As this election season is officially underway, Iowa Gun Owners will be hammering on gun grabbing politicians as hard as we possibly can.
As they seek to run from their record of supporting radical gun control, they are going to be confronted by the truth as Iowa Gun Owners floods targeted districts with mail, email, radio ads, social media, and more!
They need to pay a price for their attacks on our gun rights, and we’ll make sure that they do.
But equally important is making sure you know about some of the solidly pro-gun candidates that are running this year, some for the first time and some as they seek re-election.
As a 501c4, Iowa Gun Owners does not and cannot endorse or oppose candidates, and we don’t expressly advocate for or against them either.
Our job is to advocate for the 2nd Amendment and to get the word out about where the candidates stand on this issue.
That said, you are certainly free to aid these pro-gun candidates any way you choose to, and I would encourage you to do so.
(Please note that we’re not covering every race in this email. Some incumbents are not facing opposition, while others have not answered their candidate survey meaning we have no information to provide.)
Incumbents Seeking Reelection:
*** In Senate District 2 (Sioux, Obrien, and Cherokee county,) pro-gun Senator Randy Feenstra is running for re-election.
Feenstra, who is unopposed, has signed his candidate survey 100% pro-gun and has pledged to lead in this fight by promising to sponsor Stand-Your-Ground and Constitutional Carry legislation!
*** In Senate District 4 (Emmet, Kossuth, Winnebago, Hancock and Wright county,) Iowa Gun Owners member Senator Dennis Guth is looking to return to the Iowa Senate.
Guth, an early supporter of Stand-Your-Ground law during the 2015-2016 session, has pledged to lead in the gun rights fight by promising to sponsor Stand-Your-Ground legislation if sent back to Des Moines by gun owners in his district.
Running against Guth is hard-core anti-gunner Susan Bangert.
Now, gun owners in this district know all about Ms. Bangert as she ran against pro-gun champion Tom Shaw for the vacant House District 10 seat in the 2010 election cycle.
Bangert, who was loudly telling people that Iowa Gun Owners and our members were an extremist group calling for acts of violence against the government, was crushed by gun owners in that race by a nearly 2 to 1 margin!
Apparently it’s not good politics to attack gun owners while seeking office in North Central Iowa! We look forward to introducing Bangert’s extreme views to the voters in Senate District 4!
*** In Senate District 10 (covering most of Dallas, Guthrie and Adair counties,) pro-gun Senator Jake Chapman is seeking reelection.
His opponent consistently refuses to sign our candidate survey, which Chapman has already returned to our office with 100% pro-gun replies.
More, Senator Chapman was a leading co-sponsor of SF137, Stand-Your-Ground law here in Iowa, over the last couple of years!
*** In Senate District 28 (Clayton, Allamakee and portions of Fayette and Winneshiek county,) Senator Michael Breitbach has surveyed 100% pro-gun and was a cosponsor of both Stand-Your-Ground and Constitutional Carry law!
Running against Senator Breitbach is Jan Heikes. Heikes, despite our best efforts to get her to answer our survey, has consistently refused to tell us how she would vote on a host of gun related legislation.
Oftentimes in our experience, when a candidate won’t tell us where they stand on our gun rights, it’s a bad sign — as they virtually always back gun-control once in office.
Pro-Gun Challengers:
*** In Senate District 8 (Pottawattamie county,) Republican Dan Dawson is running against the Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal.
Dawson has surveyed 100% in support of your gun rights in our candidate survey, including the badly needed Stand-Your-Ground legislation!
Senator Gronstal is no newcomer to IGO members.
Gronstal is well known for voting against Constitutional Carry, voting down legislation that would ensure Iowa’s college and university security staff members are armed and able to defend our students, leading the charge to kill Stand-Your-Ground law this year that was 2 votes short of passage, and more!
*** In Senate District 26 (Worth, Mitchell, Howard, Floyd, Chickasaw, and portions of Winneshiek and Cerro Gordo counties,) Waylon Brown has also signed his gun rights candidate survey 100% in support of your gun rights!
This means he supports pro-gun legislation and opposes universal background checks and database schemes that endanger gun owners’ privacy.
Senator Mary Jo Wilhelm, on the other hand, voted against Constitutional Carry in the Senate and used her position as assistant majority leader to ensure that her caucus killed Stand-Your-Ground law this year when it was just 2 votes short of passage.
