(Radio Iowa) – Greene County Attorney Thomas Laehn — the first Libertarian elected to office in Iowa — has qualified to run for Iowa’s open U.S. Senate seat. “The people of Iowa are ready for a third party candidate,” Laehn said. “…Independents, disaffected Republicans, disaffected Democrats — we are the majority.”
Laehn grew up in the northeast Iowa town of Allison, graduated from Drake University, got a masters from Louisiana State University and taught constitutional law and political philosophy at McNeese State before returning to Iowa. He earned his a law degree from the University of Iowa in 2017 and has won two terms as Greene County Attorney.
“Crime rates are down at least 30% in Greene County, so hopefully that lends some credibility and legitimacy to the Libertarian Party, but also shows the people of Iowa that there is a credible third party alternative,” Laehn said, “that they don’t have to keep choosing between the lesser of two evils.” Laehn’s name will appear at the top of Iowa’s General Election ballots alongside U-S Senate candidates Ashley Hinson and Josh Turek who won their party’s primaries last week.
Candidates who are not the Republican or Democratic Parties’ nominees in the General Election faced a June 2nd deadline to file their nominating paperwork in the Iowa Secretary of State’s office. However, yesterday (Tuesday) was the deadline for people to challenge whether signatures on those petitions were legit and Laehn’s paperwork has NOT been challenged. He submitted nearly 10-thousand signatures, almost three times as many as required.
“We did not have signatures from every county in the state, but we were close,” he said. Three OTHER Libertarian candidates do face challenges that could make them ineligible for the General Election. Those candidates are Nicholas Gluba of Lone Tree, who filed to run for governor; Rick Stewart of Cedar Rapids, who filed to run in Iowa’s second congressional district; and Marco Battaglia of Des Moines, who filed to run in Iowa’s third congressional district. All three of those candidates have run in previous elections.
