By: Jacob Hall
SIOUX CENTER – About 30 people attended the first Pizza & Policy discussion hosted by Sioux County Conservatives on Thursday at the Sioux Center Pizza Ranch. Featured speaker John Thompson (State Treasurer candidate, State GOP Central Committeeman and Army veteran) discussed his background, the importance of grassroots activism and IPERS.
“I’m a native Iowan, veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, and graduate of West Point and Harvard University. After my time in the service I went to grad school to find a new direction. My West Point classmates were getting pink slips while on deployment after giving 10 years of service. The Army couldn’t afford to let them retire. The ones that stayed were very cautious to not rock the boat for fear of getting pushed out before earning their retirement benefits. Units led by commanders that were motivated by their pensions instead of their mission and troops were eroding the morale in our services. I wanted to do something about it. So I made pension reform my policy focus at Harvard. Here in Iowa we need to ensure we can keep our promises to our public employees but get to work early on improvents going forward. When planning our pensions and forecasting outputs I don’t want us to write checks we can’t cash.”
Thompson is focused on helping Iowa maintain Republican in majorities come 2018 when the state is without any significant federal, statewide races.
“We don’t have a Senate race on the top of the ticket next year. Without a national focus the state and county parties are going to have to carry the water usually done by the RNC. We will have more responsibility to raise money and hire staff to Get Out The Vote. With that in mind I wanted to start campaigning early to assist in the party building and coordination from the court house to the state house. We found out in November that Iowa is a Red State. The Democrats had just been out-organizing us. I want to make sure in 2018 we don’t skip a beat and pick up more seats. Then we can prove that Iowa is forever a Red State!”
In addition to Thompson, State Rep. Skyler Wheeler gave a legislative update. State Sen. Candidate Zach Whiting (District 1) also attended and spoke briefly about his candidacy in the neighboring counties.
The next Pizza & Policy event is scheduled for Feb. 23 at the Sioux Center Pizza Ranch. The featured speaker will be Tim Overlin, Executive Director for Personhood Iowa.
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