Republican congressional candidate Chris Peters of Iowa City has announced he will not vote for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. Peters said Trump was his 17th choice among the candidates running in the February 1st Iowa’s GOP Caucuses.
“Then as it became increasingly clear he was likely to become the nominee and then he was the presumptive nominee and then was the nominee…I had to decide personally as a candidate how to deal with him because obviously he would say some really ridiculous things on a fairly regular basis,” Peters told Radio Iowa this afternoon.
Peters had decided not to make a public statement about his presidential preferences, but he said that changed Friday night when a vulgar recording of Trump came to light.
“That was realy the last straw in a really big bale of straw,” Peters said. “When my wife expressed her extreme displeasure at Trump, i knew that was the constituency I needed to pay the closest attention to.”
Peters said his three sons dislike Trump as well.
Peters, who is a surgeon, previously ran for the state legislature as a Libertarian candidate. He’s the Republican challenging Democratic Congressman Dave Loebsack’s latest bid for reelection. Peters is now telling voters in the second congresional district they should elect him to be a check on “whatever nonsense emanates” from a Trump or a Clinton presidency.
The second district includes the cities of Newton, Ottumwa, Burlington and Davenport.