Iowa State House District 64 encompasses all of Allamakee and Clayton counties, as well as one precinct in Dubuque County. Incumbent Jason Gearhart, a Republican, is seeking a second term representing the district, and will face Democrat Brian Bruening in the Nov. 3 general election. The candidates recently shared their thoughts about key issues with The Guttenberg Press and Times-Register editor Audrey Posten. Visit elections.claytoncountyia.gov/ for more info on candidates and when and where to vote.
Brian Bruening
Brian Bruening has owned and operated Schera’s Algerian Restaurant in Elkader for the last 20 years alongside his husband Frederic. “As a small business owner, I have worked hard to bring folks from around the region and the country to Clayton County to eat at Schera’s, but to also stay at a local bed and breakfast, get coffee at the local coffee shop, and visit the shops on Main Street. I have seen firsthand how success for one business in a small town like Elkader is really dependent on the success of the other businesses around me,” he said.
Why are you running for office?
I am running for office because folks in this district are tired of 10 years of total Republican control of our state government—governor, State House and State Senate. Under their watch, Iowa’s economy has sunk to the worst in the country, cancer has risen to number two and our schools have dropped from number one when I was a kid here in Iowa, to 27. The state is spending over $330 million on private school vouchers this year, of which nearly 80% of recipients were already set to go to private school with or without the voucher. They lowered income taxes for corporations and the wealthiest Iowans and left the state budget in shambles, running a $1.5 billion deficit each of the last two years. How does HyVee getting a huge tax cut while we pay more and more at the grocery store make any sense? The myth about Republicans is that they are a fiscally conservative party, but the reality is their leadership has run Iowa into the ground. Iowa needs a new direction and that’s why I’m running.
Water quality is a key issue for many Iowa voters. What measures will you support to protect/improve the water Iowans drink and recreate in?
Improving the water quality of Iowa in general and Northeast Iowa in particular has been a top campaign issue for me since the first time I ran for office two cycles ago. This issue is particularly relevant for our area, as Northeast Iowa has some of the best streams and rivers and our economic health depends on maintaining and protecting them. Whether through fishing, canoeing or the many other water-based activities, having clean water is not just an environmental and health issues: it is a vital economic issue for us as well. That said, our current system of protecting water through the Department of Natural Resources is weak and ineffective. The Legislature needs to make several immediate moves to address this issue. Penalties for offenders must be made commiserate with the damage caused, no more $8,000 fines for killing all the life in a river or stream. These penalties, in addition to paying for clean up and mitigation measures, can go toward hiring more people at the DNR to enforce and investigate issues. We need robust programs for farmers to put nitrate reduction into practice through state assistance alongside making these measures mandatory.
What are your economic priorities to help northeast Iowa be a place where people want to stay or relocate to?
Nearly every other question you asked relates to this: how do we create a place where people want to live and raise a family. We can’t be that if our waters are poisoned. We can’t be that if our hospitals and schools are closing. We definitely can’t do that if we give billionaires and corporations free range to build data centers or CO2 pipelines anywhere they want in the state. People want good jobs, but they also want a clean environment, good schools and reliable healthcare. Until we address these statewide issues, it will be hard for rural areas like ours to get ahead economically.
That said, we have had successes in our district through programs that support the creation of small businesses. There are a lot of really creative folks out there doing really creative things, and we should continue to support them through local and state programs. What we shouldn’t do are great big boondoggles like the recent $1.4 billion giveaway to Mesabi Metallics that our local Republican representatives voted for. There is a promise of creating good jobs, but with what the Legislature promised to the company, each job will cost us, the taxpayers, $770,000! From where I stand, I know a lot of folks in Allamakee and Clayton counties who could do amazing things with that kind of investment that would benefit local communities instead of overseas investors.
How will you advocate for rural school districts to receive the support they need when it comes to education funding and legislation?
