Not only has King been largely absent from his district, but he has failed to bring home any major legislative victories and was left off the Farm Bill conference committee this year, despite representing one of the most rural districts in the country.
“For years, Congressman King has used his position to benefit himself – not the people he was elected to represent. Not only does J.D. share the values of the Fourth District, but he has proven over the course of this campaign that he will go above and beyond to fight for his community,” said Iowa Democratic Party Spokesperson Tess Seger.
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“Many outside King’s district have long been appalled by his disparagement of people unlike him. He’s compared immigrants to hunting dogs and said that for every Latino valedictorian brought over here as a child, there are 100 who are drug smugglers with “calves the size of cantaloupes.” He proposed an electrified fence across the border to shock people, saying it’s done with livestock. And yet he has kept winning elections.
Why?
It’s not anything he’s done for his district, say some. “Fifteen years without a major committee chair, 15 years with the renaming of a post office as his only legislative achievement, 15 years and Iowa’s most rural district has no representation on the farm bill conference committee,” Jeremy Granger of Sioux City wrote in a letter in last Sunday’s Sioux City Journal.”
“But some Republicans say they can support Scholten because he has conservative Catholic values more aligned with theirs. Polls this year show a narrower race.”
“Maybe, thanks in part to millennials like Baart responding to cultural shifts like the #MeToo movement. She was deeply disheartened by the belligerent way she saw nominee Brett Kavanaugh in Senate Judiciary Committee hearings respond to Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations of sexual assault. And Nykamp says virtually all the women she knows, excluding herself, have been victims of sexual misconduct. She credits them with opening eyes. But King defended Kavanaugh at a meeting this week of the Carroll Chamber of Commerce. He called the hearing a circus and said he plans to urge Trump to stick with Kavanaugh.”
“Water quality, the state of farming and health care are all concerns mentioned by district residents. Kim Olson of Lake City says she spends all her earnings on health coverage for herself and her college-going daughter. She’s got a political science degree and has been working for public libraries since 1993, but says she earns “about what the starting wage at Walmart is.” She can’t increase her hours from 21 a week because the library only has funding for two full-time staffers. And getting on her husband’s public school teacher’s insurance would cost them even more.
Health care is the region’s No. 1 issue, says State Sen. David Johnson, a Republican-turned-independent from Osceola County. His constituents are frustrated with the state’s Medicaid privatization fiasco. “When Medicaid payments are delayed by one or more years, it affects clinics and hospitals” in rural parts of the state, he said. “If you lose a clinic or hospital, it is a death blow to the county.”
Scholten also calls health care his top issue. If elected, he says he’d vote to include a public option and let people buy into Medicare at 55. He also supports a higher minimum wage. That’s significant because the financial well-being of King’s district is often cited as a reason voters stick with him. But what about Olson, or Kimberly Koster, a divorced mother from Breda who, after 10 years working at a daycare center, earns only $8.45 an hour?”
“Travels in District 4 introduced me to decent, trusting people and charming small-town life. It also exposed tensions between generations over changing cultures and values, which King has exploited. (As a state legislator, it was gay people he targeted.)
Sowing divisions has long worked for him, but it won’t last forever. His constituents deserve better.”