Voters in Iowa’s 4th Congressional District will choose between Congressman Randy Feenstra (R) and Ryan Melton (D) to represent them in Congress.
Iowa’s 4th Congressional District covers the state’s western border, which includes Sioux City and Council Bluffs, and extends east to cover Ames, Boone, Fort Dodge and Marshalltown. Feenstra is the incumbent candidate in this race and has represented the 4th District since 2021.
Feenstra was born and raised in Hull, Iowa, where he married his wife, Lynette, and raised their four children. Before being elected to Congress, Feenstra worked as the head of sales for the Foreign Candy Company and also served as City Administrator for Hull, Sioux County Treasurer and chairman of Iowa Senate Ways and Means Committee.
Melton was born in Omaha, Nebraska and lived in both Iowa and the Cornhusker State during his childhood. He received a full scholarship from Iowa State where he studied history and political science and was a reporter at the Iowa State Daily and president of the ISU Mock Trial Club. After receiving his bachelor’s degree in 2005, Melton pursued his master’s degree in U.S. History at the University of Kansas. For the last 15 years, Melton has worked for Nationwide Insurance, where he currently works as a personal lines supervisor.
The following interviews with Feenstra and Melton were conducted by email:
How do you plan to help Iowans struggling to find affordable childcare?
Feenstra: “Trillions of dollars in reckless government spending fueled the worst inflation crisis our country has faced in over forty years. Alongside price hikes at the gas station and the grocery store, Iowa families have been forced to spend way more money on childcare. Some parents have even left the workforce altogether to stay at home to care for their children because the financials of working and paying for childcare don’t add up. That can’t be the status quo. In Congress, I’ve helped introduce legislation to help young families pay for childcare by doubling the amount of money Iowans can save tax-free in Dependent Care Flexible Spending Accounts. I also helped lead legislation to help our small businesses offer these savings accounts to their employees as a benefit. We need to lower the cost of childcare to help parents stay in the workforce if they so choose and keep our families rooted in Iowa.”
Melton: “First, we need to find more child care professionals and pay them what they deserve. I continue to see full time child care openings in our congressional district that are paying at 10, 11, or 12 dollars an hour, well below a living wage. Whether it be subsidizing via government help or incentivizing businesses to provide child care via tax credit as long as they pay a sufficient wage, or providing property tax credits to in-home daycare providers, we need to be innovative here. I’m certainly in favor of increasing the federal minimum wage to an eventual living wage, which would certainly help here. In general, we also need to solve for the root causes of the hollowing out of our congressional district, as we’ve seen massive, decades-long population decline. This has led to a cratering in quality of life indicators across the board, including child care affordability and accessibility. We need to invest in our communities again to keep our people here and to draw in new folks. My opponent Randy Feenstra, for four years in a row, has asked for literally 0.00 of community improvement project earmark money, while just this year alone, the other 3 US House Republicans in Iowa asked for a collective 115 million dollars for their communities. I’m also a believer in developing a robust migrant labor program that aligns migration flows with labor shortage areas of need, and we certainly would qualify as a labor shortage area of need. Immigrants have revitalized a lot of our district’s communities, are great people, and don’t deserve the vilification they’ve been receiving. The data very clearly shows they, both documented and undocumented, commit crime at much lower rates than native-born citizens.”
Where do you stand on reproductive rights for Iowans?
Feenstra: “My faith teaches me that every person is born for a purpose and a reason. As a father of four and a Christian, I will always stand up for innocent life and defend the unborn.”
Melton: “I am pro-choice and pro-reproductive rights, and if elected, would advocate for the codifying of Roe. Iowa’s 6-week abortion ban will threaten the lives of many pregnant people here, and it puts health care professionals in impossible situations. We are already last in OB-GYN availability rate as a state nationally, are seeing a collapse of rural health care in Iowa, and are now going to find it even harder to attract the experts we need here due to the abortion ban. The data is clear that abortion bans in other states have made it harder for them to retain and attract needed health care expertise. Also, we have plenty of evidence that shows abortion bans don’t notably reduce abortion rates, but they certainly do create a lot more dangerous ones. I also think it’s impossible to legislate this area of concern, as it is indefensible to say the pregnant person loses their rights and bodily autonomy the moment they become pregnant. The true pro-life position then would instead be to provide more affordable and accessible child care, health care, housing, and good paying jobs so more prospective parents feel they can carry a pregnancy through with the needed societal supports available to them. This is supported by the big decline in birth rate we’re seeing nationally. Our supposed pro-life legislators have not built a society that is truly welcoming and supportive of life. Meanwhile, my opponent Randy Feenstra has called for a national abortion ban.”
