Corruption targeted in Wahls’ campaign

GREENFIELD — In a three-day tour of Southwest Iowa, Democratic Senate candidate Zach Wahls visited various small towns, including Greenfield and Creston, to talk about his goal to clean up corruption in federal politics.

“We have to face this corruption head-on,” Wahls said. “That is why we promised on the first day of our campaign that we’re not going to take a dime of money from corporate PACs with these special interests, and we have a three-part plan to clean up the corruption.”

If elected to the U.S. Senate, Wahls said his goal is to get the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, which allows corporations and unions to spend unlimited money on political campaigns, overturned, pass term limits and stop politicians from trading stocks with insider information.

“In Iowa, we know that rotating the crops is good for the soil, you better believe it’s good for our politicians too,” Wahls said.

Wahls, who first announced his plan to run for U.S. Senate June 11, is a two-term member of the Iowa State Senate. First elected in 2018, Wahls represented District 37 in his first term and now represents District 43, both in eastern Iowa.

During his time in the Iowa Senate, Wahls said he’s built a positive reputation.

“I have built a reputation in being able to work in a bipartisan way. My very first year in the legislature back in 2019, we had these out-of-state companies coming into the state of Iowa, buying up these mobile home communities, trailer parks, all over and jacking up the rent 50%, 60%, 70% from one month to the next,” Wahls said. “I went to my Republican colleagues and even though I was just a freshman, had just got there, I was like, look, we may not agree on every issue, but some issues aren’t about left versus right, they’re about right versus wrong, and this is wrong. We’ve got to do something.”

A bipartisan coalition was built and a bill combatting this issue was passed out of the Iowa Senate 48-0. While it was originally assumed the Iowa House would pass the bill with no issues as well, Wahls said it didn’t take long for lobbyists to step in.

“I got a text asking me to go in for a closed-door meeting. I walk into a room and on the other side of the table was the lobbyist for these big companies,” Wahls said. “Sitting next to him while he was smirking at me was State Representative Ashley Hinson, holding our legislation, just kind of shaking her head. For the small price of $1,500, which is what they had given to her most recent campaign, she single-handedly killed our bipartisan bill.”

Along with his pledge to not take corporate money, Wahls said he would always side with his constituents over party lines.

“I have a track record of being willing to stand up to my own party and I’ve paid some prices for it; I’ve got some scars to show for it,” Wahls said. “But for me, if the choice is between party bosses in the establishment and my constituents, I’m siding with my constituents every single day of the week because that’s the job.”

Since starting his campaign, Wahls said it was this corruption and the increasing costs that have been the main issues Iowans have come to him with.

“We have fallen to 48th in personal income, 49th in terms of our overall state GDP, or our overall state output, and if you put those things together, we are dead last in terms of our overall economy, but we’re number one in rising cancer rates,” Wahls said.

He referenced the budget bill passed over the summer, which included cuts for Medicaid and SNAP.

“We were in Montgomery County earlier today and they described Medicaid payments as a ‘salvation’ for rural hospitals across the state,” Wahls said. “They made cuts to food assistance, $320 billion in SNAP, which historically was a key piece of the farm bill coalition that for 80 years was passed and worked on in a bipartisan way.”

Wahls said one of the biggest issues plaguing Iowa farms was a message of “get big or get out” from Washington, D.C.

“We need to completely overhaul how we can support young farmers who are trying to keep the farm going. What we don’t want is, over the next 20 years, for land to start changing hands due to aging land owners, for the big operations to just keep getting bigger,” Wahls said. “While it makes it harder to adopt these land conservation practices, it also means that you have fewer people owning an actual stake in the economic future and we all know that that is the lifeblood of a lot of these small towns and communities.”

Wahls’ original intention was to run against incumbent Joni Ernst, who announced Sept. 2 she would not be seeking re-election.

He is one of four declared Democratic candidates running for U.S. Senate, though there are sure to be more in the future. The primary election for Iowa’s U.S. Senator is June 2, 2026, with the general election to follow Nov. 3. There are four Republican candidates in the race for now, with Ashley Hinson tapped as the favorite.