Senate Candidate Thomas Laehn is an independent running for Iowa’s open senate seat. While most people question what one independent voice can do in an ocean of blue and red, he sees it as a strategic advantage: that one vote can force a quorum and force DC Senators to actually have a dialogue.
It’s an often overlooked fact but because there are only 100 Senators and control is often on razor thin margins, if Iowa sends an independent voice, the state actually punches slightly above its weight class in the Senate. Laehn’s plan is to force a quorum and force both parties to work with each other for Iowans and the American people.
Laehn, the Greene County Attorney and the first Libertarian elected to a partisan office in Iowa history, is challenging major-party candidates for the U.S. Senate by targeting eminent domain abuse and corporate influence. Laehn criticized the Summit Carbon Solutions hazardous liquid pipeline, detailing how IRS Sections 45Q and 45Z grant $85 per metric ton of captured carbon dioxide in federal tax credits. He noted that despite 78% of Iowans supporting his drafted legislation to prohibit eminent domain for hazardous liquid pipelines on agricultural land, Governor Kim Reynolds vetoed the bill after receiving $172,000 in campaign contributions from pipeline investor Bruce Rastetter. Rejecting claims that the private project serves a legitimate public use, Laehn noted, “Our state government has vested a private company, a hazardous liquid pipeline company, with eminent domain so that, um, Summit Carbon Solutions, this private company, can take people’s property along the pipeline’s proposed route, for the construction of a pipeline that will make the company’s investors billionaires with federal taxpayer money.”
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Reforming Capitol Hill and Campaign Finance Pledging to serve a single six-year term to remain unbossed by special interests, Laehn contrasted his roughly $50,000 in individual campaign contributions with opponent Ashley Hinson’s support from a D.C. super PAC pledging $29 million. To end empty-chamber speeches, Laehn plans to enforce parliamentary rules on the Senate floor, asserting, “There should be no business on the floor of the Senate unless we have a quorum.” Pointing to a Gallup poll indicating 63% of Americans favor third-party candidates, Laehn argued that disaffected voters represent the true majority. Encouraging voters to reject uniparty dominance, he declared, “We, the disaffected, are the majority, and we just have to reject this false narrative that if you vote your conscience, you’re gonna vote for the losing candidate.”
Fiscal Policy and Constitutional Scope Laehn advocates for a constitutional balanced budget to address the national debt, which has surpassed $40 trillion, accumulates at $2 trillion annually, and consumes roughly 40% of federal income taxes in interest alone. On abortion, he maintains a strict constitutionalist position, contending that while he is morally pro-life, federal officials lack jurisdiction to regulate the issue because that authority is reserved exclusively for the states under the U.S. Constitution.