Democratic candidates Ashley WolfTornabane, who’s running for Iowa’s 4th Congressional District, and Cynthia Paschen, who’s running for Iowa’s State House District 55, held a town hall at 805 Pizza and Chicken in Hampton on Sunday, April 12.
The candidates covered a number of topics, including voting rights, appealing to independent voters and healthcare.
After the town hall, WolfTornabane – a mother of two from Storm Lake and former educator – told RadioOnTheGo News that she has maintained a lifelong interest in politics.
“It’s very important to me that there is someone running in this race that wants to bring Iowans’ voices to Washington,” she said. “Our former candidate was Ryan Melton and he unfortunately had to suspend his campaign in June last year, so I helped look for a candidate and (kept) coming up empty. I launched my campaign on July 4. And then, I started a listening tour, just asking people what issues are most important to them, and that listening tour is ongoing all the time.”
WolfTornabane says the forum Sunday was part of that tour, in which she is holding a town hall in each 4th District county before the June 2 primary election.
She said she started her tour as a way to ask people about their concerns.
“There is a lot that people are worried about and I’m listening to all of it,” she said. “With affordability, the war definitely affects the gas pump and the gas pump affects everything else, because of how transportation costs money. It costs money to bring those groceries to our grocery stores and unfortunately, I think we are going to see our grocery prices go even further because of this war, so it’s really important that we elect people in November, who starting January of next year, will reintroduce some stability into our political climate and prevent these kinds of wars that nobody really expected and nobody really understands why we’re doing it.”
Paschen says she joined the state race to give rural Iowans a voice in Des Moines.
“There’s a lot of Democrats in Des Moines, they’re in the minority. They don’t have the governorship. They don’t have the House. They don’t have the Senate. They’re doing their best to get the issues out there that their constituents are asking them to talk about. And I want to change that because rural Iowans have a lot to say about school vouchers. We don’t have private schools in this district for the most part. I want an end to eminent domain for private gain. That is something that rural Iowans have made very clear that they’re not in favor of Summit Pipeline taking over their farmland.”
WolfTornabane is running against Dave Dawson and Stephanie Steiner for the seat’s Democratic nomination. The district is currently represented by Randy Feenstra, who is now running for Governor. Paschen is running unopposed for the Democratic nomination for the Iowa House District 55 seat.
You can read more about the town hall in the April 15 edition of the Hampton Chronicle.
More will be featured on the Newsmaker program later this week on KLMJ.
Photo: Paschen (seated left) and WolfTornabane (right) answer questions during Sunday’s town hall.
