Austin Frerick, a former economist in the Treasury Department is a nice-looking young guy, but he doesn’t appear at all in his first video ad. Instead the ad is a monologue by Chris Peterson, the former president of the Iowa Farmer’s Union. Peterson explains why Iowa farmers should be supporting Frerick for Congress in the 3rd congressional district. IA-03 is a swing district that includes all of southwest Iowa, from the entire Des Moines metro to the Missouri River, including Council Bluffs and the suburbs east of Omaha. Obama won IA-03 both times he ran-- 51.4% to 47.2% in 2012 but in 2016 it went to Trump 48.5% to 45.0%. Hillary and her status quo message was the wrong candidate for the district. In the two counties that most of the IA-03 votes come from, caucus day saw Bernie with more votes that Trump. In Polk County (Des Moines) 10,526 Iowans caucused for Bernie but only 6,764 came out for Trump. It was closer in Pottawattamie (Council Bluffs), where Bernie had 1,573 votes and Trump 1,508. Bernie’s overarching message was similar to Austin Frerick’s namely that “corporate concentration is the fundamental issue of our time [and] we’re living in a 2nd Gilded Age where the middle class is disappearing while the rich get richer.” We asked him to write a guest post that sums up his campaign. Please give it a read and if you like what he has to say and would like to help him get into Congress, consider contributing to his campaign by clicking on the thermometer below.
Enough is Enough: Time To Oppose The Monsanto-Bayer Merger To Save Family Farms-by Austin FrerickIn 2016, Senator Grassley said in a Congressional hearing “it looks like this consolidation wave has become a tsunami.” Crickets since.Last November, our campaign called on Congressman David Young and Theresa Greenfield to return the money they received from Monsanto and their lobbyist and to oppose the Monsanto-Bayer merger. Crickets since.Last Thursday, our campaign called on the Iowa Farm Bureau to oppose the Monsanto-Bayer merger. Crickets since.Today, President Trump will speak to the American Farm Bureau Federation’s 99th Annual Convention and I promise you that there will be crickets when it comes to the Monsanto-Bayer merger.Enough is enough. Our campaign is committed to showing how corporate meddling has stacked the deck against Iowa farmers. I was the first and only candidate in the 3rd Congressional District race to call for blocking the proposed merger of Bayer-Monsanto and the only candidate to call for a total ban on the use of the herbicide dicamba, which is wreaking havoc for farmers across the country. I will not back down as the evidence of this corruption continues to mount.Yesterday our campaign released a new video with former Iowa Farmers Union President Chris Peterson laying out his reasons for backing our campaign.“Every farmer, every consumer, every small town Main Street business should be totally on board with Austin Frerick,” Peterson says. “[Big money] is milking rural America for profits,” he says, and “the top of all our problems is anti-trust and competition.”“I used to complain about seed corn being $70, $80, $100 a bag,” Peterson says, “I never thought it’d get to a point where people are paying $300 a bag.”“There needs to be political courage out there to address these issues,” Peterson says, “and that’s why Austin’s a hell of a candidate.” We are fighting for fairness and transparency. But we cannot do it alone. We rely on small donations from folks like you to keep our office stocked with supplies, our schedules full of events, and our cars full of gas so we can get out there and meet folks around the district.