Feenstra, missing another Iowa GOP forum, is criticized by Republicans and Dems

SIOUX CENTER — It took about an hour and 10 minutes into the Iowa GOP forum for 2026 gubernatorial candidates, but the criticism for Republican U.S. House Rep. Randy Feenstra eventually came.

"In Iowa, you must be present to win and not everyone is present here," said candidate Zach Lahn, an Eastern Iowa farmer and businessman who has worked for the Koch-affiliated Americans for Prosperity.

Lahn delivered the line during the Sioux Center forum while seated with fellow 2026 GOP candidates for Iowa governor: Eddie Andrews, Brad Sherman and Adam Steen. Feenstra was the sole declared Republican candidate for governor to no show. He was in Sioux Center on Monday, however, for an event at Late Harvest Brewery and tweeted (at 6:04 p.m.) about cutting and freezing property taxes in Iowa. The forum kicked off around 7 p.m.

The criticism for Feenstra's failure to attend wasn't limited to Lahn.

Before the forum, the campaign for Steen, the former head of the state’s Department of Administrative Services, said in an email that Feenstra "scheduled his own event just a few miles away at the same time."

That attack follows a previous critique from Steen who asked "Where's Randy?" during an event in Holstein, which the three-term Republican congressman also didn't attend. The day after that Nov. 24 event, Feenstra told The Sioux City Journal that he "absolutely" planned to attend future events with candidates and that it was "just a matter of when they occur."

The Democratic Governors Association, in their own email, took to calling Feenstra "absent Randy Feenstra."

Sand takes heat too

Though Feenstra came up a single time during the forum at the Sandy Hollow Pavilion in Sioux Center, and not directly by name, Iowa Auditor Rob Sand, the Democratic Party front-runner for governor, had an entire segment "dedicated to him."

Iowa House District 4 Rep. Skyler Wheeler, R-Hull, and The Iowa Standard's Jacob Hall asked the four men how they planned to keep up with the fundraising from the Sand campaign which reportedly raised more than $2.25 million in just the first 24 hours after the launch in mid-May.

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Lahn told the room of about 50 people that money coming in from outside the state would be important to winning against Sand in November 2026. Steen, perhaps best known for denying the Satanic Temple of Iowa's request to set up a display and hold a celebration in the Iowa State Capitol rotunda last December, said older Iowans need to be woken up and that raising large sums of money is possible if people are animated for the cause.

Andrews, a third-term legislator representing Iowa House District 43, emphasized how important grassroots work will be in the coming year as did Sherman, a former Iowa House legislator and pastor from Williamsburg.

"We are a grassroots state and if we think money is absolutely necessary to win then we're thinking down the wrong path," Sherman said.

During a series of questions about limiting emergency powers for the governor, which were asked in the context of state responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, Steen again went after Sand saying "watch out for Rob Sand with those powers." Andrews talked about his history of supporting efforts to curb gubernatorial emergency powers. Lahn said he's in favor of "pushing decision rights as low as possible" and Sherman said extending a declaration of emergency multiple times during COVID was a "problem." He also said a lot of COVID was based on "false information" but didn't offer specifics.

Immigration

All four candidates spoke about immigration, but took different paths on the question of how to address "mass immigration."

"I would like to make a distinction between immigration and invasion," Andrews said. "I'm very welcoming to those if you're coming the right way … The issue is the people who come here illegally or don't want to adapt." Andrews' bio on the state legislature website says he is the "Founder of Des Moines Spanish Conversation Group, which bridges cultures and languages and brings people together."

Lahn called for a halt of all immigration until there is an accounting of who is in the country already. He later floated the idea of ending H1-B visas with universities and said jobs on campuses should go to students and workers who haven't migrated.

Sherman and Steen both stressed that if elected governor they would work with the federal government, which has been carrying out operations in a number of American cities to detain people it says have entered the country illegally.

"Absolutely cooperate with ICE," Sherman said. "We've got work to define what American culture is … when people come here and don't want to assimilate it's not immigration it's an invasion."

Steen said he'd partner with Homeland Security to "flush out" "illegal immigrants."

Eminent domain, closing

None of the candidates raised their hands Monday night when asked to indicate if they support the use of eminent domain for carbon-capture pipelines. At his campaign launch in Sioux Center in mid-November, Feenstra was asked by The Sioux City Journal if he and Sand differed on the issue and, if so, how.

"I am absolutely against using eminent domain. I absolutely believe that the property owner and the private sector business must work it out. But I also understand how important it is for ethanol and biodiesel. Fifty-five percent of our corn crop goes to ethanol. But here's the deal, I will always be against eminent domain," Feenstra said. That issue was criticized by a number of online commenters for being too deferential to the ethanol industry and a planned pipeline that would run through Northwest Iowa and other parts of the state.

During his closing remarks, Andrews didn't raise any issues regarding Feenstra or the three men he shared the state with. He said the focus should be on one man and one man only.

"Our biggest issue is not anyone up here … Our biggest issue is Rob Sand," he said.

Maya Marchel Hoff of the Gazette-Lee Des Moines Bureau contributed to this report.