Issues & Platform
What Mark will fight for in the Iowa House.
Understand Iowa's Cancer Crisis
Iowa has the second-highest cancer rate in the country, and it's one of the only states where that rate is still rising while the rest of the nation's is falling. Nobody can point to a single cause — cancer is complex — but elevated pesticides, nitrate, PFAS, and radon are among the factors researchers have linked to higher risk. We shouldn't keep waiting for perfect answers while Iowans get sick. Mark will push to launch a serious effort to understand what's actually driving Iowa's cancer rates — starting with fully funding the water-quality monitoring that shows us what's in our water — so the state can take targeted, effective action based on evidence, not guesswork.
Public Health
Health insurers are increasingly using AI to automatically deny legitimate claims, and that hits rural hospitals the hardest — places like Compass Memorial in Marengo, the only hospital in Iowa County. Patients and small-town hospitals end up paying the price. Mark will push for a law requiring a licensed physician, not an algorithm, to sign off before a claim can be denied, with firm response deadlines and public reporting of denial rates. He'll also fight for Iowans at risk of losing coverage under the new Medicaid law, and make sure local providers have the support they need to keep their doors open.
Public Schools
Mark believes in public schools. Full stop. If a family wants to send their kids to a private school or a religious school, that's their right, and he respects that completely — it's not his place to tell anyone how to raise their kids. But he doesn't think the rest of us should be asked to foot the bill for it. Iowa's voucher program now sends over eight thousand tax dollars per student out of the public system to private and religious schools — no income limit, so families making six figures qualify for the same subsidy as anyone else. That's money that used to go to your local public school, your kids' teachers, your gym and band program. Mark will fight to fund public schools first, because that's the promise we all made to each other.
Water & Air Quality
Clean water and clean air are a basic duty the State of Iowa owes its citizens — not something to be traded away in decisions made behind closed doors. Mark believes Iowa has an obligation to protect its people and build a healthy environment for the next generation to grow up in, with clean water to drink and clean air to breathe. He'll push for transparency and enforceable standards, informed by his direct experience fighting the Morgan Valley Energy Center power plant.
Data Center Moratorium
As the AI boom drives a wave of new data centers across Iowa, ratepayers and rural communities shouldn't foot the bill for someone else's power and water demand. Counties have already acted where Republican leadership in Des Moines hasn't — a data-center transparency bill (HF2690) and a ratepayer-protection bill (HF2668) both died in the GOP-controlled House Commerce Committee this year without ever getting a floor vote. Johnson County, part of this district, passed its own data center moratorium in November 2025, and Linn County followed in July 2026. Mark is proposing an 18-month statewide moratorium on new large-scale AI data center approvals, with a catch: it doesn't simply expire when the calendar runs out. Before a single new approval, ratepayer protections, water-use limits, and air quality standards have to be written into law — not just proposed. Eighteen months is enough time to get it right, working with industry rather than against it. Iowa needs the investment and the jobs, but not at the cost of our ratepayers, our water, or our air.
Support for Farmers
Family farms are the backbone of Iowa County and rural Johnson County. Mark will back policies that support small and mid-size operations — not the interests with the loudest voices in Des Moines. That includes right to repair: farm equipment today is often locked down by manufacturer software, forcing farmers to wait days for an authorized dealer while a broken combine sits idle at harvest. Iowa's House already passed a right-to-repair bill 70-18 this year with bipartisan support, but it stalled in the Republican-controlled Senate. Mark will push to get it across the finish line, so no farmer has to ask a corporation's permission to fix equipment they already paid for.
Property Taxes
You work your whole life, pay off your house, and the tax bill keeps coming — for a retiree on a fixed income, that can feel like renting your own home from the government, and that fear deserves an answer. At the same time, property tax is the most local dollar in Iowa: it funds your kids' school, your volunteer fire department, your county sheriff, and the snowplow on your gravel road, collected here and decided here. Brad Sherman, the conservative who previously held this seat, warned that eliminating it would force a much bigger state sales tax controlled by Des Moines, and that rural counties “would go broke.” Mark's plan is targeted where the pain actually lands: immediate rebates of $1,000 for homeowners and $500 for renters, an income-capped assessment freeze for Iowans 65 and older so no retiree can be taxed out of the home they spent a lifetime paying for, and honest work on the rising valuations that keep bills climbing even after this year's property tax law (SF2472) — passed by the Republican supermajority in Des Moines — which caps local governments' revenue growth but doesn't guarantee your bill actually goes down.
Helping Iowans Age at Home
Most older Iowans want the same thing: to stay in their own homes, in their own communities, for as long as they can. Mark wants to respect that wish and help make it possible — supporting home-based care, family caregivers, and the local services that let people age where they're rooted. Not everyone has family nearby, and that's where the rest of us come in. Being Iowa Nice isn't just waving at your neighbor; it's making sure the folks who built these communities can grow old in them with dignity.
How Mark Solves Problems
Mark doesn't believe in zero-sum politics. He's spent his working life building and fixing things — balancing real, competing constraints like cost, efficiency, privacy, and energy use — and he knows the best solutions take hard work and input from everyone at the table. That's the discipline he'll bring to the Statehouse: solutions that hold up, not compromises that give in to the loudest voice in the room.
A Voice for Those Who Have None
Mark isn't interested in platitudes. District 91 has plenty of people who don't have a lobbyist, can't take a day off to testify in Des Moines, or are talked down to instead of listened to — and they're who he'll work for.
Why This Seat, Why Now
Mark never planned to run for office. But when a power plant project showed up next to his community — with real questions about water and air that nobody would answer — he and his neighbors stood up and fought it. That's when he learned Des Moines won't look out for District 91 unless we send someone who will. Take property rights: out-of-state pipeline companies shouldn't be able to seize your land through eminent domain, something Iowans across the aisle agree on. So why should it stop the second it's a gas-fired power plant or a data center instead of a pipeline? Iowans' land and water don't deserve less protection just because the industry changed. That's why Mark is running.
This Isn't Who We Are
The culture wars dominating national politics didn't start in Iowa, and they don't reflect who we are. Iowans have a long history of leading on fairness, often years ahead of the rest of the country. In 1868, Iowa's Supreme Court ordered the desegregation of its public schools — nearly a century before Brown v. Board of Education made it the law of the land. A year later, Arabella Mansfield became the first woman admitted to practice law anywhere in the United States, right here in Iowa. That's who we've always been: hard-working, practical, and willing to treat people fairly before it was popular. Iowa values are simple — a fair day's work, a neighbor you can count on, a family you show up for, plain dealing instead of empty talk, and treating people with respect whether you agree with them or not. Those values don't belong to one party, and they never have. Mark won't import fights that belong to national politics. Iowa runs its own elections, and Iowans decide who represents them — not politicians in Washington. He wants to work with Republicans and Democrats alike to protect the values that built this state.