Jim, live in Des Moines.