Congressman Steve King. (file photo)
Republican Congressman Steve King’s supporters and opponents gathered in Sioux Center last night as the “Sioux County Conservatives” hosted King at a public event. Steve Mahr helped organize a protest outside the venue, before the meeting began.
“Steve King behaves like a bully and a bully is not great representation of who this community is,” Mahr said. “…Kindness is important and I would not allow my children to speak to others than way Steve King speaks about others.”
King later responded to the assertion he doesn’t represent the views of Iowans in the fourth congressional district.
“All they need to do is look at the polling and look at the election results,” King told reporters, “and they really shouldn’t be insulting the constituents here in this district.”
During last night’s forum, King was asked to explain a comment posted on his campaign’s Facebook page that criticized one of the students who survived the Florida school shooting. It accused Emma Gonzalez of betraying her Cuban heritage by speaking in favor of gun restrictions during her speech at last week’s march in Washington. That Facebook post motivated Mahr and others to protest King last night.
“Instead of responding to the criticisms and the propositions presented by children, by teenagers, by students — he attacked their identity,” Mahr said, “which is what bullies do.”
King told reporters his campaign is using Facebook to provide “a rebuttal” to what he says are the “irrational arguments” about guns being made by Gonzalez and other high school students.
“We know what Castro did. He confiscated the guns and he told them: ‘You don’t have need of guns because we’re all here, we’re all on the side of the revolution. so you’ll never need a gun again. It’s just going to be a peaceful island,” King said. “And so, instead, he imprisoned 11 million people on that island and I only pointed out the irony of that.”
King’s supporters and opponents attended last night’s meeting in the Sioux Center library.
(Reporting by Doug Broek, KSOU, Sioux Center)