IA-03 Republican Field Rushes to Prove Who’s Most Unelectable and Out-of-Touch with Iowa

Zach Nunn, Nicole Hasso, and Gary Leffler get national attention for “amplifying their fringe views about Jan. 6 and the 2020 election on the campaign trail”

The IA-03 Republican primary field is raising eyebrows and getting national attention as Zach Nunn, Nicole Hasso, and Gary Leffler push each other further to the right in a desperate attempt to pick up traction in their wide open primary.

That was on full display last week as Zach Nunn tried to downplay and whitewash the insurrection, falsely claiming no one had been charged, Nicole Hasso claimed there was “no evidence that any of those people have done anything wrong,” and Gary Leffler admitted he was at the Capitol on January 6th.

As the Daily Beast writes, Nunn, Hasso, and Leffler’s race to the far right is “breaking the mold of swing-district candidates by embracing the GOP base’s fixation on an ever-widening set of 2020 election conspiracies.”

“From supporting total and complete abortion bans to standing with rioters who violently attacked police and our Capitol on January 6, the IA-03 GOP field’s extreme positions will ensure that they’re unelectable come November,” said DCCC spokesperson Elena Kuhn. 

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Daily Beast: Republicans Running in Moderate Districts Still Have Extreme Jan. 6 Views

• Onstage last week at a forum outside of Des Moines, Iowa, three Republican candidates running for Congress took turns weighing in on an issue of great importance to the party base: the Jan. 6 riot.

• State Sen. Zach Nunn argued that the criminal prosecutions of Capitol insurrectionists have been a sham. “We have a Nancy Pelosi committee determined to find someone that they can hang a noose around,” Nunn said.

• Nicole Hasso, a businesswoman, did say “no one is above the law”—but the “lawless” activity she was referring to concerned the 2020 riots over police brutality, not the violent attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

• And Gary Leffler, an activist, told the crowd he was actually at the Capitol on Jan. 6—though, like other candidates, he has insisted he did not go inside the building.

• “Put me in Congress. Put me on that committee,” Leffler said. “And you’re gonna get some real answers to what happened there that day.”

• These three candidates are hardly the only Republicans who are amplifying their fringe views about Jan. 6 and the 2020 election on the campaign trail.

• But Nunn, Hasso, and Leffler aren’t running to be the next Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a MAGA champion of a deep-red district. Instead, they’re running to unseat an incumbent Democrat in one of the most competitive swing seats in the entire country.

• Iowa’s 3rd District, currently represented by second-term Rep. Cindy Axne, is the least Republican district in this state. Donald Trump barely carried it in 2020, by a margin of 0.4 percent.

• It’s the exact kind of district that Republicans need to win if they are to flip control of the House of Representatives this fall. The party’s official House campaign arm has recognized that, and has officially put Nunn and Hasso on the path to their program to support the party’s most promising candidates.

• Typically, both parties seek to recruit the cream of the crop to run in such races—polished candidates who are relatively moderate, generally agreeable, and disciplined enough to stick to the party’s overarching message.

• For Democrats in 2018, that message was health care. This year, Republicans want their message to center on the economy and immigration—and national party leaders believe that the less time GOP candidates spend talking about Jan. 6 and the 2020 election, the better.

• But Iowa’s 3rd District is far from the only race where Republicans are breaking the mold of swing-district candidates by embracing the GOP base’s fixation on an ever-widening set of 2020 election conspiracies.

• In at least nine of the swing districts that are at the top of the GOP’s target list, top recruits and leading candidates have amplified voter fraud conspiracies, denied the outcome of the 2020 election, and touted their own trips to the Capitol on Jan. 6.
  …

• But if the GOP’s nominees in some of the country’s most competitive districts are Jan. 6 truthers and 2020 election deniers, Democrats believe voters will reject them at the polls—and potentially blunt what could be a historically strong election showing by Republicans.

• Jesse Ferguson, a former messaging chief for the House Democratic campaign arm, said when GOP candidates embrace these conspiracies, it sends clear messages to voters.

• “They reveal to voters that they want to overturn elections when they don’t win,” Ferguson said. “And two, that they’re part of a MAGA wing of the Republican Party that no longer looks, and acts, like the Republican Party that many of these voters remember.”
  …

• Axne, whose GOP rivals downplayed and doubted Jan. 6 at a forum last week, has focused intensely on inflation. But she has emphasized her concerns about threats to the democratic process. On the one-year anniversary of Jan. 6, Axne wrote an op-ed in the Des Moines Register defending the effort in Congress to learn more about the attack. A spokesperson for Axne said that it is an issue she regularly discusses with voters.

• Democrats believe there are races where it makes sense to emphasize an opponent’s conspiratorial views and embrace of the Big Lie—and races where other lines of attack might have a greater impact. One operative said a Republican who has a vulnerable voting record on issues like taxes or health care would likely be attacked on those grounds more than any incendiary statements about the 2020 election.

• The most important thing Democrats can do, several strategists believe, is to connect any Republican candidate’s extreme viewpoints on that issue to their broader worldview.

• In some races, Ferguson argued, Democrats could make a case that Republicans are “willing to say anything and do anything to get themselves in power—whether it means overturning your vote or overturning your health care.”

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