California U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff campaigns for congressional candidate Liz Mathis

CEDAR RAPIDS — For House Democrats, the road to maintaining and winning a durable majority very well may run through Iowa, said California U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff.

Schiff, chair of the House Permanent Select Committee of Intelligence and a member of the Jan. 6 Select Committee, campaigned Sunday in Cedar Rapids for Democrat Liz Mathis of Hiawatha for Iowa’s 2nd U.S. Congressional District.

Mathis, a state senator, is running against incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson.

Schiff and Mathis met with supporters at Mathis’ campaign headquarters near Lindale Mall before going door knocking.

“We cannot hold the line — not just of our majority, but for democracy — if we can’t win in districts like this,” Schiff said.

Schiff has assumed a prominent role on the committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection, his latest in a high-profile congressional investigation of former President Donald Trump. Schiff was also among the U.S. House Democrats who led the monthslong impeachment inquiry and Senate trial into whether Trump abused his office by attempting to withhold aid to Ukraine in exchange for an investigation into Joe Biden, then a candidate for the presidency. The Senate ultimately voted to acquit Trump.

“Of all the corrosive things I think of the last administration, there’s probably none more destructive than the four-year, relentless assault on the truth,” Schiff said of Trump's and other Republicans’ baseless assertions of a stolen 2020 presidential election. “On the very idea that if you don’t like the facts, that you’re somehow entitled to your own alternate facts. … If you can persuade people that our elections are somehow rigged just because you lose, if you can persuade people you can’t rely anymore on elections to decide who should govern, that what is left but violence?”

Hinson, who voted to certify the 2020 presidential election results, condemned the Jan. 6 attack and shortly after the insurrection was a co-sponsor of a bill calling for a bipartisan inquiry into what happened. The Marion Republican, however, ultimately voted against creating an independent, bipartisan commission to investigate, arguing it might interfere with ongoing prosecutions. Hinson at the time said she still wanted to “get to the bottom” of what happened, but would later say a congressional inquiry was unnecessary as many agencies were already investigating.

“And it is a terrible fact that here we are more than a year and a half after those events and our democracy is more vulnerable than it was a year and a half ago, because the Republican Party has taken that big falsehood about our last election and run with it around the country to usher in a new series of laws to disenfranchise people and use it to attack independent — even local — nonpartisan elections officials, poll workers and others,” Schiff said. “ … It’s no exaggeration to say that our democracy is on the ballot” in November.

Republicans, including Hinson, have criticized Biden and congressional Democrats for driving record inflation due to what they’ve termed reckless deficit spending, creating a tax on middle and working-class families.

“Leave it to Iowa Democrats for thinking that campaigning with Adam Schiff — who represents one of the most overtaxed states in the country where gas prices are averaging over $6.00 per gallon — will move the needle among Iowans reeling from Joe Biden and Democrats’ 40-year record high inflation,” Republican National Committee spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement.

But while national polls indicate Republicans are winning the messaging war on inflation, Schiff and Mathis note jobs numbers and unemployment have improved under Biden, and that Democrats have passed legislation to combat inflation.

Last month, the House passed the Lower Food And Fuel Costs Act, a package of bipartisan bills which Hinson supported, to lower prices in the grocery aisle and at the gas pump.

In May, the House passed the Consumer Fuel Price Gouging Prevention Act to give Biden the power to crack down on oil and gas price gouging. Republicans, including Hinson, unanimously opposed the bill, along with four Democrats.

Mathis, too, argued Hinson has tried to block infrastructure investments, jobs and economic growth for Iowa by voting against the bipartisan infrastructure bill, while taking credit for “game-changing” funding to modernize and expand locks and dams on the Mississippi River made possible under the law.

Hinson spoke out against the infrastructure bill and voted against it, but later was included in a bipartisan letter to the Army Corps of Engineers to request that funds be allocated for use on the river.

The only Iowans to vote in favor of the bill were Democratic U.S. Rep. Cindy Axne and Republican U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley.

Hinson said she opposed the act because it was tied to social spending; however, she said, the money was going to be spent regardless once the bill was signed into law.

Mathis also criticized Hinson for opposing a measure to allow Medicare to negotiate with drug companies to lower prices and legislation to cap out-of-pocket insulin costs at $35 a month.

Hinson told Radio Iowa she didn’t vote for the insulin bill because she said it will raise premiums as companies try to recoup lost profits, and gives government too much control over businesses.

“She should be voting ‘Yes’ on a lot of these bills, because it would bring great progress to our district, innovation and tax dollars reimbursed back to us,” Mathis said.

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