Anna Ryon, an attorney with the Office of Consumer Advocate, may run for Congress in Iowa’s third district next year, she announced on Facebook today. She has launched a possible campaign website and is recruiting volunteers to join her e-mail list for updates and “action alerts” on when to call members of Congress. She is not raising money “until I make a final decision” on a Congressional campaign.

Yesterday Ryon uploaded to YouTube a video of her remarks in May 2015 before the Bishop and Cabinet of the Iowa Conference of the United Methodist Church. Ryon “was invited to be part of that meeting to share my story of being a queer woman in the UMC, and in particular the hurtful response from the church when my ex-wife and I got married.” Instead, she shared the story of her father, a United Methodist minister who was gay and took his own life in 1999.

I enclose below Ryon’s bio from her new website. She is on Twitter @annakryon and on Facebook. Her “deep dive” about Adams County became one of the most popular Bleeding Heartland posts of 2016.

Current U.S. Representative David Young defeated Democratic challenger Jim Mowrer by 53.4 percent to 39.7 percent in 2016. Young performed substantially better than Donald Trump, who carried the third district by 48.5 percent to 45.0 percent over Hillary Clinton. Outside groups spent more than $7.4 million on the Young-Mowrer race. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee confirmed this week that IA-03 will be on its target list again in 2018.

One of Mowrer’s 2016 primary opponents, Mike Sherzan, has turned up at a number of local Democratic events lately, including the January 21 State Central Committee meeting of the Iowa Democratic Party, which attracted a large crowd because of the state chair election.

The sixteen counties in IA-03 contain 167,453 active registered Democrats, 177,457 Republicans, and 166,620 no-party voters, according to the latest figures from the Iowa Secretary of State’s office.

Anna Ryon’s bio:

I consider myself to be an “all-Iowan” girl. My dad was a United Methodist minister, which meant my family moved frequently when I was young, and I have no real hometown of my own. I was born in Creston and lived in ten different towns before graduating from Davenport Central High School. The places I lived gave me a broad understanding of the variety of Iowa’s experiences and communities. From living in Fremont, a town of about 750 people in Mahaska County, during the Farm Crisis, to seeing the current urban revitalization of Des Moines, I have seen Iowans go through loss and embrace opportunity, in both rural and urban areas.

I attended Grinnell College, where I majored in French and learned to align my vocational interests with my commitment to social justice. Instead of participating in a traditional study abroad program, I secured grant funding to work and study in Haiti on two occasions. On one of those occasions, I spent the summer working with volunteer teams from the U.S. in summer school programs, and on another I conducted independent research about the impacts of educating children in French as opposed to their native language of Creole.

I continued my studies in French at the University of Virginia, where I earned my M.A. I then spent several years in Virginia teaching in public schools in rural counties. I taught high school Spanish in addition to middle school and high school French. During my final year of teaching, I worked with another Spanish teacher and a local Walmart Distribution Center and to begin an evening ESL program for employees that was held at shift-change with no cost to the students.

I came back to Iowa to attend law school at Drake University. During law school, I began to apply my new professional skills to issues of economic justice. I started volunteering at Iowa Legal Aid during my first year of law school and continued to do so until graduation. I also developed an interest in consumer lending, and my research lead to being the first student ever invited to speak at the National Consumer Rights Center’s annual litigation conference in Washington, D.C. in 2007, on the topic of toxic mortgages.

Immediately following law school, I worked at a law firm in Washington, D.C., where I represented individual and institutional investors in securities fraud litigation. During the financial crisis, the cases I worked on included one against IndyMac based on mortgage-lending practices and another against a company that had invested union pension funds with Bernie Madoff. I also got to pursue my interests in social justice with pro bono human rights work, including assisting with a brief to the U.S. Supreme Court arguing against the admissibility of evidence from Guantánamo detainees that was allegedly obtained by torture.

I returned home to Iowa in 2010 and have worked for six years at the Office of Consumer Advocate, a division of the Department of Justice that represents customers’ interests on public utilities issues. My work at OCA includes representing ratepayers in gas, electric, and water cases; working to develop standards for maintaining reliable telecommunications services in rural areas; and serving on the Dual Party Relay Council, which advises the Iowa Utilities Board about the equipment distribution program and relay service for Iowans with communications impairments.

I’m an animal lover and have a soft spot for animal rescue. While in Virginia, I volunteered transport services for Appalachian Great Pyrenees Rescue. Since then I have continued to volunteer by fostering, and of course adopting, rescued animals. I currently have two dogs and two cats. My dog Duncan and I are a certified team with Therapy Dogs International and volunteer our time at a variety of locations to spread compassion.

In the last few years, I have found physical and emotional strength by training for and participating in triathlons. In the early morning hours before work, you may see me swimming at the John R. Grubb Community YMCA, running in the Drake neighborhood with my dog Eddie, or biking through downtown Des Moines during my commute.