As it currently stands, schools have gotten about a 2% funding increase over the last few years, an amount that doesn’t come close to meeting the cost of inflation. Plus the gutting of the AEA has hit rural schools the hardest. So in effect, the Legislature has been starving our rural school districts for the last 10 years, while giving private schools a taxpayer-funded windfall over nearly $1 billion over the last three years. We need a change of focus in the state house to keep rural schools healthy and great places to learn. Instead of yet another bill targeting the roughly 300 trans kids in Iowa, we need someone in Des Moines who focuses on the other 99.9994% of school kids who are struggling with underfunded programs and crumbling buildings.
How do you view the state of health care in Iowa? What area(s) would you focus on and why?
Like most other sectors in rural Iowa, healthcare and hospitals have taken a real beating in the last 10 years. The Big Beautiful Bill, the full effects of which have yet to take full effect, slashed Medicaid funding that many rural hospitals and nursing homes depend on to stay solvent and care for lower-income folks. Top this with a privatized Medicaid system in Iowa that has cost more and driven worse outcomes than the state-run program, and you have a recipe for a health disaster in this district. First and foremost, we must end the disastrous privatized Medicaid system and return to a state-run program with actual checks on how tax-payer funds are utilized. Gubernatorial candidate Rob Sand said this would be a top priority for his administration, and in the legislature I will work with him to make it happen.
How will you support northeast Iowa farmers and the agricultural economy?
Iowa farmers have experienced the worst farm economy over the few years in a generation. And with the war of choice in Iran spiking diesel and fertilizer costs, there doesn’t seem like an end in sight. When I was a kid growing up on a farm in Chickasaw County, my parents raised a wide variety of products: corn, beans, oat, alfalfa, hogs and beef cattle. They were still dependent on markets of course, but diversifying their output, they had some cushion if one thing or another dropped. We need to help farmers break out of the two-crop cycle. There is a shortage of beef cattle in the U.S. currently and this seems like a key opportunity for farmers to expand operations into a potentially lucrative area. We should work through already existing frameworks such as the county extensions to help farmers expand into this area.
The cost of farmland has been and remains a huge impediment for young and non-legacy farmers to get into the industry. Currently, the state has a program that was meant to alleviate this problem, but after years in action, the program has mainly served as a cheap way for retiring farmers to pass their land on to family. This wasn’t the intent of the program and it needs to be reconsidered. In addition, the state should support local farmers who produce actual food for Iowans. Bolstering the local food to schools program not only helps local farmers, but gives our school kids nutritious food to eat.
Jason Gearhart
Jason Gearhart is married to Kayela, a fourth grade teacher at Starmont, and they have two kids, Jayden and Kendyl, who are both in high school. He grew up on a farm where he said “your word and a handshake meant something. We may disagree on an issue, but I’m going to give you my honest opinion, and not a bunch of fluff I think you want to hear.”
Gearhart is an Army veteran and served five years as a military police officer and investigator. He has also served on the Strawberry Point City Council, Starmont School Board, Chamber of Commerce Board and the Jr. Stars Athletic Board, in addition to coaching youth boys and middle school girls basketball for the last eight years.
For his full-time job, Gearhart works for the Iowa DNR as an environmental specialist, inspecting wastewater plants and landfills and investigating environmental complaints, fish kills and other issues. He said his experiences in life, public service, the military and career have given him the tools to be successful representing northeast Iowa in Des Moines.
Why are you running for re-election?
The short answer is that there is still a lot of work to be done.
During my first term, I was fortunate to vote on many bills that help everyday Iowans—bills supporting law enforcement, farmers, our schools and working families. We passed legislation allowing Iowans to keep more of their own money through no state tax on tips or overtime, and we continued working on property tax reform.
I’m especially proud to have authored the pediatric cancer research bill. That proposal was eventually attached to another bill and passed into law, providing $3 million annually to the University of Iowa Stead Family Children’s Hospital for pediatric cancer research.
I’m proud of what we accomplished, but there is plenty more I want to get done.
Water quality is a key issue for many Iowa voters. What measures will you support to protect/improve the water Iowans drink and recreate in?
Clean water is important to everyone.
