116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
At Iowa State Fair candidates decry eminent domain, vow to defend abortion rights
Iowa 1st Congressional District candidates Christina Bohannan, Nicholas Gluba addressed fairgoers
Aug. 10, 2024 6:39 pm, Updated: Oct. 8, 2024 1:41 pm
DES MOINES — Candidates for Congress and the White House addressed Iowans at the Iowa State Fair on Saturday as part of the Des Moines Register’s annual Political Soapbox.
Both Democrats and Libertarians criticized Republican challenges to Iowa Libertarian candidates’ ballot access for the November general election.
Fairgoers on Saturday heard from candidates running for southeast Iowa’s 1st Congressional seat as well as the Libertarian candidate hoping to make a third-party run in the U.S. presidential election.
Libertarian candidate’s ballot access challenged in 1st District race
Nicholas Gluba, the Libertarian congressional candidate running for southeast Iowa’s 1st District seat, attacked the Republican Party’s recent legal efforts to challenge his right to appear on the ballot.
“They want to attack Iowans’ ability to vote for who they choose. We have to fight against that,” he said Saturday.
Gluba, of Lone Tree, is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who served in Operation Iraqi Freedom. He also works as both a chef and at North Liberty’s Whirlpool facility, and serves on the Lone Tree City Council.
He is one of three Libertarian candidates running for Congress in Iowa.
Two voters who are involved in Republican politics also filed an objection with Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate’s office over Libertarian Candidate Marco Battaglia’s ballot status in Central Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District.
“If the Republicans think they can take on two Marines, well, better luck next time,” Gluba said.
After the 2022 general election, the Libertarian Party tallied enough votes to receive major party status on the 2024 ballot.
Once parties reach major party status, they must have held precinct caucuses no later than Feb. 26. After that, parties must hold county conventions where delegates for district and state conventions are selected.
The complaint from two voters in Clinton and Jefferson counties alleges no county conventions were conducted, which Gluba disputes.
Gluba said the complaint showed Republican Party officials were scared of the appeal of Libertarian candidates.
Gluba is running against Democrat Christina Bohannan and incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks. The race is rated as “lean Republican” by election forecaster Sabato’s Crystal Ball.
Gluba could lure away some 1st District conservative Iowans unmotivated by Miller-Meeks who may look toward the Libertarian on the ballot. Miller-Meeks fended off a primary challenge in June from Davenport prayer breakfast organizer David Pautsch.
Miller-Meeks, who is running for a third, two-year term, declined an invitation to speak at the Register’s Political Soapbox.
Gluba also vowed to fight the use of eminent domain by private corporations and U.S. foreign interventions.
He said the money the country has spent on global conflicts should be invested at home “we could reinvest that into Iowans, into Americans, lift ourselves up and prosper.”
If elected, Gluba promised to support a bill limiting the use of eminent domain to civic structures and roadways.
The Iowa Utilities Commission this summer approved Summit Carbon Solutions to build a pipeline using eminent domain to capture carbon dioxide at ethanol plants across the Midwest and store it deep underground.
“They don’t need to use eminent domain to take privately held land, from our farmers, from our ranchers, from our citizens to put it in their pipelines,” Gluba said.
He also advocated for reducing the federal government, specifically targeting the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and Internal Revenue Service, and emphasized the need for fiscal responsibility and cutting “government bloat.”
Bohannan vows to defend abortion, working Iowans
Bohannan emphasized the need for politicians to prioritize working-class Iowans over wealthy donors and special interests. She criticized Miller Meeks for voting against the passage of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill, while publicly touting projects in the district supported by the federal funding.
“How can you vote against fixing the damn roads?” Bohannan said Saturday. “ … And I'll tell you something, Chuck Grassley agrees with me.”
Grassley was one of just 19 Republican U.S. senators and the only Republican in Iowa’s congressional delegation to back the package.
Bohannan also attacked Miller-Meeks for accepting thousands in campaign contributions from pharmaceutical companies, but voting against legislation letting Medicare negotiate for lower drug prices and capping the price of insulin for seniors.
Miller-Meeks has introduced and supported other bills seeking to lower prescription drug prices, including a bipartisan proposal that would tackle practices used by pharmacy benefit managers that drive up costs for prescription medications.
Bohannan said she knows firsthand the struggles many Iowa families face, recounting her family's own struggles growing up in a rural trailer park in a small town of 700 people. Her father worked as a construction worker, and her mother worked part-time at a day care.
