Affordable housing, public safety, and community engagement are the biggest topics of the Nov. 4 Iowa City City Council election, where four candidates — two incumbents and two newcomers — are vying for two at-large seats.
Candidates include incumbents Megan Alter and Bruce Teague, who currently hold the two open seats, and newcomers Newman Abuissa and Clara Reynen.
As Iowa City residents prepare to head to the polls, here’s a look at what each candidate brings to the race.
Newcomer Newman Abuissa focuses on community voices
Syrian-born immigrant Newman Abuissa lived in Iowa City for almost 28 years and has worked for the Iowa Department of Transportation for 35 years.
The chair of the Arab American Caucus of the Iowa Democratic Party, he served as a delegate for presidential nominee and former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry 20 years ago and at the 2024 Democratic National Convention.
Abuissa has focused his campaign on connecting with the community and said if elected, he wants to make housing more affordable, provide more support for marginalized groups in Iowa City, and create a more sustainable environment.
“I do have a vision — listen and empower,” he said. “I want to listen to the communities. I think we have lots of expertise in this community. I want to represent those groups.”
Abuissa wants to bring his insight from the Department of Transportation, saying it has allowed him to work with other cities in Iowa.
“Through my exposure to working with those cities, I feel like there is a different culture in some of those cities, and I think Iowa City can benefit from becoming a little more open, a little more active, to achieve the goals I mentioned,” he said.
Incumbent Megan Alter aims to improve child care
Megan Alter is running her third campaign for an at-large seat. She formerly served as mayor pro tem in 2022. Alter grew up in Michigan and lived in New York City before moving to Iowa City in 1995. She currently works as a senior resource manager at ACT.
While serving as a city councilor, she has helped implement fare-free public transit, launch eviction prevention initiatives, expand investment in affordable housing, and establish a wage enhancement program for child care workers.
If reelected, Alter said she wants to put focus on child care. She has worked with a coalition of providers, directors, and nonprofits working in child care adjacent areas with the Wage Enhancement program, a locally funded initiative providing an hourly pay supplement to eligible child care workers.
“It’s important to help stabilize the industry a bit, but we need more slots, we need it to be more affordable,” she said. “We need to continue to help with wage enhancement. How do we, as a local government, start to think about and act on creating more local solutions? It’s not going to be a silver bullet, but if we can help ease some of the pain points, I think that’s going to
be really important.”
Alter said she also wants to reach out to the public more to get input from the community during campaign season.
“We get out, we go to farmers markets, have coffee, or knock doors, and it’s great,” she said. “We need to do something similar, perhaps not quite so intensively —but we need to do similar outreach as an individual on council to have these conversations — not just wait for people to have an issue and come to us.”
Alter has endorsements from former Iowa City Mayor Jim Throgmorton, current Mayor Pro Tem Mazahir Salih, and District B Councilor Shawn Harmsen, according to the campaign’s website.
Newcomer Clara Reynen plans to bring a young voice
Clara Reynen is a librarian, a graduate student at the University of Iowa, and an active member of the Campaign to Organize Graduate Students, a graduate student union through the UI. She is from the Midwest and got her bachelor of arts at the UI in theatre arts and religious studies.
Reynen said she wants to focus on public safety in Iowa City.
“Things that make our community safe are things like housing, [adding] bike lanes,” she said. “When we are meeting people’s material conditions, we are keeping them safe.”
If elected, Reynen said she is interested in bringing a younger voice to the city council to strengthen connections between the city and the university, adding the council should have more access to UI leaders to discuss issues.
“The easiest way to get somebody to take better care of their community is to make them feel like they have a stake in it,” she said. “And I really do believe if college students felt more involved and more encouraged to become a part of the community, they would take better care of it, too.”
With endorsements from District C Councilor Oliver Weilein and District A Councilor Laura Bergus, Reynen said she appreciates support from sitting members and wants to take a similar approach to theirs
on the council.
“I really believe I will be in the same position where I’m not just going to sit back and wait for things to come across the desk,” she said. “I want to be out there listening to community members, making sure the city is working, and making sure people’s basic needs are being met.”
Incumbent Bruce Teague says, “We all belong here.”
Current Mayor At-Large Bruce Teague is the longest sitting member on the Iowa City City Council, starting his first term in 2018. Originally from Chicago, he has lived in Iowa City for 31 years, and is the owner and CEO of Caring Hand & More LLC.
Iowa City does not have a direct mayoral election; rather, the Iowa City City Council appoints the mayor among the sitting members in January of every even year. Teague was appointed as mayor in 2020 and has held the position since.
With the campaign slogan “We all belong here,” Teague said he wants to provide a safe community for marginalized groups, including the LGBTQ+ community, the transgender community, immigrants, and the unhoused, through greater access to the “essentials of life” such as food, clean water, and housing.
“Various individuals, various groups are being attacked,” he said. “And at the end of all of the noise and all of the activities, I really think it is so important for us to continue to reside as a community and that we all belong here, even in the moment of these challenges.”
Teague oversaw Iowa City’s successful application to host a Bloomberg Harvard City Hall Fellow for a two-year, paid fellowship. The program places recent graduates in city halls to help address pressing urban challenges. He plans to tackle affordable housing differently from his opponents, working with housing coalition partners, developers, and vocational training programs to find more ways to attack the issue.
“With that designation, I have brought a resource to the city that really has advanced us,” he said.
He also points to his leadership style and experience.
“The historical data that I have on where we were then, and how and what we plan to do, [I’ve] just been able to look at it through a wider lens.
