The two major party candidates in Iowa’s fourth congressional district engaged in a bit of verbal combat last night (Thursday) during a televised debate held at Buena Vista University in Storm Lake. Democrat Jim Mowrer of Boone criticized Congressman Steve King of Kiron for suggesting the American soldiers being sent into west Africa to deal with the Ebola epidemic should be volunteers, since Ebola is a “silent killer.”

“As a soldier I understand that you volunteer when you raise your right hand and you’re willing to sacrifice everything for this country. Soldiers follow orders. This is a job that needs to be done. That’s why Congressman King never volunteered for the military,” Mowrer said. As many in the audience murmured, King responded: “I think that this judgement to do this debate should speak for itself.” After the debate, King told reporters Mowrer’s remark was an act of “desperation.”

“I think what’s going to happen is that people review this debate and they’ll go back and look at the facts and they’ll find out that we had a really good debate tonight and he had a really bad night of desperation,” King said. Mowrer accused King of inciting panic about Ebola.  “We need to confront this outbreak in a calm, concise, deliberate way. We need to stop it from spreading here in the United States,” Mowrer said. “We need to confront it at the source in Africa…but Congressman King again has a TV ad up on the air telling people that they should be afraid.”

King, meanwhile, challenged claims in one of Mowrer’s ads that King had voted to raise his own pay “by 20-thousand a year.” “If you do the calculation on his rational, it comes to $2610, not $20,000 and my pay again has been frozen since 2009, so many of those statements are completely, blatantly, fabricated-from-thin-air false,” King said.

Last night’s (Thursday’s) debate aired live on Iowa Public Television and is the only face-to-face meeting of the two candidates this election season. The fourth district is the state’s largest, geographically, covering 39 counties in northwest and north central Iowa.

(Radio Iowa)