As a teenager, she said her father fell ill from emphysema and had his health insurance canceled, forcing the family to choose between paying for his medicine and paying the family's bills.
“He couldn't get his new insurance because of this pre existing condition, and we lost everything trying to save him because we couldn't afford the prescription drugs that would take to save his life,” Bohannan said. “And I talked to people all over the district with stories like this.”
The former state lawmaker and University of Iowa law professor vowed to fight for lower costs, good jobs, strong unions and comprehensive investment in public schools.
She also vowed to “fight for real climate change that brings farmers to the table and makes Iowa a world leader in renewable energy.”
“We gotta push back on eminent domain, and we've gotta fight for our family farms,” Bohannan added.
She also criticized Miller-Meeks’ record on abortion and access to contraception.
While in Congress and the Iowa Senate, Miller-Meeks supported anti-abortion rights legislation, including a measure that states life begins at fertilization, banning all abortions. It has no exceptions for rape, incest or the woman’s life, and does not spell out protections for fertility treatments.
Miller-Meeks has said she is “pro-life with exceptions for rape, incest, and life of the mother.”
Bohannan has vowed to put Roe v. Wade, the 1973 case that had affirmed a constitutional right to abortion, back into federal law and restore reproductive freedom for all Iowans.
On immigration, Bohannan accused Miller-Meeks of “playing politics,” by not supporting a bipartisan immigration reform bill in the U.S. Senate that the union that represents front-line Border Patrol agents had endorsed.
“They wanted to keep using it as a campaign issue,” she said. “If that is not the best example of putting party over country, I don't know what is.”
Miller-Meeks supported a 2023 House GOP-led measure to increase border security — a separate measure from the bipartisan deal that failed to advance earlier this year.
“You know, here's the thing, if representative Miller Meeks doesn't get that life saving drugs for her own people are more important than drug company profits,” Bohannan said. “ … If she doesn't get that our rights and freedoms are more important than pushing Project 2025, or her own extreme agenda, then she doesn't know what the word ‘representative’ means, and she sure as hell should not be ours.”
Libertarian presidential candidate decries eminent domain
A staff worker tried to wrangle viewers Saturday by yelling to Iowa State Fair passersby that Libertarian Party candidate Chase Oliver is the only presidential candidate not afraid to come to Iowa.
The qualifier there would be “this year,” since most of the Republican presidential candidates were frequent Iowa visitors — including to the State Fair — during the primary campaign in 2023.
But Oliver is indeed the only presidential candidate scheduled to appear at this year’s Iowa State Fair. He made his appearance Saturday.
Even presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. opted against making an appearance at the Iowa State Fair. Kennedy was scheduled to speak Friday on the Soapbox, but canceled this week. Kennedy’s campaign told the Register he canceled due to security concerns.
During his remarks to roughly a dozen seated viewers and a few walkers who stopped to listen, Oliver spoke about addressing inflation by reducing government spending and railed against the use of eminent domain for private company infrastructure.
Oliver also encouraged voters to resist voting for “the lesser of two evils,” referring to the Republican and Democratic party candidates.
Oliver said he has learned about the eminent domain issue in Iowa by speaking with state Libertarian Party leaders and meeting with Iowa farmers. He used the issue during his Soapbox remarks to segue into what he described as the Libertarian Party’s basic message to voters.
“I believe that property rights are sacrosanct in this state and that you as a farmer or you as a business owner should be able to control your property as you see fit. And if you don’t want to have a pipeline that’s built a few hundred feet away from your home, where your kids sleep every night, you shouldn’t have to,” Oliver said.
Oliver, 38, is from Atlanta — his campaign staff also highlighted the fact that Oliver is the only Millennial presidential candidate. He has been a political activist and candidate: he ran for the U.S. House in 2020 and the U.S. Senate in 2022. In the latter, Oliver’s vote share helped push that close election to a runoff, which Democrat Raphael Warnock narrowly won over Republican Herschel Walker in an outcome that helped give Democrats control of the Senate.
Oliver was nominated to be Libertarians’ presidential candidate at the party’s national convention in May in Washington, D.C.
“You can personally be as conservative or as progressive as you want to be in your life. As a Libertarian we just ask that you don’t ask the government to push those values on other people, and that we don’t want those values pushed onto you, either.” Oliver told reporters after his remarks. “So personally, you can be as conservative or as progressive as you’d like and still feel comfortable living within the Libertarian Party.”
Comments: erin.murphy@thegazette.com and tom.barton@thegazette.com
Daily Newsletters