Vice President J-D Vance is scheduled to be in Council Bluffs Friday morning to headline a rally for Republican candidates.
Chris McGowan, the Republican running in Iowa’s fourth congressional district, said Vance’s visit underscores the importance of Iowa races in this year’s elections. “We’re coming off the heels of the first-ever Republican Midterm Convention in Dallas. I was there. I saw the vice president speak,” McGowan told KSCJ Radio. “He is a phenomenal orator and a great communicator.”
The event will be held at the Mid-America Center in Council Bluffs. That’s the site of a Trump rally before the 2018 midterms that drew people from Iowa and Nebraska. On the Nebraska side of the border, Republican incumbent Pete Rickets is seeking re-election and there’s an open race for the U.S. House seat in the Omaha area. Iowa has an open U.S. Senate race featuring Republican Ashley Hinson and Democrat Josh Turek, who is from Council Bluffs. McGowan said it’s a key race that will decide which party will have a majority in the U.S. Senate next year. “My job is to make sure that Iowa 4 comes out en masse, in complete and total support and helps Ashley Hinson win her senate seat statewide,” McGowan said.
Dave Dawson, an assistant Woodbury County Attorney, is the Democrat running in the fourth congressional district. On September 1, Republicans held a voter registration edge of nearly 183,000 over Democrats in the fourth district.
Iowa Democratic Party Chair Rita Hart said Iowa Republicans “keep parading politicians from the Washington, D.C. swamp through Iowa in hopes it will save them from record-high diesel and gas prices.” Hart said it’s not going to work “because Iowans are smarter than that.”
(Reporting by Woody Gottburg, KSCJ, Sioux City and Radio Iowa’s O. Kay Henderson)