Iowa Dem pastor-lawmaker wants to help the wounded and ‘fix the road’ in 2nd Congressional District
By Mike Mendenhall
The Iowa Mercury
Iowa State Rep. Lindsay James is on a growing list in Iowa and nationally of Democrats who are also clergy running for elected office in Washington D.C.
Maybe the most well known is Texas State Rep. James Talarico who’s making a bid for the U.S. Senate.
In Iowa, there are a trio of pastors representing the trend – James, a Presbyterian minister and one of three Democrats trying to secure the party’s nomination in the race for Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District; one of her opponents in that race, Clint Twedt-Ball; and Lutheran Rev. Sarah Trone Garriott who’s running for Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District.
James tells The Iowa Mercury on Wednesday that her call to run for Congress can be explained by the parable of the Good Samaritan from the Gospel of Luke, specifically, interpreted by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
“He said that as people of faith we’re not only just called to help pick up the person who’s hurting on the side of the road. We’re also called to fix the road,” James, four-term state lawmaker from Dubuque, said. “Because that road was notorious for being a dangerous road where people were taken advantage of and exploited and hurt.”
“What I love about King’s (interpretation) is that there’s not just a call to help our neighbor. There’s a call to fixing the realities causing our neighbors harm in the first place,” she said. “…It’s a call to fix systemic problems in our country.”
State of the race
James will face Twedt-Ball and retired Army nurse and former Kirkwood Community College Dean of Nursing Kathy Dolter in the June 2 Democratic primary.
The race was blown wide open last September when incumbent Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson, who’s held the seat since 2020, announced she would instead run for the U.S. Senate seat in a bid to replace retiring Sen. Joni Ernst.
Two Republicans – property developer and former state lawmaker Joe Mitchell; retired police officer and State Sen. Charlie McClintock – are in their own primary fight.
Farmer and folk musician Dave Bushaw is running for the seat as an independent.
James on Iran
James’s faith helps inform her positions on defense policy and events like the U.S. current military actions in Iran, she said.
She sees the Trump administration’s bombing campaign in the Middle Eastern country as a “real quagmire,” and predicts it will have “devastating” long-term economic impact for the country in addition to a moral cost.
“We are living in a world where we’re all neighbors with one another, and we need to do everything that we possibly can to exercise as many diplomatic efforts as possible to prevent things like a forever war,” James said. “And President Trump broke his promise to Americans when he said no more forever wars.”
She says ongoing conversations about Social Security shortfalls, health-care costs and an unaffordable housing market should not be supplanted by a $200 billion ask by the White House to fund the war.
Affordability agenda
Like many Democrats this election cycle, James is talking about affordability on the campaign trail – the increasing costs of living for things like spiking gas prices from the war in Iran, and groceries.
But it was the nearly $1 trillion to Medicaid in Trump and Congressional Republicans’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” allowing the Affordable Care Act subsidies to expire, and other health care cuts that James said pushed her attention toward a seat in D.C.
“People are one health care bill away from making really impossible choices with their lives,” she said. “...Prescription drug prices, we can reduce the cost of those, hold (pharmacy benefits managers) accountable, reduce or cap the cost of insulin, and then invest in rural health care funding instead of taking it away.”
James is critical of Trump’s use of tariffs and congressional willingness to allow the policy that she says caused “so much turmoil” for Iowa farmers.
“We need to have a very serious conversation about tariffs, opening new markets, and making sure farmers have the resources they need to feed the world,” she said.
“Tariffs are an economic tool that we can use to drive business back to the states, which is always the goal. But they have to be used thoughtfully and well. The Trump administration is not doing that, and Congress is absolutely failing at their job when it comes to holding him accountable for the policies that he’s putting forward.”
Water quality and the Farm Bill
According to James, the federal government should play a role in funding solutions for Iowa’s struggling water quality – which a recent study by the Iowa Environment Council and Harkin Institute for Public Policy linked to the state’s highest-in-the- nation cancer rates.
She says people in power are placing the blame for Iowa’s cancer crisis on the personal behaviors of Iowans.
“They’re putting the emphasis on the fact that personal choices and behaviors are causing the cancer crisis – drinking alcohol, obesity, smoking,” James said.
“And while those are scientific and evidence-based factors in cancer, if those were the only factors, we would look like every other midwestern state or every other state in the county. We do not. We have disproportionately high rates of cancer in this state. … It is our responsibility to determine what is causing that.”
She said studies on the environmental factors leading to Iowa’s cancer rates need to be fully funded – one being water quality monitoring systems.
The Farm Bill, which funds federal food, agriculture and conservation programs, could be a vehicle to fund agriculture-related water quality efforts, James said.
The 2026, five-year Farm Bill has been delayed for months and has not moved since the House Agricultural Committee voted 34-17 to advance the legislation on March 5.
She said there should be more federal investments in wetlands and prairie restorations and cover crops that could reduce farm runoff into Iowa waterways.
“We can’t wait another 10 years to have another farm bill,” James said. “... There are a number of strategies that we can subsidize in order to help our farmers make our operations work and protect our soil and water quality.”
Is the seat winnable for Democrats?
Iowa’s 2nd Congressional district is one of a slew of U.S. House races the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and other national Democratic groups are targeting to flip in the 2026 election.
The last time a Democrat was elected to the seat was 2018 when it was Iowa’s 1st congressional district before redistricting. It was carried by former U.S. Rep. Abby Fiinkenauer who lost to Hinson in 2020.
James sees the seat as gettable for the Democrats linked to voter frustration with the current GOP majority in Congress.
“We’ve seen incredible swings in special elections throughout the state,” she said. “Really, I’m hearing over and over again at people’s doors, in conversations I’m having at the Iowa Legislature, at church potlucks with my neighbors, that people are exhausted by politics and they just want a leader who has the courage of conviction to do what’s right by everyday families.”
Even if the Democrats win the U.S. House majority, the Democrats will still have Trump in the White House for two more years with his veto pen. That would make getting legislation passed difficult.
James says her time navigating a GOP trifecta at the Iowa Capitol makes her suited for the U.S. House.
“I am not unfamiliar with challenging work environments,” she said. “And because there’s so much at stake right now in our country, whether that has to do with affordable health care, affordable housing, affordable childcare, there are really important policies that we can keep pushing on day one when we get there … that address those realities in Iowa right away.”
About The Author
(Mike Mendenhall is a regular contributor to The Iowa Mercury. Mendenhall is a 15-year journalist, editor and reporter working in Florida and Iowa. A native of Des Moines’ Eastside and a graduate of the University of Iowa School of Journalism and Mass Communications, Mike is a former associate editor of the Des Moines Business Record and past editor in chief of the Newton Daily News. He covers city and state government in Jacksonville, Florida, and has worked for private and public media outlets.)
ABOUT THE IOWA MERCURY
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Thank you for the straightforward reporting on an excellent candidate to represent IA-02. Lindsay’s clear, no nonsense answers are indicative of the type of Representative she will be.
I appreciate the questions by the writer and clear answers by Lindsay. Her unequivocal answers are polestars for other candidates.