Mark Lofgren
An eastern Iowa legislator who turns 52 today is announcing his campaign for congress today with stops in five cities in the second congressional district.
Mark Lofgren, a Republican from Muscatine who has won two races for the Iowa House, is setting his sights on a seat in the United States House of Representatives.
“My biggest concern is, you know, basically the finances of the federal government are just a mess,” Lofgren said during an interview with Radio Iowa.
Lofgren graduated from the University of Iowa with a degree in finance and worked in real estate for a decade. He then went into investment sales.
“Basically I’ve started two businesses from scratch and I’ve had Lofgren Investments for, I think, 17 years and I pretty much do retirement investments — that type of planning,” Lofgren said.
Lofgren has been the top Republican on the Iowa House Appropriations Committee and he intends to argue the financial turn-around at the statehouse could be done in D.C.
“Right now we have a $17 trillion national debt…There’s a budget gap of about over a trillion dollars, so that’s my big concern,” Lofgren said. “I guess that’s the area I’m going to focus my efforts on.”
Lofgren will speak at 9 a.m. today in Muscatine before making campaign “announcement” stops in Durant, the Quad Cities, Clinton and Coralville.
Democrat Dave Loebsack is currently Iowa’s second district congressmen. He’s served in the House since January of 2007.
Lofgren is the only Republican in the second district to have a 2014 congressional campaign launched. Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks — an Ottumwa eye doctor who is now director of the Iowa Department of Public Health — is considering a third run for congress. Miller-Meeks ran unsuccessfully against Loebsack in 2008 and 2010.