Дэв Давсон выступает в Карролле, обещая bipartisan подход и борьбу за снижение цен

A frequent visitor the Carroll area in his campaign in Iowa’s 4th District congressional election, Dave Dawson appeared in a meet-and-greet at the Carroll County Democrats’ office and the Iowa Forward Campaign regional headquarters in Carroll on Saturday morning. Dawson said this was the 247th event he’s attended since launching his campaign last August. He won the Democratic primary in June over Stephanie Steiner and Ashley WolfTornabane and now faces Republican Chris McGowan, president of the Siouxland Chamber of Commerce. Dawson and McGowan are bidding to succeed Randy Feenstra, who ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination for governor. Dawson, who’s served as a prosecutor in the Woodbury County Attorney’s Office nearly 20 years and was elected to terms in the Iowa House (2013-17), said this was his seventh campaign appearance in Carroll County, including six stops in Carroll and a visit to the county fair in Coon Rapids. “I think people appreciate me showing up in public and meeting face to face and answering questions,” Dawson told the Times Herald. He said he’s not only participated in campaign events but also gone door to door. “The biggest issue people are concerned about right now is affordability of costs, whether it’s housing or food prices or gas prices or health care. People are very concerned that our economy is not working well for working people,” he said. “I think people who are ready for a change in direction and are not satisfied with what’s been going on the last two years should consider my race. I’m a longtime northwest Iowa resident, lived 46 of my 52 years in northwest Iowa, born and raised in Washta and live now in Lawton, so I come from a small town and live in a small town, and I think a lot of people appreciate having somebody run for office who didn’t just move into the district to run for office. I’m somebody who’s lived here for a long time.” Dawson said he and McGowan will meet in a debate at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 30, in the KTIV TV studio in Sioux City. Dawson said he’s proposed debates in three regions of the county — Ames, Council Bluffs and Sioux City — but the TV-studio debate is the only scheduled so far. “I was disappointed that we won’t have a town-hall-style where we can get questions directly from the public, but at least we’ll have a District 4 debate. That’s the first one since 2020.” Responding to concern about so many attack ads in Iowa’s elections, Dawson said, “I’ve been making a point of staying very positive because I think people who are running for office need to set a different tone, and I’m hopeful my opponent also will stick with his pledge to also not be negative about name-calling and making things up. The tenor over the last 10 years has just been horrible, and it turns people off. Then they don’t want to engage or go vote because they don’t like anybody, so I try to run a different type of campaign, try to talk about what I hope to accomplish if I’m elected.” In the meet-and-greet, Dawson addressed questions on such issues as tax breaks for the wealthy, health care funding, the Iran war, the Epstein files, election-rule changes and term limits on service in Congress. Dawson said, “The Republicans added $3.6 trillion to the national debt by passing that law (tax cuts in the Big Beautiful Bill Act),” Dawson said. “It would have been over $4 trillion if they had not cut $1 trillion in health care funding on top of it. They’re the reason, the Republicans in Congress, that we’re over $40 trillion in debt. “People just don’t seem to understand that there are people in the Democratic Party, who are fiscally conservative like me and want to make sure we pay for things as we go along, and that’s what we did when I was in the Iowa Legislature, and I support making sure we’re not spending more than we’re taking in. But you have to have revenue from some sources, so I believes we should pull back those tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires to make sure we can pay for things like health care and make it more affordable and closer to home because we don’t want rural clinics to continue to close, rural maternal health facilities or hospitals closing. Then the next thing would be nursing homes in small towns, which people rely on so they can live close to home with family. If we don’t have Medicaid funding for long-term health care for seniors, it’s going to be devastating to small towns, and people won’t be able to stay close to home in their senior years.” Dawson said more than 20% of Iowans are on Medicaid. “So we need to come up with a system that makes health care a right that you can have no matter what your income level and you always have access to care,” he said. “I’m supportive of a public health care action that is for everybody if they want it, they could opt in. It wouldn’t be mandatory. But if you like your private insurance and some people do, you can keep it. But if you want a system that works better based on your ability to pay it would be similar to the Hawki system in Iowa, which is something you can opt into for children, but it would also be for adults, not just for children, and hopefully it would be a lower cost