(Radio Iowa) – Christina Bohannan of Iowa City, the Democrat running in Iowa’s first congressional district, says immigration is something people from all parties care about it. “We hear this a lot,” Bohannan said this weekend. “People want to secure the border and we should secure the border.” Bohannan, who’s running a second time against Republican Congresswoman Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Davenport. said Miller-Meeks and other Republicans played politics with the issue this year by rejecting a bipartisan border security that was backed by the union that represents Border Security agents.

“The strictest border security bill that our country has ever seen,” Bohannan said. “…Rather than do anything about it, Representative Miller-Meeks and U.S. House Republicans wanted to keep playing politics with it, they wanted to keep using it as a campaign issue. If that is not the best example of putting party over country, I don’t know what is.” Bohannan also is criticizing Miller-Meeks for voting against the bipartisan Infrastructure Bill three years ago.

First district congressional candidate Christina Bohannan speaking on August 10, 2024. (RI photo)

“An infrastructure bill that’s fixing our roads, bridges, dams, locks here in southeast Iowa and creating hundreds of great paying jobs in the process. How can you vote against fixing the damned roads?” Bohannan asks. “…Senator Chuck Grassley helped negotiate that infrastructure bill and voted for it because he knew how great is was going to be for Iowa.” Grassley was the only Republican in Iowa’s congressional delegation to vote for it.

Bohannan made her comments during a speech on the Des Moines Register’s Political Soapbox at the Iowa State Fair. Miller-Meeks declined the paper’s invitation to speak at the venue.