Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders wrapped up his latest presidential campaign swing across Iowa on Sunday. He rallied a few hundred voters in Sioux City.
At Sioux City’s Orpheum Theatre, Bernie Sanders repeated common themes like "Medicare for All" and investing in rural America. He said his campaign is about the people.
“I think many of you know that the message of our campaign is ‘not me. Us’,” Sanders said.
Rural America, he said, has been ignored for far too long, and that needs to change.
“Tragically, instead of seeing good paying jobs, education and health care coming to our rural communities, we are far too often seeing despair, depression and people losing hope,” Sanders said.
Sanders said there need to be policies that support rural America and focus on the working class and family farmers, not large corporations and agribusinesses.
The independent senator who caucuses with Democrats credits Iowa for launching his political revolution during the last election cycle. He said his ideas were seen then as radical, but now people are embracing them.
“And with your help on this campaign, we are going to complete what we began right here!” Sanders said, to cheers and applause.
Corey and Misty Davis of Sergeant Bluff attended the rally with two of their children. Corey Davis has been a huge supporter since 2016, saying Sanders’ ideas about health care and education resonate with his own views and personal experiences.
“He’s my No. 1,” Corey Davis said. “… I believed in him in 2016 and I believe in him now.”
Misty Davis was not sold on the idea of Bernie Sanders as president in 2016. But she has a good friend in Canada, where there is free health care; the friend dealt with a major medical crisis that “would’ve bankrupted them if they lived in the states," she said. That shifted Misty Davis’ perspective on Sanders, as she wants a president who champions for "Medicare for All."
“It’s kind of opened my eyes,” Misty Davis said. “I used to be one of those people who thought it was radical and now I realize it’s not.”
Sanders stopped in several other cities over the weekend, holding town halls in Fort Dodge, Perry and Spencer, and a rally in Ames.
During a stop in Osage, in Mitchell County, Sanders announced a plan to help rural communities thrive. The plan focuses largely on agriculture, aiming to protect family farms by putting a moratorium on large agribusiness corporation mergers, restricting foreign companies from owning farmland in the U.S., and ensuring stronger environmental oversight on factory farms.
“We will no longer allow factory farms to destroy beautiful communities,” Sanders said in Osage. “Working together we will apply the full force of the Clean Water Act on factory farms.”
Sanders’ plan also outlines his goals for education, like having a universal childcare program, paying rural teachers more money and offering free college to everyone.
