(Radio Iowa) – Fourth district Congressman Randy Feenstra of Hull has defeated Republican Primary challenger Kevin Virgil by 20 points. Feenstra issued a written statement last (Tuesday) night, saying voters sent the message they want a conservative voice in congress and he’s humbled by the strong support for his campaign. During a forum in Cherokee last week, Feenstra discussed his decision to run for the U-S House in 2020.

“I had a tremendous amount of farm producers and businesses come to me and say: ‘We need somebody who can make a different in congress,'” Feenstra said, “and that’s what I try to do every single day.” Feenstra beat fellow Republican Steve King in that first race and he’s defeated the candidate King endorsed in this 2024 G-O-P Primary.

Ryan Melton of Nevada is again the Democratic Party’s nominee in the fourth congressional district. Melton says the top concerns he hears from voters haven’t changed much since 2022.”Number one is the hollowing out of our communities in our fourth congressional district,” Melton says, “a steady population decline that’s leaving us much less secure, much more vulnerable in a wide variety of different ways.” Melton, who got 30 percent of the vote in his 2022 race, says concerns about the proposed carbon capture pipelines come up at nearly every campaign stop.

“I’m the first major party candidate in the state to fight against the pipelines back in early ’22, so that’s given me a rare foot in the door in Republican households that other Democrats don’t have,” Melton says, “that I’ve been on the right side of that battle since the very beginning.”

Republicans hold a sizable voter registration edge in Iowa’s fourth district — there are nearly 153-thousand more Republicans than active Democratic voters.