Meet The Iowa Election Deniers Running For Statehouse Offices – Iowa Starting Line

Individuals who deny that Joe Biden is the President of the US aren’t only a fringe group in Arizona or Florida anymore. They’re proper right here in Iowa—and so they need to be within the Iowa Legislature.

You may keep in mind the touring Ohio math professor peddling the Huge Lie in Independence, attempting to drum up extra assist for his or her mistaken perception {that a} majority of Individuals voted for Donald Trump for president in 2020.

Not less than 4 Republican state legislative candidates have been available throughout that presentation—Brad Sherman, Bernie Hayes, Anne Fairchild and present Rep. Sandy Salmon. Each Sherman and Fairchild seemed to be serving to arrange the occasion.

And there can be much more precise candidates in your poll for the Iowa Legislature who agree with the Huge Lie and need to impose much more voting restrictions—if not ultimately take away the correct totally for a lot of.

Right here’s who they’re, and what they’ve stated to earn a spot on this listing:

Sherman: ‘Large fraud and dishonest’

Brad Sherman, of Williamsburg, is working for Iowa Home District 91, which encompasses his hometown of Williamsburg, together with Iowa County and west/north Johnson County in japanese Iowa.

Sherman—the chair of the Iowa County Republicans and a pastor who based Knowledgeable Selections, a sequence of clinics that dissuade girls from looking for abortions—was the winner of a six-way Republican major for the open seat created by redistricting.

He says on his web site his coverage positions embody being “Professional Election Integrity.” However that apparently means one thing completely different to him than the remainder of us.

“I’ll say it straight out: The end result of the November 3, 2020 normal election was the results of large fraud and dishonest,” Sherman says on his marketing campaign web site. Extra ominously, he provides, “This stuff must be addressed in Iowa.”

His opponent is Elle Wyant, a Democrat from Marengo who works in air cargo gross sales at UPS and is a board member at LGBTQ advocacy group One Iowa. She can also be a transgender girl who documented her transition within the early 2000s on YouTube.

Stoltenberg: Truly attended Jan. 6 revolt

Luana Stoltenberg, a candidate for the open Iowa Home District 81 seat protecting northwest Davenport, additionally lists “election integrity” prominently on her marketing campaign web site—with the identical bizarro-world backward which means as Sherman.

However Stoltenberg, an writer and speaker who campaigned on her anti-abortion views and on ending civil rights protections for LGBTQ Iowans, did extra than simply discuss the discuss: She traveled to Washington, DC (she says with a “prayer group”) to attend Trump’s “Cease the Steal” rally, posting images and descriptions of the occasion on her Fb web page.

“WE THE PEOPLE are simpl[y] exercising our constitutional proper to assemble and inform the federal government officers they aren’t representing us and there may be fraud,” she wrote on Jan. 6, 2021.

When the Quad-Metropolis Occasions picked up the story, Stoltenberg claimed she by no means went into the US Capitol. She stated she was solely “there to hope for my nation as a result of I like my nation, and pray that there could be peace and there could be reality.”

Matt Trimble, chair of the Scott County Democrats, stated in a press launch that Stoltenberg’s “declare that the 2020 election was fraudulent is contributing to a harmful second in our nation’s historical past.”

“We should establish her and all who assist this un-American exercise as harmful to democracy,” he added.

Stoltenberg’s opponent is Craig Cooper, a Democrat and former hospital spokesperson and reporter. He referred to as Stoltenberg’s attendance at Jan. 6 “irresponsible.”

Abdouch: ‘Joe Biden will not be the president’

However why tiptoe and canine whistle when you may simply say what you actually imply?

So goes the considering of Sarah Abdouch, the Republican candidate for Iowa Home District 20, which incorporates northwest Council Bluffs and Carter Lake.

Aldouch appears to pleasure herself on how far to the correct she is—even to the purpose of attacking fellow elected Republicans for being too average.

Abdouch is a former state lobbyist and state director for Conference of States Motion, a political motion committee attempting to influence no less than 34 state legislatures to formally name for a constitutional conference that will put all federally enshrined rights in jeopardy.

