Opinion: Mike Davis Backs Iowa AG Brenna Bird and Calls Democrat Nate Willems 'Soft on Crime'
The Article III Project's founder says Bird's cold-case unit has won life sentences, and argues her challenger's votes put him out of step with Iowa on crime, guns and immigration.
This is a summary of an opinion column. The views below belong to its author, Mike Davis, not to RightNewsRightNow.
Davis, founder and president of the Article III Project, is an Iowa native and a former staffer for Sen. Chuck Grassley. His column makes a plain argument: Iowa should re-elect Republican Attorney General Brenna Bird and reject her Democratic opponent, Nate Willems.
On Bird, he points to results. A cold-case unit she created took up the 2021 shooting of Ryan Cooper of Traer. Karina Cooper was convicted and is serving life without parole, he writes. He also cites the 1989 disappearance of Barbara Lenz of Woodbine. Davis says Bird's unit charged Robert Davis nearly four decades later, a jury found him guilty and he got 50 years. "That is what a real attorney general looks like," he writes.
On Willems, Davis lists votes. He says the state legislator voted against requiring electronic monitoring of convicted sex offenders, against making Iowa a shall-issue concealed-carry state, against a ban on abortion after 20 weeks, and against voter ID. He also says Willems reposted a D-Day image captioned "A plane full of uniformed antifa, circa 1944," which Davis calls "a moral failure."
Davis adds an immigration point: Bird has filed briefs backing federal immigration enforcement, while Willems has attacked those policies. He warns a Willems win would make Iowa a state "resembling California or Illinois."
His closing contrast is stark: "Bird hunts and prosecutes murderers decades after their crimes; Willems wants convicted sex offenders back on the street without electronic monitoring."
Keep in mind that this is a one-sided endorsement from a partisan advocate, and the characterizations of Willems' votes and motives are Davis's. We have not checked the voting record against legislative sources, and Fox's piece does not include a response from Willems. Readers in Iowa should look at both candidates' records before voting.