option because you wouldn’t have private insurers that are for-profit running it. It would be a government-run system “I’m hopeful that we can work on those types of things if I were elected to Congress and also restore the funding that was cut from the Affordable Care Act subsidies because there are 25,000 Iowans in northwest Iowa who were impacted by those cuts. Not everybody lost coverage, but some people weren’t able to afford it without those additional subsidies.” He said officials at clinics and hospitals are anticipating loss of revenue because the Medicaid, and they may have to cut staffing levels. Dawson said the Iran war has exacerbated budget difficulties. “How about spending billions of dollars on a war that Congress has not even declared,” he said. “The president attacked another country and is engaged in armed conflict for an extended period of time. This isn’t a skirmish, this isn’t a defense action, this isn’t a retaliation. This is ongoing.... “Why are we sending people and resources and risking Americans’ lives to not us make us safe. There was no imminent threat to our country. Nothing had changed, and weren’t we told in the summer of 2025 that we had bombed (Iran’s) weapons manufacturing or their nuclear plant and we weren’t going to need to ever go back. So why are we there a year later?” Dawson said to a question about full disclosure of information in the Epstein files, “As somebody who has prosecuted cases when victims of sex abuse were children, it’s horrendous and horrifying to me that the Epstein victims are not receiving justice, that there have not been prosecutions. The Justice Department still has not released all the details. There are still too many things that are redacted that are not supposed to be. If I get to Congress, we should be bringing Justice officials before Congress and possibly holding them in contempt of Congress for not following the law. The only thing that should be redacted is the identity of the victims. They shouldn’t be made public unless the victim wants to be made public, and that’s always how we are when it comes to child sex abuse victims. We don’t identify their information publicly. “I don’t understand how it’s taken this long to not be able to release all the information and have some justice for children who have been trafficked. That’s what I’ve always been about as a prosecutor is standing up for abused kids. I’m hopeful that we will finally get all the details released, but you need people who are pushing for those types of things.” Dawson also expressed concern about the Trump administration’s proposed restrictions on mail ballots so close to the Nov. 3 election. He said, “This makes it more difficult for people to be doing the correct thing whether you’re a poll worker or a local elected county auditor or election official or elected secretary of state. You’re changing things in the middle. Federal law usually only picks the time and date of the election, and other election rules are left up to the states, he said. “Once again making government decisions by executive order is not the best way to govern because presidents don’t make laws,” he said. “Presidents can direct departments of executive branch agencies to implement policies as long as they’re following the law. They’re not allowed to make an executive order that doesn’t comply with the law or the Constitution, so when state laws decide the way most elections are held, there’s really not a federal role for them to be making changes especially through executive action. Congress possibly could pass some laws that affect some of the elections that the president can sign into effect but really it should be coming from Congress passing legislation, not through executive order.” Dawson is a member of the Take BAC Congress organization that favors term limits on members of Congress and said those limits could help make sure “we don’t have people going out to Washington, D.C., and becoming career politicians just to make money off of the system. “So if you’re not always running for reelection you might be more accountable to trying to getting something done for your constituents,” he said. Dawson said when he served in the Legislature, Republicans had the majority in the House, Democrats in the Senate. “And they worked together in a bipartisan way to actually fix some things,” he said. “We expanded health care coverage to 150,000 Iowans, we passed the property tax reform bill that cut property taxes on businesses. Whether you’re a small business or a big business, we tried to reduce burdens on businesses in Iowa. “That’s really what my campaign tour is about. It’s about balance and accountability. So, yes, we need to hold people accountable when they’re not following the law, and we need to bring balance to government.... There are some good ideas that Republicans have, there are some good ideas that Democrats have, and let’s work together and try to solve the problems instead of just playing partisan games where you don’t get anything done. That’s why I think I would be the best candidate for the 4th District Congress because I have that experience of working together to get things done, and I’m not just going to be a rubber stamp for my party. I’m going to listen to anybody who wants to talk to me about their issues.”