T-R PHOTO BY ROBERT MAHARRY Republican U.S. Senate candidate Jim Carlin of Sioux City addresses a crowd of about 25 gathered at Legends American Grill for the weekly Pachyderm Herd meeting over the lunch hour on Friday.

“Are you sure you want to give a lawyer an hour?” U.S. Senate hopeful Jim Carlin, a Republican from Sioux City, joked about 10 minutes into his meeting with the Marshall County Pachyderm Herd at Legends American Grill on Friday.

Carlin, 63, a U.S. Army veteran, trial lawyer and former State Senator, is one of two candidates seeking the GOP nomination in the race to replace retiring Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and is widely considered the underdog against current U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa). Nonetheless, he used the aforementioned time to make his case, speaking for about a half hour before taking questions from the audience of about 25 and then sticking around to interact with attendees as the lunch hour wound down. Carlin explained that he is running in hopes of creating a better world for younger generations and credited President Donald Trump with saving Americans from “dancing in dumpsters.”

Carlin placed the blame on the Federal Reserve for the rising costs of housing as investors are purchasing more and more homes through interest free loans that were available during the COVID-19 pandemic. He also criticized the Affordable Care Act (ACA), better known as “Obamacare,” for creating a monopoly that has ultimately resulted in increased insurance premiums. Even as he highlighted his own free market capitalist bona fides, Carlin criticized what he called “a rigged game” and worried that his grandson would struggle to afford college, buy a home and start a family of his own.

From there, Carlin shared a story of working with former Sen. Jeff Edler (R-State Center) and advocating for residents at the Iowa Veterans Home (IVH) who were upset about smoking privileges being taken away. Four of them ended up placed in the Alzheimer’s ward for complaining, and one of them was drugged — a series of events that ultimately resulted in the firing of Commandant Timon Oujiri. He said he had also worked to increase the payouts from the Veterans Trust Fund.

“Why do I tell you that? Because I don’t look the other way when you’re screwing somebody over,” he said. “I’m watching this game unfold where instead of the veterans being screwed over, I think it’s our kids and our grandkids. And I’m not gonna look the other way just because I’m only gonna be around whatever many years. I’m getting in the game now. You can’t intimidate me because in my head, I’m already dead and gone. You live that way (and) you can live kind of fearlessly. When you’re a soldier, if you accept the fact that you’re dead and gone, you can fight a good fight.”

He then took Hinson to task for encouraging voters to caucus for Nikki Haley and not Trump in 2024 along with several of her votes, including one to send $100 billion in aid to Ukraine, another in favor of the Respect for Marriage Act, which provides federal protections to same-sex couples who are married, and another to allow warrantless spying on citizens.

Ultimately, Carlin lamented that voters don’t elect politicians but donors before shifting his remarks to the ongoing military conflict in Iran, expressing approval of Trump “cutting the head off the snake” but also noting that he would not support a ground war. His solutions to the problems facing the country included the government “living within its means” financially, auditing the Federal Reserve and returning to the Gold Standard to reverse a system that disproportionately benefits the rich and the powerful, and securing the border, citing the welfare, national security and crime concerns caused by illegal immigration.

Citing areas like Detroit, Philadelphia and Texas as examples, Carlin called for a ban on Sharia Law before it becomes a problem in Iowa and shared his support for efforts to keep Iowa farmland in American hands. He lamented that the pork industry had already been lost to China and rendered farmers contract labor with no control over inputs and markets.

“They’re not being protected, and that is not free market outcome driven for the people who work our soil and feed the world. They’re not being treated fairly,” he said.

Finally, he called for term limits, a ban on Congressional stock trading, a ban on family members of politicians serving as lobbyists and the overturn of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision with a constitutional amendment along with an end to Super PACs.

“I think we’ve gotta be really honest and really self aware because this is the bottom line for me. We’re being robbed. We’re being robbed by sharks, sharks who are smart, sharks who want to take from us because we’re good moral people. We trust people,” Carlin said. “But the problem is this. We’re trusting our lives and our children’s lives with people that are not looking out for us.”

Before opening the floor up to questions, Carlin commented that he probably wouldn’t believe in America again until he saw people like Hillary Clinton in prison.

“Unless there’s justice, we’ve got a lot of organized crime dressed up in a political monkey suit,” he said.

He also reiterated that the race with Hinson is still very much in play ahead of the June primary. Carlin then took questions on topics ranging from the SAVE Act requiring voter identification in elections (he supports it) to fixing the federal court system and revamping the Department of Justice (he said he has been disappointed in its handling of the Epstein Files thus far, called for Anthony Fauci to be imprisoned and pushed for more research into deaths caused by the COVID-19 vaccine and the links between vaccinations and childhood autism) to term limits for staffers as well as politicians to why Republicans are “afraid” to tell people they’re Republicans.

“I’m unequivocally more authentically Republican than Ashley Hinson,” he said.

In response to another question about Sharia Law, Carlin commented that it was beyond him to understand how women could support it given the requirements for face coverings and bans on driving in some Muslim countries.

“For all the crap that people want to say about America, listen, America is a place where a woman’s boundaries are respected. I don’t believe in abortion, at all, but I do believe that a woman should be treated as an equal,” he said.

Carlin concluded by sharing the story of a woman he encouraged to give her child up for adoption instead of having an abortion and meeting the daughter, now a graduate student at the University of Kansas, years later.

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Contact Robert Maharry

at 641-753-6611 ext. 255 or

rmaharry@timesrepublican.com.