What is your stance on lawmakers funding private school vouchers over public education?
Feenstra: “As a father of four, I believe that every Iowa student deserves a quality education and that parents deserve both a voice in their children’s education and a say in how their taxpayer dollars are spent. We can simultaneously support public, private, and faith-based schools in a way that strengthens our educational system and lets Iowa parents use their hard-earned money to fund their children’s education. That’s why I have supported legislation in Congress to ensure that every student can reach their full potential and pursue an education that best fits their needs regardless of their family’s income or zip code.”
Melton: “Public money belongs in public schools only. I’m not anti-private school, but the private school vouchers that have diverted public money from public schools have harmed our public schools that 90% of Iowa’s students attend, and the vouchers haven’t even notably increased the ability of those struggling economically to attend private school, as private schools are now raising their tuition post-voucher bill passage. Private schools also have the ability to cherry pick who they accept, so this school voucher bill is not accessible to all. The whole thing is a scam designed to destroy public education. We’re already seeing in other states like Arizona how such plans blow up state budgets and as such, cause harm to all. A big chunk of our counties in our district don’t even have a private school.”
How will you ensure children in Iowa schools are safe from gun violence?
Feenstra: “Every student deserves to be safe at school and no parent should fear for their child’s safety when they drop them off. I’ve supported legislation to fully fund school resource officers, invest in mental health services, and harden our schools against criminals. Protecting our kids is a crucial priority that we all support, and we must continue to work together on solutions that keep our children safe.”
Melton: “We certainly need to do more to advance common sense gun safety legislation. I’m a supporter of universal background checks, of red flag laws (that are carefully written to respect the balance between privacy, 2nd amendment rights, and public safety), etc. We also need to get corporate money out of politics, as the NRA owns many of our politicians, including my opponent Randy Feenstra, rendering our representatives compromised and unwilling to truly represent us and our interests in this context.”
How do you plan to work with members of the opposing party to pass legislation that benefits your district?
Feenstra: “Back in May, my colleagues on the House Agriculture Committee and I passed the Farm Bill in a bipartisan fashion to deliver certainty and stability for our farmers and producers. With low commodity prices, declining farm income, and a growing agricultural trade deficit hurting our producers, we took action to deliver relief. We strengthened crop insurance, increased reference prices for commodities like corn and soybeans, doubled funding for trade programs like the Market Access Program (MAP) and Foreign Market Development Program (FMD), supported agriculture education, invested in provisions to protect our country from foreign animal diseases, and included measures to keep China and our foreign enemies away from our farmland. I also had 10 bills that I introduced included in the Farm Bill such as lowering crop insurance costs for young and beginning producers, investments in refrigeration infrastructure to ship our commodities around the globe, and reforms to the Livestock Indemnity Program to secure fair and accurate prices for our cattle producers. Senate Democrats must work with Republicans to get the Farm Bill signed into law before the end of year for the good of our farmers and Iowa agriculture.”
Melton: “I have already been doing that, and robustly so. I speak with Republicans all the time, and have been working with them in our united opposition to the carbon capture pipelines that are an eminent domain abuse threat, along with being a risk to our water and public health. If elected, I’d work to modify the 45Q federal tax credit intended to drive innovation in mitigating the effects of human-caused climate change to ensure only tools proven to sufficiently address the issue (unlike these CO2 pipelines) get funding, and would work to see what is possible regarding banning the use of eminent domain for private gain regarding such projects. Additionally, the Republican primary challenger of my opponent Randy Feenstra, Kevin Virgil, endorsed me instead of Feenstra back in August. I’ve built a strong cross-party coalition.”