Senator Wilhelm is also refusing to answer her candidate survey this time around, leaving us confident she’ll continue attacking our gun rights if sent back to Des Moines.
*** In Senate District 30 (portions of Blackhawk county,) pro-gun candidate Bonnie Sadler is running against Democratic Senator Jeff Danielson.
Sadler has signed her candidate survey 100% pro-gun, promising to sponsor pro-gun legislation if elected!
Lots of candidates promise to vote for pro-gun bills, but Bonnie Sadler has promised to lead this charge!
Danielson, who voted against Constitutional Carry legislation in the Senate, is refusing to answer his gun right candidate survey, meaning that he’s likely to continue his attack on your gun rights if re-elected.
More than that, Danielson is very influential in the Senate Democratic caucus and has reportedly been very active in quashing pro-gun legislation over the past two years.
*** In Senate District 34 (Cedar Rapids area) Rene Gadelha has surveyed 100% pro-gun as well. Incumbent Liz Mathis has refused her survey and has marched in lock-step with the anti-gun Senate leadership during her time in the Senate.
Specifically, Mathis cosponsored Michael Bloomberg’s signature legislative goal: universal background checks (aka Statewide Firearms Registery) in 2013.
This legislation, SF233, would make Iowa grandfathers FELONS for merely passing down family firearms to their heirs without obtaining government permission first!
*** In Senate District 36 (Marshall and Tama county,) Jeff Edler is the pro-gun candidate who has promised, in writing, to champion Stand-Your-Ground and Constitutional Carry legislation and a host of other pro-gun bills.
These are the very bills that Edler’s opponent, Senator Steve Sodders, has crushed in his Judiciary Committee over the past two years.
Sodders, as you well know, is one of the most aggressive gun-grabbers in Des Moines and as Senate President Pro-Tem, has the power to compel the caucus to fall into line.
Sodders voted against Constitutional Carry legislation, sponsored the bill to create a searchable database of every Iowan with a concealed carry permit, and cosponsored Bloomberg’s “Universal Background Check” legislation!
Can You Help?
Having read this email and by being a supporter of Iowa Gun Owners over the years, you know who’s ‘good on guns’ here in Iowa and who is not.
But what about your friends at work, or your buddies at the range, and how about your larger family?
That’s where we come in!
We’re educating Iowans with targeted direct mail, mass email deployments, radio ads, house-to-house literature drops, TV ads — everything but my kitchen sink — during this election season!
But as much as we’ve done in the early voting phase of this cycle, we have much more to do as we finalize plans for the last two weeks of October!
And I need your help to run this program.
Every penny you provide is hammering a gun-grabber here in Iowa.
Every penny helps us expose them and hold the line against further attacks on our freedoms, and every legislator in the state will be reminded that you and I are always ready to defend our 2nd Amendment rights!
For others, I know that $20 represents a sacrificial gift.
Whatever you can do, I need you to do it right now.
With $50 I can deploy over 100 pieces of targeted direct mail to gun owners in Sodders’ district.
With $500 I can book at least a dozen radio ads to run in Council Bluffs, so gun owners and everyone else learns the truth about Senator Mike Gronstal’s support of gun control!
With just $20, I can ensure that at least 5,000 gun owners see our sponsored Facebook post in Waverly, Oelwein, and Independence, where anti-gun Senator Brian Schoenjahn is trying to fool gun owners into believing that he’s pro-gun.
We can reminded everyone that Senator Mary Jo-Wilhelm voted against Constitutional Carry and continues to leave women in Iowa vulnerable to attack by blocking advancement of Iowa’s Stand-Your-Ground legislation!
You see, whatever you can do, be it big or modest, will go directly into this fight!
Whatever you do, please make sure that all of your pro-gun friends and family see this information so they can have the facts when trying to make important decisions, especially now that early voting is officially underway!
Thank you, in advance, for whatever you can do to help us expose gun grabbers here in Iowa!
For Freedom,
Aaron Dorr
Executive Director
P.S. Iowa Gun Owners has been busy meeting with and surveying candidates as we get into the heart of the 2016 election cycle.
Some of the results of that survey is above.
Please make sure your pro-gun friends and family know which candidates are willing to fight for the 2nd Amendment — and which ones are desperately running from their support of gun control as we are now in the early voting phase of this election season!
We need to educate many more gun owners about where these candidates stand.
Iowa Gun Owners has the plan in place to do that using mail, email, social media, TV and radio ads, and more.