An incumbent state representative will make good on his promise to run for re-election after losing the republican primary. Joe Hutter of Bettendorf represents House District 82.

Hutter says in his four years at the statehouse he hasn’t voted for any tax increases as he’s accused of doing. Hutt says he’s not going to be intimidated by any political action committees. “I think that people want to have a choice.” Hutter was defeated in the Republican primary in June by Linda Miller, who was heavily backed by the Muscatine-based “Iowans for Tax Relief.”

But he says there’s no democrat on the ballot running for that seat, so he’s running as an Independent to give voters that choice. “They need to have two people to run for every office,” Hutter says, “and I want to be able to run for that office and give them a choice.”

Hutter says he has lots of support in Bettendorf, and he thinks backers who didn’t come out to vote in the primary will show up in the general election to send him back to Des Moines.

“Pearl Harbor might have been June 7 for me, but I’m looking for November to be my Midway,” Hutter says, referring to a pivotal battle of World War Two in which the American troops prevailed. Hutter says he spent 6-thousand dollars campaigning for the primary and Miller, a political consultant, spent about 40-thousand on her campaign.

During the primary campaign Hutter, a former police officer, told reporters he’d spent 28 years as a cop knocking on doors, often unwelcome, and so he isn’t campaigning that way.