Abortion a dividing issue between GOP Iowa House 66 candidates

Both Republican candidates for Iowa House District 66 in Jones and most of Jackson counties come with previous experience in the Statehouse.

Redistricting in 2021 caused Rep. Steven Bradley, of Cascade, previously of District 58, and Rep. Lee Hein, on Monticello, previously of District 96, to become opponents in District 66 in the 2022 election.

There are no Democrats running in the district, meaning the June 7 Republican primary election will likely decide the winner before the final election in November.

Bradley was elected to District 58 in 2020. He serves as the vice chair on the Iowa House Human Resources Committee and is also on the Economic Growth, Natural Resources and Transportation committees.

Bradley said if he is elected in the new district he would like to focus on continuing lowering taxes, increasing tourism and improving health care in Iowa. Bradley is a dentist and spent several years working on health care bills with the Iowa Dental Association before he eventually ran for political office.

He also said he sees abortion as one of the biggest issues that will come up in the next few years, and he would support bills that oppose abortion.

“I don’t just say I’m pro-life, I vote pro-life. With Roe v. Wade being turned around by the Supreme Court, Iowa could be a destination abortion state. So that’s why we need this life amendment, and I’m all for the life amendment,” Bradley said.

The “Protect Life Amendment” is a proposed amendment to the Iowa Constitution that says the constitution does not recognize a right to abortion. It could be on the ballot for voters as soon as 2024.

Hein also said abortion is an important issue for him, and he has supported multiple bills limiting abortion rights, but he also believes that choice shouldn’t be completely denied.

“My position is, first and foremost, I believe life begins at conception. But I also believe that it is a moral, a religious and — most of all — needs to be a family decision,” Hein said.

Hein said he voted against an bill against abortion rights in 2018, often referred to as the “heartbeat bill,” which would have made it illegal to perform an abortion once a heartbeat could be detected from the fetus. Hein voted against the bill because he said he believed it went too far.

“When we were discussing the heartbeat bill, my daughter was going through a pregnancy where at 12 or 13 weeks, when they did their first ultrasound … the doctor basically told them that the baby would not survive birth. There was a heartbeat there,” Hein said. “They determined after a couple more tests that it was Turner Syndrome, where some of the insides, intestines and organs, were actually growing outside the body, and they basically laid out that, more than likely at some point in the pregnancy, she would probably miscarry … and the longer she went into the pregnancy, the more violent that miscarriage could be,” Hein said.

Another issue that Hein said he would like to focus on in coming years is increasing transparency when it comes to property taxes. Property tax bills go up, he said, not because the government has increased the levy on the property but because the value of a property increases, so homeowners end up paying more while local officials can say taxes weren’t raised.

“I would like to make it so that however the value goes up, the levy gets readjusted down so that they’re collecting the same amount of money that they were collecting last year. And if they want to raise it, I’ve got no problems with them raising it, they just need to be honest with the constituency and they need to go on record to vote in increase the levy,” Hein said.

Hein, a farmer, was first elected to the Iowa House in 2010.

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