About a dozen local voters joined Joe Shelly of Perry Saturday afternoon for coffee and conversation at the Perry Perk Coffeehouse in downtown Perry.
Shelly, a Democrat, is seeking to oust two-term Republican Carter Nordman of Panora for the district 47 seat in the Iowa House of Representatives.
Perry-area voters shared many of the same concerns as voters across Iowa, from reproductive rights to the governor’s ongoing attack on public schools, whether in the form of private-school vouchers or gutting the Area Education Agencies.
Shelly noted his opponent appears to take his marching orders from the governor’s office and never varies from her position, including pushing for more guns in the schools following the January gun murders at Perry High School.
Democrat Tori Riley of Jefferson was among Saturday’s attendees. She is challenging 18-year Republican incumbent John Muir for a seat on the Greene County Board of Supervisors from district 4.
Riley said one issue that is exercising voters in Greene County — but maybe less so in Dallas County — is the proposed Summit Carbon Solution pipeline for carbon capture and storage, a project led by big-ag magnate Bruce Rastetter, a multimillion-dollar donor to Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, who strongly supports Rastetter’s CO2 project.
As a state lawmaker, Shelly would represent all of Greene and Guthrie counties and a portion of northwest Dallas County, including Perry and Dawson. As a retired journeyman pipefitter, Shelly has definite opinions about the Summit Carbon pipeline and the eminent-domain land grab the pipeline project is counting on.
“We have to be at the table to facilitate the operation of this pipeline,” Shelly said. “We have to be able to say, ‘No, you’re not going to use this as eminent domain. You’re not going to take people’s property. You already have eminent domain.'”
He said the pipeline builders, instead of diagonally crossing 360 parcels of farmland in Greene County and 565 parcels in Guthrie County, they should use the public right of way that already exists along roadways, a ready-made source of eminent-domain property.
Shelly will meet with voters again Tuesday night at the Hotel Pattee, where he will help to welcome Lanon Baccam, Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives for District 3. Margaret Liston of Ogden, a candidate for the Iowa Senate, and Meggan Guns of West Des Moines, a candidate for Dallas County Attorney, will also be on hand to meet voters.
