Democratic Attorney General Tom Miller says that when he first got elected, he was the sole statewide Democrat. Republicans had just taken the House and the Senate. He said he made his office about helping Iowans on the ground.
“We concluded that the best policy was the best politics. The best service was the best politics so we were going to try and do as good a job as we could do and hope the politics worked out,” he told a small crowd on Wednesday at The Des Moines Register’s Political Soapbox at the Iowa State Fair.
Miller pointed to recent work like making Opioid manufacturer Endo International pay up to $450 million to participating states and local governments, for its role in the opioid crisis. There’s also his office’s work to forgive $15.7 million in student loan debt for 900 Iowa students who were in debt to for-profit ITT Technical Institute.
He said for this November, he’s contrasting that record with Republican challenger Brenna Bird, who has said she’d sue the Biden administration for public health and farm regulations.
“She has a strong commitment to the ideology and the partisan politics of issues. That’s exemplified by when she announced she'd sue Biden. That’s essentially an ideological agenda. It’s not an agenda that will effect Iowans,” Miller said.
Bird spoke at the soapbox last Saturday.
