While Christina Bohannan may not have pulled off a victory against incumbent Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks this time around, her campaign should be a wakeup call for Iowa Democrats.
Bohannan took on the corporations. And it very nearly worked.
Her campaign website calls for putting our Constitution over corporations, rejecting the corrupting influence of special interests, taking on corporate Big Ag and Big Oil giants, and fighting for a country in which people who work hard can rise above corporate greed. Core to her appeal was her willingness to attack incumbent Rep. Miller-Meeks’ cozy relationship with corporate interests.
Example: Bohannan slammed Miller-Meeks’ pocketing $150K in hush money to buy her silence on Koch Industries’ multi-billion dollar monopoly acquisition of a synthetic nitrogen fertilizer plant in the district, and urged antitrust regulators to stop the move.
After an election cycle dominated by oligarch cash, and in a state awash in corporate kickbacks, it has become impossible to ignore the all-powerful corporations playing with our politics. In Iowa, where we are paying for Big Ag corporate domination with our health, economy and environment, Bohannan proved that an anti-corporate message is a popular one.
Just look at the numbers: Bohannan far outperformed Vice President Kamala Harris by more than 15,000 votes. In counties like Scott and Jefferson, where Trump won handily, voters split their ticket to side with Bohannan.
Iowans need leaders willing to take on the corporations ruining our lives—and it’s not hard to see why. We have corporate policymaking to blame for decades of worsening pollution, economic slowing, and even rising cancer rates. While our legislators cash corporate checks, Big Ag is taking over Iowa—and we are losing out.
Corporate agricultural giants have run more than 30,000 family farms out of Iowa, leaving environmental and economic destruction in their wake. Home to more factory farm waste than any other state, over half of Iowa’s assessed waterways are impaired, with the bacteria E. coli, found in animal waste, responsible for the majority. Meanwhile, going back to 1982, Iowa counties with the most hog factory farm development have suffered significant population decline, as well as declines across several economic indicators, including real median household income and total jobs.
Meanwhile, the world’s biggest seed companies are holding farmers hostage to toxic pesticides, linked to our second-in-the-nation cancer rates. Just three companies (Bayer, Corteva, and Syngenta) control more than three quarters of the nation’s seed corn and soybean seed markets. Fully 90 percent of those seeds are genetically modified for use solely alongside their pesticides, forcing farmers to use toxic products like Bayer’s Roundup, whose active ingredient glyphosate is under scrutiny as a probable carcinogen. While glyphosate use skyrockets, Iowa is the only state in the country with rising cancer rates.
Corporate power—and our legislators’ courage to confront it—will take center stage in Iowa’s next state legislative session.
Bayer, the aforementioned seed and chemical giant, is backing a bill that would grant it legal immunity from the health impacts of its pesticide products. And the company is paying off legislators to make it happen. From 2002 to 2018, Monsanto (the original Roundup manufacturer, now a Bayer subsidiary) donated $456,641.95 to state-level politicians. Since 2018, Bayer has chipped in an additional $80,250, taking the total to nearly half a million dollars, according to the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board.
This terrifying bill offers Democrats the opportunity to prove to Iowans that they fight for people, not corporations. While Iowans seek solutions to our high cancer rates, Bayer sees an inconvenient speed bump on its pursuit to profit off mass poisoning. The corporation paid $10 billion in 2020 alone to settle thousands of cancer lawsuits linked to their pesticide products.
Bohannan’s campaign has proved that Iowans are hungry for leaders willing to take on corporate dominance. The opportunity is there for Democrats to take. They must pick up that mantle this session and stop Bayer’s Cancer Gag Act, introduced last year as SF 2412. The time for a popular stand is now.
Jennifer Breon is an Iowa Organizer with the national advocacy group Food & Water Action. She is an IA-01 voter based in Iowa City.
