March 28, 2024

Fiorina meets with supporters in Colfax

Candidates make race to Feb. 1 caucus

COLFAX — The last time Mitchellville hog farmer Duane Van Wyk saw Republican presidential hopeful Carly Fiorina was at the Jan. 19 Iowa Renewable Fuels Summit in Altoona. He owns and operates a 4,000-head hog confinement six miles west of Colfax, and said he supports Fiorina’s opposition to what she sees as EPA overreach with the Waters of the U.S rule, regulating large and small bodies of water — some on farmland.

That was a main topic of conversation when Van Wyk was able to speak with the candidate one-on-one Tuesday morning during a campaign stop at a Kum & Go convenience store in Colfax.

“The water standard is way too stringent,” he said. “Smart people in 2016 shouldn’t be drawing their drinking water out of the river for God’s sake. There’s wells that they can get their drinking water from. It’s a huge problem.”

The presidential candidate and former Hewlett Packard CEO rolled into the fuel station at 8:45 a.m. and met privately on her campaign RV with member of the National Association of Convenience Stores, an interest group representing fuel retailers and convenience stores at the federal legislative level, before walking through the convenience store to meet with supporters and customers who happened to be there buying their morning doughnut and coffee.

NACS spokesperson Caroline Quat said the group has invited both Democrat and Republican candidates to visit Iowa convenience stores this Iowa Caucus cycle to discuss issues ranging from Renewable Fuels Standard ethanol volume requirements to underground storage tanks. Another recent NACS presidential event held in Iowa during the 2016 caucus season was at a Casey’s General Store with Republican presidential candidate and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.

“We’re not really urging any one issue,” she said. “Right now we’re just trying to educate presidential candidates on the industry because these are local, small businesses within a community. And we want to show presidential candidates that there’s a lot that goes on in these stores and a myriad of issues that affects them from credit card fees and data security to issues with fueling.”

Fiorina did not give a stump speech in Colfax or speak to members of the media, but she met individually with about a dozen supporters and several local Kum & Go staff.

One supporter discussed with Fiorina the potential use of eminent domain to obtain private land in the proposed Dakota Access Crude Oil Pipeline — proposed to run diagonally across 18-Iowa counties. Although she did not voice support or opposition for the project, Fiorina used the moment to take a jab a Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump, criticizing the hotel and real estate mogul of abusing eminent domain with his development projects.

“There are places where (eminent domain) is really abused to take people’s property away. Donald Trump abuses it to take people’s property away, for example,” Fiorina said. “Shocked, shocked, shocked. The ultimate crony capitalist.”

Tuesday was part of a seven-day, 19-town stop for Fiorina in the final week before the Feb. 1 caucus.

Fiorina, who polled as high as the number two spot nationally in September in the crowded Republican primary field, has now dropped to near the bottom of the pack — tied with Ohio Gov. John Kasich at 2 percent support among likely Iowa caucus voters in the latest Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics Iowa Poll.

Contact Mike Mendenhall at mmendenhall@newtondailynews.com