You’ve most likely guessed that’s instantly tied to the Huge Lie, and also you’d be proper. Whereas Aldouch may dance round it on her official candidate web page, she doesn’t maintain again on her private profile.

It’s clearly no small matter for her: As lately as this week, she posted a single sentence, “Oh, additionally the 2020 election was stolen.”

Her Democratic opponent, Josh Turek, is a former two-time gold-medal Paralympic basketball athlete. In an interview with Beginning Line, Turek laid out the stark selection between a vote for him and Abdouch.

“Democracy is on the road. The soul of the nation is on the road,” Turek stated. “It actually does really feel like we’re form of on this crux in our nation’s historical past; like, which path are we going to go? What sort of nation are we going to turn into?”

What Gehlbach Likes: ‘There was all kiiiiiiiinds of dishonest’

Not each election denier can afford to be so open.

Take Dan Gehlbach, the Republican working to symbolize Iowa Home District 46, which encompasses elements of Urbandale and the northeastern a part of Dallas County.

Gehlbach is a Waukee faculty board member who’s nonetheless campaigning on his assist of “faculty selection” and claiming that public faculties are “brainwashing” college students in LGBTQ ideology.

Gehlbach’s social media presence, nevertheless, is crammed with way more average language, plus the usual fundraising appeals and marketing campaign images.

However Twitter’s bought a enjoyable function referred to as the “likes” tab. Mainly, any tweet an individual likes is public information by clicking a tab on their profile.

So what has Gehlbach liked that places him into the election denier class? A pattern of his likes from November by December 2020:

• A Nov. 4 tweet from the CPAC director: “#Arizona is STILL IN PLAY. @FoxNews bought it unsuitable. #StopTheSteal”
• A Nov. 7 tweet from South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem: “The 70 million Individuals who voted for @realDonaldTrump should not transferring on simply because the media says so.”
• A Nov. 10 tweet from @davelimbaugh: “The complete push for mail-in ballots was about fraud.”
• A Nov. 27 tweet from @hodgetwins: “Twitter is hiding all of the #BidenCheated motion? There was all kiiiiiiiinds of dishonest.”
• A Nov. 28 tweet from Sen. Doug Mastriano: “There’s mounting proof that the PA presidential election was compromised.  If that is so, beneath Article II, Part 1.2 of the US Structure, the state legislature has the only authority to direct the style of choosing delegates to the Electoral Faculty.”

• A Dec. 1 tweet from Rep. Matt Gaetz: “There’s an curiosity in analyzing voting irregularities and forcing a debate in Congress about whether or not or to not settle for states’ electors the place these irregularities exist. Nothing is off the desk.”
• A Dec. 1 tweet from account @justin_hart: “The testimonies being given at an official listening to of a Senate Committee in Michigan are clear and convincing proof that fraud was dedicated. There isn’t a means round this now. We have to open the entire thing up!”
• A Dec. 28 tweet from a Texas US Home candidate: “That is how we take our nation BACK … Jan sixth throw out the fraudulent vote, and restore election integrity!”
• A Dec. 30 Josh Hawley tweet: “Any person has to face up. 74 million Individuals should not going to be informed their voices don’t matter.”
• A Dec. 30 tweet from Charlie Kirk praising Hawley: “Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri will OBJECT to the election outcomes on January sixth. That is what braveness appears like. That is what it means to FIGHT! RT if each different Republican must do the identical!”

Gehlbach’s opponent is Bridget Carberry Montgomery, an Urbandale Metropolis Council member and advocate for public faculties, reasonably priced housing, and infrastructure.

After fundraising studies got here out, Montgomery referred to as him “a puppet being compelled on us by the intense proper wing that desires to defund our public faculties and eradicate reproductive freedom.”

Fairchild: Doesn’t imagine US “has had a free or honest election for many years”

Republican Anne Fairchild is working for Iowa Home District 78, which incorporates a lot of southeast Cedar Rapids.

And he or she’s taken up among the exact same options as Huge Lie proponent Douglas Frank, which embody additional limiting Iowans’ proper to vote, and making already overworked election officers depend each single poll by hand.

