Libertarian Nicholas Gluba, who is running for Congress in Iowa's 1st District, said he wants to ban the use of eminent domain for private gain and rebalance government powers.
At the Des Moines Register Political Soapbox on Saturday, Gluba told Iowa State Fairgoers he would sign onto a bill in Congress to prevent the use of eminent domain for the private gain of corporations.
He criticized state regulators’ decision to grant conditional permission to Summit Carbon Solutions to use eminent domain to complete its proposed carbon capture pipeline.
"These are all billions upon billions of dollar corporations,” Gluba said. "They don’t need to use eminent domain to take privately held land from our farmers, from our ranchers, from our citizens, to put in their pipelines. If they can’t reach a fiscal agreement properly, obviously it means nobody wants their product.”
He said eminent domain should only be used for projects like bridges and roads, not carbon pipelines, oil pipelines and wind turbines.
Gluba, who lives in Lone Tree, is a former U.S. Marine and now works as a production lead at Whirlpool in North Liberty and as a chef for Price Creek Event Center in Amana.
They want to attack Iowans’ ability to vote for who they choose. We have to fight against that.Nicholas Gluba
He said the country needs to rebalance the powers of the legislative, judicial and executive branches of government.
Gluba said the president and executive branch should not have the authority to write their own laws without action by the legislative branch.
"That effectively makes the president in the United States a king,” he said. "We fought against the king back in 1776. We won. We need to do it again. We need to win that war again and make sure a king can’t control the United States of America ever again.”
Gluba described himself as "anti-war,” saying the U.S. should reinvest the trillions of dollars spent on foreign wars into Iowans and Americans.
He also criticized ballot challenges that were filed claiming Gluba and two other Libertarian congressional candidates do not meet legal requirements to appear on the ballot. He said the challenges show that Republicans are afraid of the Libertarian candidates.
"They want to attack our ability to be on the ballot,” Gluba said. “They want to attack Iowans’ ability to vote for who they choose. We have to fight against that.”
He said Libertarians will defeat those challenges and appear on the ballot in November.
Gluba is running against Republican U.S. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Democrat Christina Bohannan. Bohannan also spoke at the fair on Saturday, but Miller-Meeks is not scheduled to speak at the Soapbox this year.