Too often, people want to blame only farmers for the water-quality problems we face. But the issue is much bigger than that. From Sept. 20-23, a single wastewater plant in Iowa bypassed roughly 40 million gallons of untreated wastewater into a river because it received more rain in a short period than it could store and treat. One plant. Three days. Forty million gallons. And other plants around the state were bypassing for the same reason.
I authored a buffer strip bill aimed at improving water quality. I also wrote an aquifer monitoring bill that would give the Iowa Geological Survey access to more wells and better data so we actually know how much water is in our underground aquifers.
We also provided historic funding this year for water-quality initiatives, including $25 million for a nitrate-removal facility in central Iowa.
We need to look at the entire picture: agriculture, wastewater infrastructure, drinking water, groundwater and conservation, rather than pretending there is only one source or one solution.
What are your economic priorities to help northeast Iowa be a place where people want to stay or relocate to?
We need jobs. Especially good-paying jobs.
We had a special session on Oct. 2 that will hopefully help pave the way for one of the largest steel mills in the country to locate here in Iowa. Northeast Iowa needs to fight for opportunities like that when they come along.
If we can bring good-paying jobs, we can bring people. When people move here, they buy homes, raise families, shop at local businesses and send their kids to our schools. That helps our towns, our businesses, our schools, and the entire region. We need to make northeast Iowa a place where young people can build a career and a family without feeling like they have to leave to find opportunity.
How will you advocate for rural school districts to receive the support they need when it comes to education funding and legislation?
The same way I have for the last two years. Iowa will invest nearly $4 billion into public education this year, another historic high. At the same time, simply spending more money every year cannot be the only measure of whether we are succeeding. We should expect good outcomes for our students.
My wife is a public school teacher. My kids attend public school. I’m a product of Iowa’s public education system, and I served on the Starmont School Board before being elected to the Legislature. I strongly believe we can do better.
One thing I hear from teachers is that they need room to actually teach. Teachers who want to go deeper into a subject, try something different or make learning more exciting for their students should have the flexibility to do that instead of being locked into rigid lesson plans every minute of the day.
We should support our schools while also giving good teachers the freedom to do what they do best, educate kids.
How do you view the state of health care in Iowa? What area(s) would you focus on and why?
I live in Strawberry Point, a very rural part of the state, and I’m fortunate to have access to health care in my community, including several clinics and three separate hospitals within about a 20-minute drive. Not every rural Iowan can say that.
We are seeing some rural hospitals close their OB units. While that is unfortunate, there are real reasons behind those decisions. I’ve talked directly with hospital administrators because I like to understand the issue before forming an opinion. When a hospital is delivering only a small number of babies each year, maintaining a full OB department can become extremely expensive, and low delivery volumes can also create additional risks and significantly increase malpractice insurance costs.
As our rural communities continue to decline in population, it is reasonable to believe people may sometimes have to travel farther for specialized care.
Our focus should be on keeping strong hospitals, clinics, emergency services and basic health care available in rural Iowa while recognizing that every specialized service may not be available in every small community.
How will you support northeast Iowa farmers and the agricultural economy?
By continuing to pass common-sense legislation that lets farmers farm.
This year, the Iowa House passed right-to-repair legislation that would give farmers more ability to work on their own tractors and equipment, because if you own it, you ought to be able to fix it. Unfortunately, that bill stalled in the Senate, so there is still work to do on that issue.
The governor also recently signed a proclamation allowing farmers and agricultural haulers to use dyed diesel through February in qualifying trucks and semis when hauling grain and other approved agricultural products, helping reduce costs during harvest and beyond.
Agriculture is personal to me. I grew up on a farm, and while I still try to help when I can, I don’t have the time to be there as much as I once did.
I hope someday to continue the farming legacy started by my great-great-grandfather here in Iowa. A legacy passed down through my great-grandpa, grandpa and dad. They taught each generation how to work the land and, just as importantly, how to be a good steward of it so it is there for the next generation.
I want Iowa agriculture to remain strong enough that the next generation has that same opportunity.
