Greene County Attorney Thomas Laehn, the first Libertarian elected to office in Iowa, has qualified to run for Iowa’s open U.S. Senate seat.
“The people of Iowa are ready for a third party candidate,” Laehn said during an interview with Radio Iowa. “…Independents, disaffected Republicans, disaffected Democrats — we are the majority.”
Laehn grew up in the northeast Iowa town of Allison, graduated from Drake University, got a masters and a PhD from Louisiana State University and taught constitutional law and political philosophy at McNeese State before returning to Iowa. He earned his a law degree from the University of Iowa in 2017 and has won two terms as Greene County Attorney. “Crime rates are down at least 30% in Greene County, so hopefully that lends some credibility and legitimacy to the Libertarian Party, but also shows the people of Iowa that there is a credible third party alternative,” Laehn said, “that they don’t have to keep choosing between the lesser of two evils.”
Laehn’s name will appear at the top of Iowa’s General Election ballots alongside U.S. Senate candidates Ashley Hinson, a Republican from Marion, and Josh Turek, a Democrat from Council Bluffs, who both won their party’s primaries last week. Candidates who are not the Republican or Democratic Parties’ nominees in the General Election faced a June 2 deadline to file their nominating paperwork in the Iowa Secretary of State’s office. However, yesterday was the deadline for people to challenge whether signatures on those petitions were legit and Laehn’s paperwork has not been challenged. He submitted nearly 10-thousand signatures, almost three times as many as required. “We did not have signatures from every county in the state, but we were close,” he said.
Three other Libertarian candidates do face challenges that could make them ineligible for the General Election.
Here are the other third party candidates who submitted nominating petitions for the General Election (an asterisk denotes their petitions have been challenged and they face a hearing before the State Objection Panel):
US House First District
Independent Michael Bridgford of BettendorfUS House Second District
Independent Dave Bushaw of Hawkeye
*Libertarian Rick Stewart of Cedar RapidsUS House Third District
*Libertarian Marco Battaglia of Des MoinesGovernor
*Libertarian Nicholas Gluba of Lone TreeState Senator District 5
Independent Rachel Gravert of EsthervilleState Representative District 4
Independent Garth Van Donselaar of Sioux CenterState Representative District 15
Independent Blake Johnson of Council Bluffs
Independent Marilyn J Mentzer of LoganState Representative District 61
Independent Lucas Hewitt of WaterlooState Representative District 89
Independent Daniel Arch of Iowa City