Brenna Bird, the Republican candidate for Iowa attorney general, said she will defend Iowa’s laws if challenged in court at the Iowa State Fair on Saturday.
Bird, was first elected to be the Guthrie County Attorney in 2018, and is challenging Democratic incumbent Tom Miller, who has served as Iowa's attorney general since 1978.
At the Des Moines Register Political Soapbox, she said she's learned about Miller is that he's out-of-touch with Iowans, particularly those in law enforcement, as she's campaigned across the state.
"Something that we hear when we're in different counties, they just haven't seen our attorney general," Bird said. "He hasn't been there. He doesn't know them. Even if they've spent their entire career in law enforcement in Iowa.”
Bird called for more support for the state's law enforcement officers, calling Miller "completely silent" when it comes to supporting the police and defending them from calls to "defund the police."
Bird said as the state's highest-ranking attorney, she would defend all of Iowa's laws if they are challenged in court.
"We have a state legislature that passes laws. Whose job is it to defend those laws when they are challenged in court? It's the job of the attorney general," she said.
Miller has declined to participate in the state’s legal actions to defend its laws restricting abortion, including a recent push by Gov. Kim Reynolds to reinstate a law imposing a ban on abortions at around six weeks of pregnancy, passed by a Republican-led legislature in 2018.
Bird said Miller has also failed to defend Iowans against what she calls "unconstitutional mandates" imposed by the Biden administration, such as restrictions for the COVID-19 pandemic.
"They seem to think that the CDC and other experts should impose different rules on us, right, taking away our freedoms," she said, "and who in our state has the power to go to court to sue the federal government to enforce the law and constitution? It's the attorney general, right?"
Miller is scheduled to speak at the Political Soapbox on Wednesday.
