Mt. Pleasant native announces run for Congress

DES MOINES — Mt. Pleasant native Lanon Baccam has served his country through military service and multiple roles with the United States Department of Agriculture since leaving the community in which he was born and raised. Now, he seeks to further his service to the state he calls home as he announces his intention to run for Iowa Congress.

Democratic candidate Baccam seeks to represent Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District currently occupied by Republican Zach Nunn.

While the 3rd Congressional District represents an area of the state near Des Moines, Baccam drew connections to his Iowa roots from Mt. Pleasant as he gave some background information about himself in a video announcement on social media, Thursday, Nov. 9.

“I’m proud to be an Iowan,” Baccam said. “This state took my family in. I was born and raised in Mt. Pleasant, went to a community college, then used the GI Bill to go to Drake University.”

According to Baccam’s website, his parents Inh and Bounmy Baccam came to Iowa in 1980 from Laos and worked at the Mackay Envelope Factory, which still operates in Mt. Pleasant.

The U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants report that Baccam graduated from Mt. Pleasant Community High School in 1999 and graduated from Drake in 2011.

“At 17 years old I sat at a table just like this with a local National Guard recruiter and my parents,” Baccam said in his video. “I wasn’t eighteen yet, so I needed their blessing and their signatures to join.”

While he says his parents worried about his decision because they saw the war in Vietnam firsthand, they agreed because they knew his determination.

“After 9/11 my National Guard unit was activated and deployed to Afghanistan,” he said. “As a combat engineer I was on the front line detonating unexploded ordnance and weapons caches.”

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“Baccam is a military veteran and spent eight years in the U.S. Army and Iowa National Guard and was deployed to Afghanistan in 2004-2005,” the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants states on their website. “During his time in the Army, Baccam held leadership roles as a unit movement officer and served as a combat engineer at a Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) base in Kandahar, Afghanistan.”

“I was proud of my service and grateful to make it home,” Baccam said. “But my determination to serve my county was still strong.”

This determination is what Baccam says drove him to serve as Deputy Undersecretary for Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services at the USDA.

In December last year, the USDA announced Baccam’s promotion to Senior Advisor in the Office of Communications.

According to the USDA, “Previously, he served as the Deputy State Director for Iowa during the Biden-Harris general election campaign. He also served as an appointee in the Obama-Biden Administration, including as Deputy Undersecretary for Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services and USDA’s Military Veteran Agriculture Liaison.”

Baccam states that the determination which drove him to enlist at 17 and then serve in various capacities in the USDA remains strong and is his reason for announcing his run to represent Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District.

“We can all sense and feel our country is incredibly polarized,” he said in his video. “People are moving apart, and folks are divided into their political camps. Nowhere is that more true than the U.S. Congress and Zach Nunn is part of the problem”

“I’m ready to serve Iowans,” Baccam continued. “Let’s bring this country back together and rebuild our communities.”

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While Baccam’s roots originated in the small community of Mt. Pleasant, he now resides in the Des Moines area where he first met his wife, Alissa.

They now raise one daughter, Freya, in the area he hopes to serve in Congress.

Comments: AnnaMarie.Ward@southeastiowaunion.com