Linn County Republicans, state party disagree on Iowa House nominee

A pair of Linn County Republicans are disputing the nomination of the leader of the local chapter of Moms for Liberty as the party’s nominee for a statehouse seat.

The Linn County GOP nominated two candidates at convention last week to run against Democratic incumbents for two local Iowa House district seats.

Republicans also nominated former Alburnett school board candidate Terry Chostner to run for Linn County auditor against Cedar Rapids Democratic state lawmaker Todd Taylor, who is stepping down from the Iowa Senate to run for the auditor’s job.

Longtime Linn County Auditor Joel Miller, a former Democrat who became an independent, is not running for re-election.

Contested Iowa House seat

The Tuesday special nominating convention heard pitches from two Republicans seeking to run for Iowa House District 73, which was without a Republican candidate since no one ran in the June primary.

The district covers a portion of Cedar Rapids and much of northern and eastern Marion, and is currently represented by Democrat Elizabeth Wilson, who is seeking re-election to a second term.

Wilson, a former Linn-Mar school board member who owns a financial services firm, won the open seat in 2022 — edging out Republican Susie Weinacht, a former Cedar Rapids City Council member, following a recount. Wilson did not return a message seeking comment Monday.

The two Republicans seeking to challenge her are Geralyn Jones, chair of the Linn County Chapter of Moms for Liberty, and Jim Conklin, a former chair of the Linn County Republican Party Central Committee.

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Conklin and Justin Wasson, who serves on the Iowa GOP’s state central committee and was asked to chair the special nominating convention, said the meeting began with an hour-plus disagreement on whether a quorum had been met. Once it was determined a quorum had been met, Jones and Conklin made their pitches to precinct committee members who live in the House 73 district.

Wasson said Conklin received nine votes to Jones’ seven and was declared the winner by a Republican Party of Iowa staffer.

After adjourning the special nominating convention, Wasson and Conklin said they formalized paperwork to submit to the Iowa Secretary of State’s Office for Conklin to be listed on the ballot this fall. That included a signed and notarized affidavit of candidacy and a convention certificate.

However, the next day the Republican Party of Iowa audited the votes cast and discovered a tabulation error, Republican Party of Iowa spokesman Luke Wolff said in a statement to The Gazette.

Wolff said the error “flipped the already close election, deeming Geralyn Jones the correct winner of the convention.”

Wasson said the state party deemed Jones the nominee by “weighed vote” based on the voting strength of each precinct represented at the convention.

Iowa Code allows a state party to adopt a constitution or bylaws allowing votes cast by party precinct committee members to be made “proportionate to the vote cast for the party’s candidate for the office in question in the respective precincts at the last general election for that office.” That means a committee member from a precinct with more active GOP voters gets more of a say.

Wasson and Conklin, though, contend the state party came to the conclusion too late, and no one contested the results the night of the convention.

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Wasson told The Gazette on Monday he is not prepared to sign paperwork establishing Jones as the nominee “unless someone can show me … we can arbitrarily change (the results) after the fact.”

“I can make a strong case for either side,” he said of Jones and Conklin.

Conklin told The Gazette on Monday he plans to file an objection with the Iowa Secretary of State’s Office challenging Jones’ nomination.

The deadline to file a written objection with the Secretary of State’s Office is 5 p.m. Aug. 29. After that, a hearing would be scheduled with the State Objection Panel comprised of Iowa’s Secretary of State Paul Pate, Attorney General Brenna Bird and Auditor Rob Sand. Pate and Bird are Republicans; Sand is a Democrat.

Jones, who unsuccessfully ran in 2021 for the Linn-Mar school board, told The Gazette in a statement Monday that Conklin was wrongly announced as the nominee at the convention and that the audit by the state party correctly recognized her as the winner.

The Secretary of State’s Office said Monday afternoon it had yet to receive nomination paperwork for House District 73, and that the ultimate answer will come from state party bylaws regarding how proportional voting works at conventions.

Another Moms for Liberty candidate nominated

Linn County Republicans also nominated Barclay Woerner as the party’s candidate to run for Iowa House District 79 in the Nov. 5 election.

The district covers the northwest area of Cedar Rapids and is represented by Democrat Tracy Ehlert. Ehlert, an early childhood educator and business owner, is running for re-election to a fourth term.

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Woerner unsuccessfully ran for Cedar Rapids school board in 2021 and 2023. He was endorsed by Moms for Liberty-Linn County, a conservative political organization that advocates against school curricula that reference LGBTQ+ rights and racial and ethnic discrimination in the United States.

Moms for Liberty, which has chapters across the country, emerged on the political scene in 2021 as some parents pushed back against pandemic restrictions in public schools.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights watchdog, last year identified the nationwide nonprofit as an “extremist” coalition of “far-right antigovernment parents” known for “intimidating and harassing teachers and school officials.” The conservative school activist group contends the label is false and libelous.

Woerner told The Gazette on Monday he’s running to lower taxes, support Iowa law enforcement and give parents a bigger voice in education. He said he supports a proposal by Republican lawmakers to further cut Iowan’s income taxes and reduce property taxes.

Woerner, who has five children, said his family and many others in the state continue to struggle with high grocery and gas prices and larger property tax payments, and are looking for relief.

“It’s a real struggle to put food on the table, pay for your house and raise a family in Iowa,” he said.

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Iowa’s tax revenues have largely stayed robust as prior tax cuts have taken effect, leading Iowa Republicans to call for deeper tax cuts, arguing that the state is collecting more money than it needs. Critics argue accelerated cuts will further strain underfunded public schools schools and public services.

Woerner said he’s also running to give parents of special needs students a voice amid ongoing changes to the state’s area education agencies. . Woerner, whose son has difficulty reading, said he supports the changes.

“Competition is good,” he said, adding the AEA change provides greater transparency and accountability over how services are provided for students with disabilities, in addition to boosting teacher pay.

Ehlert, the Democratic incumbent, said she is running to boost wages and benefits for working Iowans, support good-paying jobs, and expand access to affordable health care in the state, particularly for Iowans battling cancer. Ehlert was recently diagnosed with cancer and was receiving treatment.

She said she is also running to increase state investment in public K-12 and postsecondary education, “while making sure we’re focusing on our youngest learners and supporting early childhood education as well.”

Comments: (319) 398-8499; tom.barton@thegazette.com