On the road: Scholten stops at The Mill ahead of June primary

With nothing but the open highway in front of him, a massive RV nicknamed “Sioux City Sue” and an expansive district sprawling from Inwood to New Hampton to cover, Democratic congressional candidate J.D. Scholten is doing everything he can to reach as many voters as possible before the June 5 primary. Last Monday, the bus stopped at The Mill, allowing the former minor league baseball player to meet with prospective constituents along with his friend Tracy Freese, a state senate candidate from Dike.
           
A freelance paralegal who moved back to his native western Iowa from Seattle last year, the Democrat sees himself as the only challenger with a realistic chance at taking down Steve King, the outspoken and often inflammatory eight-term congressman first elected in 2002. With a plethora of issues currently facing the country, Scholten firmly believes that it all starts with campaign finance reform.
           
“I’m passionate about the economy. I’m passionate about agriculture, and I’m passionate about a clean environment,” he said. “But one thing that’s a common denominator is that if we don’t get money out of politics, we don’t clean up a lot of those things. It’s not just talking the talk. It’s walking the walk.”
           
Thus far, Scholten has refused corporate donations and has received over 6,000 individual contributions totaling about $500,000. He noted that eradicating the influence of lobbyists and political action committees (PACs) is one of the only ideas he and his Trump-supporting, gun-owning neighbor in Sioux City can agree on.
           
At 38, Scholten is considerably younger than the 69-year-old King or his two primary opponents—55-year-old Spencer businesswoman LeAnn Jacobsen and 57-year-old Ames pediatrician John Paschen—and he hopes that a new generation of leaders can bring fresh ideas to Washington, D.C. He even half-jokingly argued in favor of forcing elected officials to either introduce bills that get signed into law or leave their seats after a specified time period.
           
“The average person in Congress is 58 years old with a net worth of a million dollars, and I’m 20 years younger and just shy of a million dollars poorer,” Scholten said. 
 
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