Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Ongoing Tower Work Impacting KUNI (90.9 FM)

2nd District candidates try to sway a district open to change

Graphic by Madeleine C. King
Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson is running against Democratic challenger Sarah Corkery in Iowa's 2nd Congressional District.

The 22 counties in Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District will have the choice this November between a well-established Republican incumbent and a Democratic challenger who’s running an entirely grassroots campaign.

Polling and fundraising numbers so far show the district as majority Republican. According to data from the Secretary of State, Republican voters outnumber Democratic voters by about 20,000, and there are almost as many No Party active voters as Democrats. However, the district hasn’t always voted along party lines.

It used to regularly swing between Republicans and Democrats, but incumbent Rep. Ashley Hinson has kept it red. She ousted Democrat Abby Finkenauer in 2020. Prior to that, Finkenauer had toppled Republican Ron Blum in 2018.

Meet the candidates

Hinson is now seeking her third term in Congress. At a recent meeting with the Iowa Women’s Foundation on expanding child care in the district, the Republican from Marion said one of her priorities for next term will be renewing the Trump-era tax cuts that are set to expire at the end of 2025.

"We’re going to be dealing with a tax bill next year," Hinson said. "Today, you’re hearing about private investment, raising wages for child care workers — all those things that are providing more opportunities I think fit into the bigger picture of what we’re going to be talking about in the next session."

Hinson has built her platform alongside former President Donald Trump's, supporting many of those policies. Her campaign has been endorsed by Trump.

Her opponent, Democrat Sarah Corkery, is campaigning essentially from her kitchen table. It’s her first leap into politics, and the Cedar Falls resident is running without financial support from the national Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Corkery says she entered the race after a conversation with Rep. Hinson regarding a bill on that — at first — her opponent refused to sign. Women’s health remains a top priority for her. Corkery is a cancer survivor herself, as well as a parent to a child with disabilities. It's those experiences that have made health care her top priority as she looks to unseat Hinson.

A woman speaks on a crowded stage
Grant Leo Winterer
/
Iowa Public Radio
Sarah Corkery speaks at a candidate forum at the Volga City Opera House

The fight over abortion rights

At a candidate forum at the Volga City Opera House in Clayton County, Corkery said her biggest fight would be to resist government restrictions on abortion by codifying Roe v. Wade.

"The number one thing we need to take care of is making sure women have access to abortion care," Corkery said. "And that it should be a conversation between a person and their doctor, end of story."

Hinson, on the other hand, has supported Iowa’s ban on abortion at around six weeks of pregnancy, with exceptions.

Several of the county’s undecided voters were on hand that evening to parse out whether to cast a ballot for change, as they felt the previous congressional session left some pressing issues unresolved.

Addressing health care access and nursing home worker shortages

Clayton County’s Dick Dinan was one of them. Like many rural Iowans, health care bas been a huge concern for him. He has seen firsthand the district’s struggle to provide proper care, and thinks Congress needs to be doing more to address access.

"We haven’t had any mental health services since our former governor came back from China," he said, referring to Terry Branstad, who became the U.S. Ambassador to China in 2016. "And we haven’t done anything since. We’ve lost an ungodly amount of mental health workers."

Staff shortages have impacted mental health care in rural areas, as well as nursing home care.

When the Biden administration proposed a minimum number of staff in nursing homes, the State of Iowa sued, saying it punishes providers who can’t rapidly fill those roles.

Corkery argues a lawsuit isn’t the answer. To fix the problem, she says Congress needs to rethink worker compensation.

"We need to pay those folks more," Corkery said. "Some of them are still operating at ratios under emergency systems from the pandemic. I think we need to look at the minimum wage, which hasn’t been touched in a long time."

In a debate on Iowa PBS, Hinson said she supports the lawsuit, arguing that those blanket policies don’t account for the challenges in filling positions in rural Iowa. She believes the way to fix the problem is through incentives to bring in more workers.

"I think it comes down to the worker pipeline — making sure we’re incentivizing work-based learning, " Hinson said. "Making sure people have educational options that can turn out people for the workforce."

Immigration and border security

Immigration has also been a top concern for the district ahead of the election.

Hinson said she has been a strong supporter of increasing border security through measures including limiting asylum eligibility and ending programs that allow asylum seekers to stay in the U.S.

We simply can’t sustain that level of illegal immigration.
Rep. Ashley Hinson

"Those were solutions that were working to help secure the border," she said. "We simply can’t sustain that level of illegal immigration. We need to focus on the legal visa program to get people in the right way."

Corkery has been openly critical of those policies. While she agrees border security should be a priority, she has been disappointed with the perceived politicking and partisanship when it comes to the border.

"There was a great plan put forward, where both Republicans and Democrats worked together," Corkery said. "But some extreme Republicans blocked it so it wouldn’t see the light of day — all for political purposes."

She added that she is not the only one who thinks Congress needs a change.

"That’s what people are tired of," Corkery said. "They want to see us get this problem solved."

A voter's hope for unity

Frederic Boudouani of Elkader agrees. He is a first-generation immigrant from Algeria who has been in the country for nearly two decades. After the candidate forum in Volga, he said politics have changed so radically that this United States is almost unrecognizable.

"It used to be, when you disagreed with someone in your community, you would disagree and still went out and had a beer together," he said. "Now, if you disagree with a person, they want you dead."

He is hoping that after this election, the healing will begin.

"At the end of the day, we need to snap out of this politics of hatred and vilification of the other," Boudouani said. "We’re part of this country and the fabric of this country."

Corkery’s campaign faces an uphill battle in what was once a swing district. The Cook Political Report rates the race as solidly Republican in Hinson’s favor. But it will be up to the 2nd District voters to decide what happens next.

Grant Leo Winterer has been Iowa Public Radio’s Waterloo and Cedar Falls reporter and host of Weekend Edition since August of 2023.