In this year’s race for governor, there are four so-called “third-party” candidates listed along with Democrat Chet Culver and Republican Terry Branstad on this fall’s ballot. Jonathan Narcisse, a newspaper publisher and former Des Moines School Board member, is running as an “Iowa Party” candidate. Narcisse has proposed that Iowans who are paid by the hour should only pay state income taxes on their first 40 hours of work in a week.
“We also fix property taxes,” he says. “We link it to the purchase price not the random assessed values which allows folks, particularly working class folks, to acquire property and to improve it without getting crushed.” David Rosenfeld, a Des Moines tire factory worker, is the Socialist Worker’s Party candidate for governor. He says Iowa should have a much more progressive income tax that completely exempts the working class, while requiring upper income Iowans to pay more.
“I’m not concerned with creating class warfare,” Rosenfeld says. “We live in a society that is subject to the class struggle. Whether you want to hide from it, pretend that it doesn’t exist, or whether it gets buried beneath everything and you can’t see it as well — the class struggle exists.”
Eric Cooper, an Iowa State University psychology professor, is the Libertarian Party’s nominee for governor. Cooper says it’s time for dramatic changes in the way the state doles out money for educating kids. “Attach any subsidy money to the individual child. Let the parents decide where that kid goes to school,” Cooper says.”That could be private school, parochial school, home schooling or even the current public schools — if they want to.”
Gregory James Hughes, an employee at the Quaker Oats plant in Cedar Rapids, is running as an independent candidate for governor. Hughes, a divorced man who is a “father’s rights” advocate, says too many judges are mishandling divorces and child custody proceedings.
“I would like to set up a panel so that if somebody thinks that, really, these decisions are egregious, they could have a place for them to be looked at and re-evaluated, from a common sense level,” he says. “They really do a very, very, very poor job at policing themselves.” The four “third-party” candidates for governor made their comments Monday during a joint appearance on Iowa Public Radio.