Christopher Peters on Sunday announced his candidacy for Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District in the 2018 election. He will challenge Rep. Dave Loebsack, D-Iowa.
By Madeleine Neal
When Christopher Peters ran for Congress in 2016, he earned around 46 percent of the vote.
On Sunday evening in the Old Capitol Senate Chamber, he announced he will try again to win another 7 percent or so.
Peters, who served in the U.S. Army and works as a surgeon in Coralville, will run against Rep. Dave Loebsack, D-Iowa, in 2018 for Iowa’s 2nd District seat.
“There are several things that we’re doing differently,” Peters said. “We’re starting 15 months before the election rather than seven months, so that’s a big difference. We were always playing catch-up, we were chasing our tail for seven months, so I think we did good for the resources and the time we had.”
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Peters also noted that the previous campaign was not the most professional of organizations. For the 2018 election, he said the campaign will be more professional, consist of more fundraising, a bigger ground game, and more staff.
“But what’s more important for me as a candidate is I’ve had the experience of doing it once,” he said. “I’m still nervous up there [on stage], but it’s not as bad as it was in the beginning.”
Matthew Evans, Peters’ campaign manager, said time is on Peters’s side in this campaign.
“[Time] will help us organize more; we’ll be able to raise more money, we’ll be able to get more places more often and get more people involved, which we were completely unable to do last time for the most part,” Evans said. “Also, just the experience of having one [campaign] under our belts, we were pretty much amateur last time — but we gained a lot of valuable experience through hard work and persisting through some adversity.”
Zach Hartzler, the treasurer for the UI College Republicans, said Peters gained his support because of his past struggles with party identification.
“I think that [political parties] kind of clouded our judgment, this political polarization of our country,” Hartzler said. “And I think we need to start looking to the middle to find solutions for problems like tax reform, the Affordable Care Act, and I think that’s why I’m confident that he [Peters] has a good shot to beat Dave Loebsack.”
When it comes to such polarizing issues as health care, Peters said, it is important to care for vulnerable citizens, which he said could include access to Medicaid.
“It’s certainly an important measure of society is how well we take care of the most vulnerable,” he said. “We can’t expect a kid with breathing problems or tracheomalacia to be able to bargain or check prices. That’s something we just need to take care of, whether that’s through a program like Medicaid or under some other name — it doesn’t really matter, but that’s something we just need to provide, again, whether that’s at the federal or state level.”
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Peters said the vast majority of people are healthy until an illness arises, and health-care coverage should be something used as a backup.
When it comes to issues such as health care, he said, the pragmatism that comes along with being a surgeon could help him in Congress.
“Being a surgeon, running a business, being a farmer — again all those kind of things, being an engineer — it’s that problem-solving practicality that I think would be a great value in Congress,” he said.