Independent congressional candidate Dave Bushaw asked for Iowans’ support Saturday at the Iowa State Fair as he works to build an “independent movement” past the 2026 election season throughout the state.
Bushaw is running as an independent candidate in Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District, but has a history in Democratic politics, having worked as an organizer for U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign during the 2020 Democratic presidential nominating cycle. But during his speech at the Des Moines Register Political Soapbox, he criticized both the Democratic and Republican parties as “two wings of the same bird that feed corporate greed,” which he said do not represent working class Americans.
“The hard truth, folks, is that this freedom isn’t going to be won within the corrupt two-party establishment,” Bushaw said. “I became the first no-party candidate to secure ballot access in northeast Iowa in modern history because working-class voters wanted it to be that way.”
Bushaw will appear on the ballot with Democratic state Rep. Lindsay James and Republican Joe Mitchell, a former state lawmaker. The 2nd District is an open race, as current U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson is on the ballot as the GOP nominee for Iowa’s U.S. Senate seat.
While the seat is expected to be less competitive than the congressional races for Iowa’s 1st and 3rd Districts, according to political forecasters, Democrats still hope the seat could be a potential pick-up in the midterms.
Bushaw said his campaign did not have party infrastructure in the 2nd District, which covers much of northeast Iowa, or the financial support his major-party opponents have, but said his campaign came to the race with a small amount of money and “folks that were ready to fight.” Bushaw reported raising $12,555 in the most recent Federal Election Commission reporting period, falling below James, who raised $755,587 and Mitchell, who raised $377,769.
“While the media often fixates on enormous amounts of money raised and spent by these candidates in the Democratic and Republican Party — which I find more disgusting than impressive — we’re showing that working-class poor folks can build infrastructure and run a strong campaign without money backing them,” he said. “That’s called fiscal responsibility, and it’s a foreign concept to most politicians.”
While he called for voters in the 2nd District to support his campaign for Congress, he also said he plans to build a greater independent “movement” in future election cycles.
“This doesn’t stop in 2026,” Bushaw said. “I’ve been organizing for 15 years. … I intend on starting here in the 2nd District, but we are going to build an independent movement here in Iowa in all districts and across this country — 2028, 2030, and 2032. That’s a promise.”
If elected in 2026, the first measure he would introduce would be to allow for national ballot initiatives that would allow U.S. voters to directly weigh in on certain measures at the federal level, like the legalization of cannabis and campaign finance reform.
“There’s 435 members in Congress right now, and almost all of them are completely bought out by the corrupt two-party duo. I believe that representative democracy, in some facets, has outlived its usefulness. These aren’t the days of horse and buggy, when you had to send a ballot box on a you know, all the way across from Oregon to Washington (D.C.) — we all have cell phones, we all have computers. We’re hyper connected. I believe and I trust the American people to make decisions ourselves. … I trust the American people to make the right decisions on these things, so I want to give more direct democracy power to the American working people.”
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