Muscatine attorney announces Congressional campaign in Eastern Iowa’s 1st District

DES MOINES — Citing a need to put Iowans ahead of “political party leaders and corporate interests,” Muscatine attorney Taylor Wettach on Tuesday announced he is running for the U.S. House in Eastern Iowa’s 1st Congressional District.

Wettach becomes the fourth Democrat in the 2026 1st District election. He joins former state legislator Christina Bohannan, who was the party’s unsuccessful nominee in 2022 and 2024, as well as health care worker Travis Terrell and former state legislator Bob Krause.

They are vying for the right to challenge three-term Republican incumbent U.S. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks.

The 34-year-old Wettach is a Muscatine native and a seventh-generation Iowan who has worked as an international trade and national security lawyer. Wettach has never run for political office before, but said through his job he has advised and negotiated with the federal government on multibillion-dollar economic matters.

“I didn’t plan to be a politician. I’m doing this because I believe it’s the right thing to do,” Wettach said Monday in an interview with The Gazette. “But I do believe that I have a lot of experience from having advised the intelligence community, advised folks in Congress, negotiated with the federal government on critical national security and economic matters, and stood up to overreach of multibillion dollar, Fortune 500 companies.”

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Wettach said he recently left the law firm he had been working for when it joined a settlement with Republican President Donald Trump after his administration demanded information about the firm’s hiring practices.

Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP was among five law firms that agreed to provide $125 million in free legal work to the administration for causes including veterans affairs and combating antisemitism in exchange in order to avoid the prospect of punishing executive orders, the Associated Press reported.

“Unfortunately, my law firm was one of the firms that was targeted, and I had hoped that we would stand up for what I believe we need to do, which is to push back against government overreach when they come after our judicial system, our legal system. And sadly, they caved,” Wettach said.

“I disagree with that decision, and I had to think about how I could respond,” Wettach added. “I felt that in this moment, this is too pivotal of a moment to keep on doing the same thing and hoping that things will go back in the box, keep on trying to do the same sorts of responses and expecting a different result.”

Eastern Iowa Democrats are expressing a similar sentiment, Wettach claimed, about the 2026 1st District election. Wettach said he hears from voters who are concerned that the party will nominate Bohannan for a third time only to see her lose to Miller-Meeks a third time.

Miller-Meeks was first elected to Congress in 2020 on her fourth campaign for the U.S. House. After three unsuccessful challenges against Democratic incumbent Congressman Dave Loebsack, Miller-Meeks in 2020 won an open-seat election by just six votes out of nearly 414,000 cast.

“I’m not a professional politician. I’ve not run before. I’ve not run twice. I also have not lost once or lost twice,” Wettach said. “As I talk to folks in the district … I keep hearing the same thing: that folks are concerned about doing the same thing again and hoping for a different result this time. …

“They really brought to me the concerns they have about making sure we had a next generation of folks with new ideas, with fresh blood, and a real commitment to working the ground game. And also somebody who’s representative of not only listening to the urban areas of our district but also the rural areas, like where I come from, in Muscatine.”

Wettach said the economy is a primary policy concern of his. He said inflation is “out of control” and that the country’s economic policy favors corporate interests over working Americans.

“The economy is not working for working people,” Wettach said. “And beyond that, we have a trade and tariff policy that is jerking everybody every which way.

“I’m a trade lawyer and an economic policy adviser. I understand that well. I don’t think the people in Washington really understand what they’re doing. And I’m going to be fighting tooth and nail for folks here, day in and day out.”

Wettach said health care is another policy concern. Wettach said his father and grandfather were both small town doctors in Muscatine and Mount Pleasant, and he expressed concern for rural Iowa hospitals with the new federal law, passed by Republicans, that will reduce Medicaid spending by $1 trillion over 10 years and according to Congressional Budget Office projections will increase the number of uninsured Americans by 11.8 million.

“The cuts that are taking place because of the decision of Miller-Meeks to vote for this big, ugly bill are only going to make that worse. And it’s incumbent upon us to be a leadership that is going to fight like hell to make sure that we pull that back.”

Iowa’s 2026 primary election is June 2 and the general election is Nov. 3.

U.S. House Republicans respond

In a statement, the National Republican Congressional Committee — the campaign arm of U.S. House Republicans — described Wettach as “another out of touch Democrat.”

“East Coast elitist Taylor Wettach just gave up his posh city life to join the clown car Democrat primary in Iowa’s First Congressional District,” NRCC spokeswoman Emily Tuttle said in the statement. “There’s no doubt that whoever comes out of this race to the left will lose to ‘America First’ Mariannette Miller-Meeks next year.”

Comments: (515) 355-1300, erin.murphy@thegazette.com

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