U.S. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, R-Iowa, rallied voters to vote for her in an increasingly close election during a campaign stop in Walcott, Iowa on Saturday. 

Miller-Meeks rallied voters with U.S. Reps. Kat Cammack, R-Florida, and Celeste Maloy, R-Utah, who encouraged voters to vote for Miller-Meeks as polls show an increasingly close reelection campaign. 

Iowa’s 1st Congressional District, which Miller-Meeks represents, is now considered a tossup, according to an Oct. 5 Cook Political Report, an organization of nonpartisan elections analysts. 

Miller-Meeks and Iowa City Democrat Christina Bohannan are facing off in the 1st District for the second time. A new Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll found a Democrat would be preferred to a Republican in the district, which is the first time in the 2024 election cycle that polling showed that opinion in Iowa’s 1st Congressional District.

The poll found that 49 percent of the 160 respondents preferred a generic Democrat over 46 percent who preferred a Republican. The lead is well within the poll’s eight-point margin of error. 

Cammack and Maloy encouraged the roughly 40 attendees to not only vote but take their friends and family to the polls on election day, as Miller-Meeks has won by small margins in the past. 

Miller-Meeks, running for reelection in Iowa’s 1st Congressional District, first won her seat in Congress against former Iowa state senator and current Iowa Democratic Party Chair Rita Hart in 2020 by just six votes. She won reelection against Democrat Christinia Bohannan in 2022 by seven percentage points. 

Cammack said she wanted to come to Iowa despite the hurricanes devastating her state because she believes Miller-Meeks seat is the path to maintaining a Republican majority in the House. 

“I’m very confident about the Senate, but I’d be worried about the House because right now, we control the House of Representatives by two votes. That is one heart attack or one temper tantrum away from losing it all,” Cammack said. 

Malloy expressed a similar concern and said although Miller-Meeks has won a tight race before, voters should turn out so she wins by large numbers. She warned that Trump’s plans and the Republican agenda will not go through if there is a Democratic House. 

“If we have Trump in the White House, and we have a Republican Senate, the House is going to be able to stop all of the good Republican policies — the good conservative changes we need — if we don’t hold the House,” Malloy said. 

There are currently 212 Democrats and 220 Republicans serving in the House. 

The congresswomen also spoke on the importance of women running for office and holding positions of power. 

“I’ve been in Congress for 10 months, and we do need women in the majority, we need women’s voices,” Cammack said. “But the thing I love about our women and the Republican Party is we don’t make it about being women. We go talk about the policies we want, we talk about the things we’ve done, what we’re going to do, and then we get it done.” 

Cammack serves on the House Energy and Commerce Committee with Miller-Meeks. 

Maloy said Republican women in Congress never make politics about being women, and they work hard to see a smaller, more accountable government. 

“We want to protect individual freedoms, and we get elected based on our ideas and our work ethic, and we have a unique perspective in Congress,” Maloy said. “We add to the culture there, and we happen to be women, and I think that’s great.” 

Vivian Martin, an attendee at the event, was inspired by the congresswomen and said she plans to start volunteering more. 

“I’ve seen that these girls are doing a great job, they’re not in it for themselves, they’re in it for others,” Martin said. “They have great feeling for what they are doing. And I think it’s great that they are reaching out and going beyond what maybe somebody like me who is older, who thought I couldn’t aspire to something like that. They have great vision by doing that.” 

Martin, wearing a skirt adorned with Republican candidates’ campaign signs, plans to vote for Miller-Meeks in the upcoming election. 

The two candidates for Iowa’s 1st Congressional District will face off in an Oct. 21 debate. In an interview with The Daily Iowan, Miller-Meeks said she is preparing for the debate by listening to people and looking out for the issues they care about.

Miller-Meeks said she plans to address Bohannan’s lies on her record on abortion and her silence toward pro-Palestine protesters who urged her to make a statement on the Israel-Hamas war at a campaign event earlier this month.

Bohanna held a reproductive freedom rally Friday night at the University of Iowa. She said she is preparing for the debate by speaking with voters and learning what issues matter most to them. 

“When you’re out, talking to people, you learn their stories,” Bohannan said. “You learn what matters to them, and so the issues that we’ll talk about during the debate are the issues that are going on in people’s lives. And so I have enjoyed immensely going out and talking to people all throughout the district about what’s happening with them. And that is what really gives me, you know, the information that I want to talk about during the debate.” 

Set to air at 8 p.m., the debate will be hosted by Iowa PBS.