AAUW Loess Hills Branch members held a successful 2024 Southwest Iowa Candidate Forum October 17 from 6:30 – 8:30 at the Council Bluffs Police Department community room. We invited all twelve Democratic and Republican candidates in House Districts 15, 16,19, 20 and Senate Districts 8 and 10. The candidates responded to the invitation ; House candidates: Benjamin Schauer(D), Candella Foley-Finchem (D), Brent Siegrist (R), and Josh Turek (D) and Senate candidates: Ryan Lee Roenfeld (D) and Steve Gorman (D) Roger Petersen(D) and Dan Dawson(D) were unavailable. David Siek(R) said yes but didn’t attended. The other two Republican candidates didn’t respond dispite several efforts to contact, but to no avail.
We shared topics for questions in the candidate invitation: Voting Rights; Childcare Workforce Shortage; Affordable Housing; Education; Paid Leave; Reproductive Rights; Equal Pay for Equal Work; Rural Economy; and Diversity, Equity, Inclusion. Six members each wrote a topic introduction and question and also read it at the forum with just the question displayed on screens throughout the room.
Each candidate had up to 2 minutes to answer the question. All candidates were compliant.
There were ten minutes at the end for two audience questions which they had written ahead of time and submitted for a Loess Hills member to read.
The event was covered by KMA radio in Shenandoah aired an interview, Iowa Public Radio in Sioux City sent a reporter and aired a report the next day. KETV in Omaha sent a cameraman whose clip was included in the 10:00 news and the morning news. The Council Bluffs Nonpareil printed our press release October 6 and included our forum in an election article. All the area newspapers were provided a press release.
Forty seven constituents attended the forum. Loess Hills Branch will post a video of the forum as well as publicity sites on our website: loess-aauw.org.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DuFfMqs7VmsD-2B_yrEmcxw1910sxD7K/view
https://www.ketv.com/article/iowa-house-senate-candidates-discuss-issues-candidate-forum/62651669