“The one means to make sure the sanctity of our elections is to vote utilizing serialized paper ballots which are solid on Election Day and counted by hand on the precincts,” Fairchild says on her web site. “Digital voting machines and tabulators don’t have any place in our elections. Identical day registration needs to be eradicated and absentee ballots solely allowed with respectable justification.”

She was additionally, together with Sandy Salmon and Brad Sherman, at Douglas Frank’s “Election Integrity Summit,” and proudly posts that truth on her “Information” web page, noting she was swayed by his arguments.

“His findings confirmed how the voter rolls are not behaving randomly county by county,” she stated. (His findings supplied no proof of that.)

Now a real believer within the Huge Lie, she informed the Cedar Rapids Gazette she believed vote tabulators within the state are linked to the web, making them weak to hacking, which Iowa’s Secretary of State (a Republican) has stated is unfaithful.

However Fairchild even went past Frank’s assertions in her Gazette interview.

“Fairchild insisted that the voting course of within the U.S. is flawed, and that she doesn’t imagine the nation ‘has had a free or honest election for many years, to be actually sincere,’” the paper quoted her as saying.

Her opponent is Sami Scheetz, an adviser to the Mike Franken for Senate marketing campaign who would turn into Iowa’s first Arab-American state lawmaker if elected.

Hayes

As a lot as we maybe need Bernie Hayes’ dream of constructing the world’s first holodeck in Cedar Rapids to return true, it’s his embrace of the Huge Lie, boldly going the place no critical candidate ought to go, that ought to most likely be probably the most regarding to Iowa voters.

Hayes, of Cedar Rapids, is working once more for Iowa Senate. This time within the redistricted Senate District 39, which covers Cedar Rapids in addition to southern Linn County.

He was certainly one of 4 candidates at Frank’s Independence presentation, standing and introducing himself to the group. On his web site, he responds to an NPR article in an open letter that he says is just-asking-questions and closely counting on “proof” of fraud from Frank’s web sites.

“Many information organizations, NPR included, will repeatedly (relentlessly) state that there’s ‘no proof’ for the Nov. 2020 presidential election fraud. My concern is that I hear the assertion, however I’m by no means given the proof to again it up,” Hayes stated.

Hayes’ opponent is Rep. Liz Bennett, a tech skilled presently serving her fourth time period within the Iowa Home.

“There’s a really stark distinction in views and imaginative and prescient between me and my opponent,” Bennett stated this month. “Your vote counts.”

Salmon: The Huge Lie’s Queen Bee

However we’d be remiss to not point out Iowa Rep. Sandy Salmon, the one certainly one of these candidates who has truly been within the Iowa Legislature for 4 phrases attempting (and typically succeeding) to show these half-baked concepts into burned actuality.

Salmon, of Janesville, needs to symbolize Senate District 29, which incorporates Waverly, New Hampton, Charles Metropolis, and elements of 4 northeast Iowa counties.

However she needs to go a lot additional in election regulation restrictions, touting the identical sorts of Douglas Frank-inspired options like solely paper balloting, falsely claiming voting machines have been linked to the web, denying folks the correct to vote absentee, and extra.

“We want frequent sense protections for our election and voting course of in order that honest and clear elections happen,” Salmon says on her web site.

Sound acquainted? Salmon was not solely acknowledged a number of occasions at Frank’s Buchanan County occasion this summer season however she was additionally heralded as election deniers’ one true champion within the Iowa Legislature.

And that wasn’t her first election-denier occasion: She additionally attended Mike Lindell’s three-day Cyber Symposium in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in August 2021, later saying Lindell “gathered sufficient proof that factors to manipulation, interference, and potential fraud giant sufficient to impression the result of the 2020 election within the presidential race and sure different congressional races as effectively.”

Her opponent is Jenn Wolff, a Waverly native, former occupational therapist and longtime incapacity rights advocate.

“I’m decided to battle for our rights and freedoms,” she wrote on her Fb web page July 4. “To do that we’d like the votes of many, particularly those that really feel under-represented!”

By Amie Rivers
10/23/22

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