Democratic 1st Congressional District candidate Christina Bohannan criticized her opponent’s record on immigration and abortion at the Iowa State Fair on Saturday.
During a speech at The Des Moines Register Political Soapbox, Bohannan said Republican U.S. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks refused to publicly support a bipartisan border security bill earlier this year.
"Rep. Miller-Meeks and U.S. House Republicans wanted to keep playing politics with it,” she said. "They wanted to keep using it as a campaign issue. If that is not the best example of putting party over country, I don’t know what is.”
House Republicans passed their own border security bill but refused to consider an immigration proposal that had bipartisan support in the Senate. Bohannan said she would vote to secure the border, and she would support "comprehensive immigration reform.”
Bohannan, a University of Iowa law professor and former state legislator from Iowa City, is trying for a second time to unseat Miller-Meeks after getting about 47% of the vote to Miller-Meeks’ 53% in 2022.
Bohannan said if elected, she would vote to put national abortion rights protections that existed under Roe v. Wade into federal law.
She said Miller-Meeks has "sold out Iowa women.”
"As we stand here today, Iowa now has one of the strictest abortion bans in the country,” Bohannan said. "And there’s a lot of blame to go around, plenty of it on this ban, but in a lot of important ways, this is Mariannette Miller-Meeks’ abortion ban.”
Miller-Meeks wasn’t in the Iowa Legislature when laws banning abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy were passed in 2018 and 2023, but she said she supported it. She also voted for a proposed constitutional amendment that would have removed state-level constitutional protections for abortion rights.
In Congress, Miller-Meeks cosponsored the Life at Conception Act in 2021, which would ban all abortions nationwide and could threaten fertility treatments like in vitro fertilization.
Miller-Meeks did not sign onto the most recent version of the Life at Conception Act, and she said last week she supports exceptions to abortion bans for rape, incest and the life of the mother.
All we ask is that our representatives put Iowa first, and that is what I’m running for Congress to do.Christina Bohannan
Bohannan said growing up, her family "lost everything” trying to afford medical treatment for her dad, who got emphysema and lost his health insurance.
"I am running to fight for hardworking families like mine, because I think that if you are working hard, you deserve a fair shot — not just to get by, but to get ahead,” she said.
Bohannan said she would push for national investment in public schools, especially for rural schools.
She said she would fight for shoring up Social Security, Medicare and veterans services, and lowering health care and prescription drug costs. Bohannan also said she would push for affordable housing and affordable child care, as well as "real action” on climate change.
She also said she is running to help restore Iowans’ faith in government.
Bohannan said Iowans are strong, hardworking, fair-minded and independent.
"We don’t ask for much from our government,” she said. "All we ask is that our representatives listen to us. All we ask is that our representatives put Iowa first, and that is what I’m running for Congress to do.”
Miller-Meeks is not scheduled to speak at the Soapbox this year.
Libertarian Nicholas Gluba is also running for Congress in the 1st District. He spoke at the fair Saturday afternoon.
