Forum features Dickey, Taylor in bid for Iowa Senate seat

FAIRFIELD — Two Iowa State Senators, one current and the other former, participated in a forum on Oct. 11 at the Fairfield Arts & Convention Center hosted by the Fairfield Area Chamber of Commerce.

The forum featured the two candidates vying for Iowa State District 44, incumbent Republican Adrian Dickey of Packwood and Democratic challenger Rich Taylor of Mt. Pleasant. Taylor was previously an Iowa Senator before he was ousted by Republican Jeff Reichman in the 2020 election.

Iowa Senate District 44 covers all of Van Buren, Jefferson and Keokuk counties, the southwest corner of Henry County including Mt. Pleasant, and the eastern half of Mahaska County including Oskaloosa.

One of the questions the two men got was what they would do to lessen the effects of inflation for Iowans. Dickey said that the state Legislature is lowering taxes, giving money back to people. He said that inflation is a product of the federal government printing money, and that the state government can do almost nothing to stop it.

“What we can do is return the money to you so that you can pay for everything that is super high,” he said. “Thank God we have the ability to do that, because we’ve been fiscally conservative over the years.”

Dickey spoke about how, in a forum earlier that night, the candidates were asked about immigration and the state’s workforce. He said it’s that Iowa has a shortage of workers, and he feels it as the president of Dickey Transport in Packwood.

“The federal government is doing nothing to improve on immigration,” he said. “They hired 87,000 IRS agents to come after us, but they can’t hire a single Border Patrol agent or a single additional legal immigration processing agent, to deal with legal immigration applications that are piling up.”

Dickey said that, two years ago, he hired 2,500 people from South Africa, professional drivers with at least 15 years of experience and a perfect safety record. The EB-3 visa he applied for to get them was supposed to take “six steps and eight months,” but after two years of waiting, he’s still on step 2, with no idea when the applications will be approved.

“People want to legally come to the country, but the federal government is doing nothing to allow that to happen,” he said. “But the borders are porous and all kinds of illegal immigration comes in, and it’s not the solution we need.”

In response to that question, Taylor said the state’s current policies are “making big corporations wealthy.”

“Sure, there’s inflation, but who do you think is getting the money? It’s going to big corporations. It’s not going to the mom and pop coffee shop,” Taylor said. “When I talk about big corporations, we don’t really have big corporations in this neck of the woods.”

Taylor said inflation is being caused by corporations refusing to raise the wages of their employees, and instead “keep it all for themselves.” Taylor said the state Legislature could do more to help the average person, and suggested reducing the gas tax.

“We have a Department of Transportation that has way more money than they can spend,” Taylor said. “They can’t find enough contractors to spend all the money they’re making in gas tax. We could eliminate the state portion of that for a year or two years.”

Taylor said the gas tax couldn’t be suspended in cities or counties because those governments need that money for road repairs.

“You’ve got streets right here in Fairfield that are in terrible shape, and we’ve got them in Mt. Pleasant,” Taylor said. “That’s because they’re not getting a big enough piece of the pie. While I was in office, we had a gas tax increase of 10 cents. I voted against it, not because I didn’t think we needed the money, but because of how it was being distributed. It was all going to the state for their big highway projects.”

Call Andy Hallman at 641-575-0135 or email him at andy.hallman@southeastiowaunion.com