Subscribe to our RSS feed
Follow us on TwitterIt would be hard to find a political candidate in Iowa with a more difficult race than James Van Bruggen. To say he’s got an uphill struggle to unseat incumbent Rep. Dwayne Alons in Iowa House District 4 would be an understatement.
Republican Dwayne Alons, left, and Democrat James Van Bruggen.
What’s Van Bruggen’s problem? He’s a 25-year-old legislative assistant from George, facing a farmer and former Air Force pilot who has been running unopposed for a decade in the northwestern part of the state that has been called the “Bible Belt of Iowa.”
At first glance, many would think Alons might be just the kind of a candidate the state Democratic Party might put resources into unseating. During his 10 years in office, he has been very successful at grabbing headlines that are not always flattering.
* Last year Alons told a House committee that humans thrive in times of global warming. He said the ancient Mayan culture was made up of giants because of warmer global temperatures.
* In January, Alons said: “We shouldn’t be as concerned, actually, about [global] warming, especially now that we have modern refrigeration and air conditioning.”
* He has been an outspoken proponent of a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, even joining in on a lawsuit in 2000 against then-Gov. Tom Vilsack alleging the governor exceeded his authority by signing an executive order to protect gay state workers from job discrimination. Then, in 2008, he opposed a bill that would extend that protection to the areas of employment, housing, education, public accommodations and credit practices, telling the Sioux City Journal that it was inappropriate to grant these rights to “people that make choices in life that other people feel are inappropriate.”
* In 1999, Alons had a heated exchange with a fellow legislator during debate on the English-only law over whether anyone should be allowed to speak Spanish on the House floor. During debate of the bill, which eventually passed, former Democratic state Rep. Ed Fallon began speaking in Spanish for several minutes on the House floor. Alons quickly objected and called a point-of-order, a move the Des Moines Register called “the parliamentary equivalent of tattling on someone.” After a few minutes of back and forth, Fallon was permitted to proceed.
“But most of what he does and says in Des Moines doesn’t really make it back to the district,” said Lynn Trapp, chair of the Sioux County Democratic Party. “I think those that already oppose him hear about that stuff, but not the residents who support him.”
A nearly four-hour drive from the state capital, the vast majority of House District 4 is farmland. Sioux Center is its largest city, with a little more than 6,000 residents. Directly between two media markets, residents are as likely to get their news from Sioux Falls, S.D., paper and television as from Sioux City.
Religion plays a huge role in shaping not only politics but also everyday life. Nearly a quarter of students go to Christian schools, and Sioux County is home to two Christian colleges, Dordt College in Sioux Center and Northwestern College in Orange City.
“This district is very conservative and believes in traditional values,” Alons said in an interview with Iowa Independent. “People believe in the traditional definition of marriage and are overwhelmingly pro-life.”
Mark Lundberg, chair of the Republican Party of Sioux County, half of which sits in HD4, said, “We usually don’t even have Democrats on the ballot in local races.”
There are districts like this all over Iowa, where the parties see no hope of victory and have ceded territory to their opponents in order to put resources where it is perceived they will do the most good. While Van Bruggen said he understands the strategy, his hope is that his campaign will help put northwest Iowa back on the radar of the state Democratic Party.
“This is how a party is built,” Van Bruggen said. “I can understand why the state Democratic Party is not active in this district. But voters need to have choices, and if I put up a good showing, maybe the state party will take another look at northwest Iowa.”
Van Bruggen said that in the 10 years Alons has held office, HD4 has been underrepresented. He points to Alons’ vote against the statewide sales tax to pay for school infrastructure earlier this year as an example.
“That was a vote that didn’t split down party lines, it split urban and rural legislators against each other,” he said. “That will provide rural schools with much needed resources, and Rep. Alons wouldn’t support it.”
Alons said his vote represented the will of his constituents who don’t trust lawmakers not to raid the state sales tax revenue for something besides school infrastructure or property tax relief in the future.
“If there were more guarantees that the money would only be used for those purposes, I would have supported it,” he said.
Alons said he is going to campaign vigorously and would focus on showing voters he will protect traditional values and try to bring state spending under control.
“People are worried that it won’t be long before the state’s budget problems start to affect their budget,” he said.
Van Bruggen said he would focus on education and transportation, two areas where rural Iowa districts like his are being left behind.
The Des Moines media may portray Alons in a negative light, but, like another prominent western Iowa lawmaker, media criticism could actually help to cement his popularity.
“It’s a lot like [U.S. Rep.] Steve King,” said Luke DeKoster, a writer with the Sioux County Index-Reporter. “Some of the things they say may seem extreme to people in Washington or Des Moines, but they just aren’t viewed that way up here. In fact, I think when the media is critical of them, people say to themselves ‘If they think he’s bad, he must be pretty good.’”
Alons welcomes any comparisons to King, saying they share a lot of the same values and beliefs, “but Rep. King is much more eloquent than I am in getting his point across.”
Out of 20,000 registered voters in Sioux County, nearly 15,000 are Republicans. In Lyon County, which makes up the other half of HD4, registered Republicans outnumber Democrats 5,140 to 1,219.
In a year that has seen a spike in enthusiasm on the Democratic side of the aisle, northwest Iowa hasn’t been immune. Nearly 10 times as many Democrats caucused in Sioux and Lyon counties this year as compared with 2004. But even that big of an increase pales in comparison to Republican turnout.
“The four precincts around Hull and Boyden had about 70 Democrats turn out to caucus this year,” DeKoster said. “Usually, there are about 12. For Republicans, 209 people turned out.”
Democrats like presidential candidate Barack Obama and U.S. Congressional candidate Rob Hubler will get more votes in this part of the state than any Democrat has in many years, which could help them carry the day but won’t translate to success for local candidates, DeKoster said.
Even if he loses, Trapp said Van Bruggen’s candidacy is the first step of building up the Democratic Party in northwest Iowa.
“Its really hard for people to run knowing they are going to lose,” he said. “But if you want to build a party, you have to have people willing to take the hit. We will work to get our message out, and one day we’ll be successful.”
