Ryan Melton is the Democratic nominee in Iowa’s fourth Congressional district. These are his prepared remarks for the Iowa Democratic Party’s Liberty and Justice Celebration in Des Moines on July 27. You can listen to the speech as delivered here.
At the Mills County Fair Democratic party booth in Malvern a couple Saturdays ago, a high school freshman to be asked me what motivates me to keep going despite the odds in our district, so he too could buy in and join the effort.
Here’s what I told him:
1. More are paying attention to what we on the front lines of the civic sphere do than we often realize. With regularity, I get messages from people thanking me for fighting for them. Often, it’s kids in the LGBTQ+ community, or young women who fear getting pregnant in an abortion ban state, or landowners besieged by eminent domain abuse by the corporate titans that run this state and own its politicians. They often feel left behind, but seeing advocates fighting for them helps them to see where their community is. They see they aren’t alone, and that matters immensely.
2. By continuing to run for open offices despite the odds, we hold the powerful accountable. We force them to knock doors and attend public forums where unopposed they most certainly wouldn’t. We force them to spend money they otherwise wouldn’t spend. We force them to attempt to defend the indefensible. In ‘22, we only had ten Democrats running for state House out of our 25 seats in our Congressional district. This time we’re up to seventeen through the recruitment efforts of myself and others. That’s a lot more forced accountability this time.
3. By challenging entrenched incumbents, you force them to think twice before harming us to satisfy who owns them. I and other residents of the 4th shamed Feenstra into voting for the PACT Act the second time it came to him in the House, a bill that expanded VA access for veterans suffering from severe illness due to their exposure to toxic burn pits and agent orange. The first time, he voted against the bill that has saved so many lives since it’s passage, and went on a radio show to double down on his opposition despite there being a consensus of support among veterans advocacy groups.
4. While the ultimate goal is certainly the win on election day, we can accomplish a lot of wins on specific issues in the meantime. Last legislative session in Des Moines, I protested anti-LGBTQ+ bills. I wasn’t alone. Hundreds filled the Capitol in Des Moines numerous times protesting such bills. The legislators certainly could hear us in their committee chambers. Over 20 anti-LGBTQ+ bills went down in defeat last session despite the Republican Party’s hold on both chambers and the governor’s seat. That doesn’t happen unless there’s robust protest to drive accountability.
I also was arguably the first major candidate to campaign against the carbon capture pipelines in ’22 that threaten our land, water, and public health, while not delivering substantive climate action, whereas Feenstra was a public supporter of them, so much so that he wrote an op-ed in a district newspaper in December ’21 at the bidding of his donors. When I started campaigning against them right after filing with the FEC to run in early ’22, he went silent on the issue, as his stance has become more and more unpopular, a stance 80 percent of polled Iowans oppose, rendering the tens of thousands in donations he received from Bruce Rastetter a less helpful investment.
I was told when I first campaigned on the issue that it was a fool’s errand, but now, with the robust opposition to these pipelines that has taken over the state, we have a fighter’s chance, and the fight certainly didn’t end with the IUB [Iowa Utilities Board] decision that declares the Reynolds administration prioritizes corporate power over landowner rights and public health.
5. Finally, I really believe we can win this thing. It was only a few cycles ago when J.D. Scholten lost the election for this seat by only 3 percent. Yes, it may take a lot of variables aligning in our favor at the right time, but that’s exactly what’s happening, confirmed by my many conversations with the many disgruntled Republicans in my district.
From the frustration over the IUB approval of eminent domain for these carbon capture pipelines that has sparked so much rank-and-file anger amongst Republicans against their party’s leadership, to having their Republican electeds push for bills absolving polluters of our water and air from liability for the damage their chemicals cause while we suffer through the second highest cancer incidence rate nationally, to having a 34-time convicted felon at their top of ticket, someone who only earned 50 percent of the vote in the Iowa Republican Caucuses), to having a Republican governor who typically polls as the least popular in the nation for her gutting of the state’s economy, public schools, AEA [Area Education Agencies] system, and reproductive rights of its citizens, to having a Republican opponent in Randy Feenstra who for the fourth year in a row has rejected any community project earmark money for our communities that has left local Republican leaders frustrated in having to manage the hollowing out of our district without that money, the momentum is on our side. We saw an 11 percent jump in the Iowa Poll from February to June.
6. Feenstra is an incumbent who lost 40 percent of the vote in his primary to an opponent who got in the race late with little money or party backing by calling out Feenstra’s corporate cronyism, obedience to party over people, and unwillingness to address our state’s cancer crisis, many of the same things I’ve been pointing out. Those [Kevin] Virgil voters are, more and more, coming over to my side.
A lot of the above reads like what was happening not too far or long ago in red state Kansas before voters across the political divide voted out their Kim Reynolds clone governor, a state that now has a twice elected Democrat sitting in the governor’s chair. We can accomplish that and more here in Iowa. Thank you.
Editor’s note from Laura Belin: Bleeding Heartland previously covered the GOP primary election between Feenstra and Virgil here.