Attorney General Brenna Bird said Iowa voters have a “big choice” before them in November as she spoke to supporters at the Des Moines Register Political Soapbox.
Bird, who first took office in 2023, is running for a second term against Nate Willems, a Democratic labor lawyer and former state legislator.
Here’s what she said on Monday, Aug. 17:
First-term touts: Cold Case unit, fighting scams
In her remarks, Bird touted several accomplishments of her tenure, including opposing transgender women participating in womens’ athletics and being the first state to bring fraud lawsuits against crypto ATM companies, one of which has since declared bankruptcy.
“Nothing makes me madder than seeing good-hearted Iowans cheated out of their money by evil scammers, so we take them right on,” she said.
She also pointed to her office’s establishment of a Cold Case unit, which has begun producing convictions; several lawsuits challenging what she described as “woke mandates” in other states, and her support for a new law to increase the penalties for assaults on law enforcement.
Bird hits Democrat on ‘stand your ground,’ voter ID
Bird knocked Iowa Democratic candidates generally, saying “they don’t seem very proud of our country sometimes.” Against Willems individually, she had two complaints, the first being that as a legislator, he opposed Iowa’s “stand your ground” personal defense law in 2017, which she said was “just basic common sense, basic Second Amendment.” She also faulted him for opposing Iowa’s 2017 voter ID law.
“I can’t understand that. I would think everybody should be for voter ID, whether you’re Republican, Democrat, no party at all,” she said. “We all want to know the people voting are supposed to vote, and they’re just voting once.”
AG defends turning over voter rolls to feds
Responding to media questions after her speech, Bird said she shares concerns voiced in the race for governor about Iowa’s high cancer rates but did not identify any role the Iowa Attorney General’s office plays to address the issue.
She said she supports workers being paid fairly but described it as primarily up to the federal government to enforce wage laws, where Willems has pledged to create a dedicated wage theft task force in his office.
And she declined to say whether her office erred in advising Secretary of State Paul Pate to turn over Iowa voter information to the federal government, despite numerous court rulings holding that other states were correct to refuse turning over their data.
“I believe that both the state and fed government should work together to eliminate illegal voting and do everything we can to eliminate illegal voting in the first place,” she said. “… I think everything we can do to prevent illegal voting, to prevent fraudulent voting, it’s important that we do that, and cooperating with the federal government is a good way to make sure the voter rolls are…
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