State candidates get in front of county voters

FORT MADISON – What was supposed to be a night of spirited debate along partisan lines to allow voters to fine tune preferences, turned into two separate events along partisan lines at two different locations.
A state candidate forum scheduled a month ago at the Lee County Career Advantage Center and sponsored by Mississippi Valley Media, Pen City Current, and the League of Women Voters went on as scheduled Thursday night.
Candidate Jim Beres, a Democrat who’s challenging Matt Rinker for the 99^th House District, and Nannette Griffin, the Democratic challenger to State Sen. Jeff Reichman (50^th District), met without challengers, but with about 60 people at the center, while another 25 watched online.
Meanwhile, the Republican incumbents in the upcoming election put together a late forum of their own Thursday night at the same time as the sponsored forum. Reichman, Rinker, and State Rep. Martin Graber (R-House District 100) all met at Turnwater Bar and Grill in a moderated forum, also without challengers.
At what amounted to a Democrat forum, with the exception of candidate Nic Atwood, who is challenging Graber’s seat and declined to attend, Beres and Griffin fielded questions as RadioKeokuk’s Mike Greenwald moderated the event.
As it turned out, the questions posed at the two different forums were markedly different.
However, one issue, abortion, was addressed at both forums.
All candidates responded to questions about abortion. Reichman said the country is seeing fringe left groups celebrating abortions.
“Abortion should be seldom and safe and not a means of birth control. We did the heartbeat bill for that reason. We’re all created in God's likeness and we should keep that in mind,” he said.
Graber said 98% of abortions done have nothing to do with rape or incest.
“It’s not about that, it’s about choice,” he said.
Rinker said he spent weeks studying the heartbeat bill, talking with physicans, Planned Parenthood, conservatives, and liberals.
“What it comes down to is that, as legislators, we have a responsibility to have a voice for people who don’t have one and that includes the fetus,” he said. “Whatever conversation we engage in has to include the health of the mother, but it also has to involve the fetus.”
Beres, an attorney in southeast Iowa, said the state ranks dead bottom in OB/Gyn care per capita in the United States.
“I don’t know a good way to address that but other than say maybe more subsidized clinics or provide internships in Iowa to attract more,” he said. “What you don’t want to do is pass a six-week abortion ban and put liability on the shoulders of OB/Gyns for making the wrong decisions.”
Griffin said as an adopted child, she probably wouldn’t choose abortion, but said the government has no standing there.
“All my life I’ve said I’m adopted and I may not make that choice. But it’s not up to me to tell another woman what to do with their choice. Our mortality rates for infants is up to almost 30%. In this day and age that’s unacceptable. There are consequences to this law that was just passed.”
“I’m for fighting for women’s rights to make their own decision and keeping government out of the doctor’s office.”
Another topic was public education.
Beres said Governor Reynolds is not serious about supporting public schools. He said she’s going to spend $200 million on a program to give money to private schoos.
“That won’t make public classrooms any smaller. It’s not going to give them an opportunity to buy more books or computers. It takes money from public schools and gives it to a school system that is completely unaccountable to you,” Beres said.
“We need a governor who’s serious about public education and values it as much as we do.”
Griffin said it’s not the vouchers that are the issue. She said there isn’t a level playing field as far as transparency and public schools having to accept every student.”
“I’m not against private schools. I went to one and my grandchildren went to one. If they’re going to use public funds, they need to be transparent with their school board, financials, and be required to accept everyone and not pick and choose.”
She also said that open enrollment should require all dollars to follow the student and not just partially following the student, which she indicated was about $1,200 in student aid that stays with the district school.
Both Griffin and Beres said they had not been in a public school setting in more than a year.
Rinker said the federal government opened the spigot on public dollars going to private schools when they allowed Pell Grant dollars to go to private universities about 15 years ago.
“19 billion is going into private colleges and any conversation around this has to include all the public education dollars,” he said.
“In my district, everybody won. Private schools won because they were able to get more support, and my public schools won because, for example, Burlington walked away with ¾ of a million that they didn’t have before.”
Graber repeated his analysis that the last time education funding was cut was under Democratic Governor Chet Culver.
“Since the Republicans have been in control, we have increased funding. We are not underfunding education. But we need to take a hard look at how that money’s being spent.”
The rest of the two forums appeared to be in stark contrast to one another.
Republicans talked about the situation on legislation that limited what books can be accessed at public schools, but stopped short of calling it book banning.
Reichman said people can get whatever books they want on Amazon, but legislators took a stand on how taxpayer money is spent on books. They also talked about immigration and Graber said the country, including Lee County itself, is seeing an influx of illegal immigrants who have no right to be here.
Reichman told the audience at Turnwater that he was most proud of his role in getting legislation passed to allow rural emergency hospitals to open in the state with reduced footprints. He said if elected next year, he wants to focus on, among other things, ticket gouging again and stopping bots from driving up the prices of in-state ticket prices for Iowans to attend events.
Graber said the state still needs to do more to get mental health regionalized in the state.
“We’ve worked on that and there’s a plan in the works that will put mental health care districts out there to get that service closer to home,” he said.
He said he’s proud of the work he’s done to improve returns on investments in the Veteran’s Fund. If elected, Graber wants to zoom in on property taxes again. He said he realizes that property taxes impact cities, counties, and schools, and tinkering with the property tax “is hurting someone else’s money”.
“Our goal is to do something about your taxes that won’t hurt the support system. At the state, we need to watch out for the person who owns the property.”
Rinker was most proud of his work on increasing penalties for felons committing crimes with firearms. He said his last proposed legislation lost due to running out of time in the funnel, but he said support is strong for the bill that would increase mandatory jail times for repeat offenders. Reichman said he’d like to help get that bill across the finish line.
He said a Veterans omnibus package would be top priority if re-elected.
Griffin and Beres discussed the decreasing number of nursing homes in the state.
They both agreed that the state needs more inspectors and more frequency on site.
“My mother is in a nursing home and she’s been well taken care of, but we don’t have enough investigators to make sure those residents are taken care of,” she said. “Our state has a surplus and we need to start spending that money on those areas.”
Beres said inspections have been underfunded for years and the state needs to correct that.
Griffin said the state needs to be more active in supporting working parents so they can afford childcare. She said with increased income would come additional childcare slots.
“We need to help workers get back to work and, if that means helping with child care, then that’s what we need to do,” she said.
Beres said the state needs to open tax credits to child care centers.
“We need to be prepared to also extend tax credits to parents to utilize those care centers and to consider subsidies to families that still can’t afford child care.”
They spoke about Iowa’s water quality. Beres said this past summer many of Iowa’s beaches were inaccessible due to poor quality and the cancer rates in Iowa are unexplainable.
“We need to sit down and call in the best advisors we can get, and sit with farmers and Farm Bureau, and work on the solution. Right now we’re doing nothing. We’re not even talking about it.”
Griffin said in her lifetime Geode has been drained twice due to farm drainage. She said buffers on farm property could help with the problem. She said large farm operations or cooperations don’t respect the land like family farms do.
The forums continue next Thursday with seven of the eight candidates for Lee County Supervisor joining at the Career Advantage Center in Montrose at 6 p.m. for a two-hour conversation with Fort Madison Partners' Executive Director Tim Gobble moderating.