T-R PHOTO BY LANA BRADSTREAM Republican Shane Heintz, running for Iowa House of Representatives District 51, tells the Marshall County Pachyderm Herd why he’s running for office on Friday. He will face incumbent Brett Barker in the June primary.

TIMES-REPUBLICAN

Indicating that both major parties have issues, Republican candidate Shane Heintz of Nevada told the Marshall County Pachyderm Herd on Friday that people should be willing to fix them.

When he started his campaign and gathered petition signatures to get on the ballot for the Iowa House of Representatives District 51 seat, he spoke with people across the political spectrum.

“We have an awful lot in common, and I know I’m kind of in the belly of the best here at a Republican luncheon, but some of those guys are not that bad,” Heintz said. “Given the opportunity, I want to represent them too. I will still talk to them and have a seat at the table. We can work through whatever issues we have together.”

He made his thoughts on two issues – eminent domain and the school voucher program or Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) – clear to the attendees.

First, Heintz is against eminent domain, stating that he is against a private company taking his farmground or anyone else’s farmground.

“I understand if Marshalltown grows and needs a new interchange out here, I understand that,” he said. “That is for everyone. That is not for one guy to get rich off of, but a pipeline cutting across my property for one other guy to make money . . . I’m not okay with that.”

Heintz said if one of the carbon pipelines rupture, the contents do not just disperse. It flows out. If a break occurred during the wrong time of the night, he said half of the State Center population would “drown in their sleep.” He is referring to carbon dioxide poisoning, as it is an asphyxiant, odorless and colorless.

Heintz said oil pipelines are different, as identifying a break is much quicker due to advanced technology. People monitoring carbon pipelines do not have that.

“This carbon pipeline thing is political and a New Green Deal,” he said. “It’s a political nonsense kind of thing, to me.”

Moving to ESAs, Heintz said he knows the Republicans like to pat themselves on the back for the program.

“I am for school choice, I am,” he said. “Rather than looking at talking points, I actually dug into the nuts and bolts of it, and I know Republicans are super proud of it. But if you dig into that, you see it’s a horrible, horrible plan.”

The design of the ESA program, which was signed into law by Gov. Kim Reynolds in 2023, allows state money allocated for a student to follow that student to either a public or a private school. As a capitalist, Heintz is all for giving people the choice of where to send their kids to school.

“The problem that is actually happening is the private schools are taking the money, and raising the tuition by the exact same amount,” he said. “Kids still can’t afford to go to that school. Plus, the worst part is, we aren’t doing our own paperwork on it. We are sending the paperwork to a venture capital company in New York City.”

Another problem, Heintz said, is that if a student has special needs, the private school does not have to enroll him or her.

“That lets them take the cream of the crop and not have the extra burden of taking care of the kids who need extra work,” he said.

There has to be a better way to put the program together, and get back to what it was originally intended for, Heintz told attendees. He acknowledged his stance might not be popular amongst staunch Republicans, but he is not a fan of the ESAs.

Heintz said one reason he challenged incumbent Rep. Brett Barker (R-Nevada) is he has not been happy with things the representative has done, and brought up the recent situation with NuCara, of which Barker is the vice president of operations. The state is suing the company, a pharmaceutical firm, claiming that it owes $22 million.

“They have no idea where the money went, and Brett stood up in front of people and said he didn’t have a single idea what happened, that he didn’t know about it,” Heintz said. “.. . . If you’re number two in charge, you have seen the ledger. You’re getting certified mail, because [the state] didn’t just sue you yesterday. They’ve been sending you letters for months.”

Barker’s lack of communication has been Heintz’s biggest concern. As a resident of Nevada, of which Barker was previously mayor, he said Barker would refuse to speak with people. When he did, Barker spoke in circles without really saying anything.

“I think that regular folks that work for a living should be representing the people, not special interest, not PAC,” he said. “I like the idea of moving more control to the local level.”

Contact Lana Bradstream at 641-753-6611 ext. 210 or lbradstream@timesrepublican.com.