Peggy Huppert retired in 2023 following a 43-year career with Iowa nonprofit organizations, including the American Cancer Society and NAMI (National Alliance for Mental Illness) Iowa. She is a board member of LIFT Iowa and a long-time progressive political activist.
Jill Alesch is running for the Johnston School Board this fall, and her supporters couldn’t be prouder.
Jill is a truly special candidate. She has lived in Johnston for more than 10 years and has two children in Johnston schools—a son who is a senior in high school and a daughter in 7th grade. Jill is running for the school board because she cares about the kind of schools her kids attend, but also the quality of education for all students into the future.
Jill was born and raised in Denison, where she attended both private (Catholic) and public schools. That gives her a unique perspective on the value and limitations of each system. On the topic of public funding for private schools she says:
“I support parental choice and do not necessarily oppose public funding for private schools. But I do believe that with public dollars comes accountability. Private schools receiving public funding should have to play by the same rules, like accepting all students and all the same oversight as public schools.”
Jill is a military veteran, serving 22 years with the Iowa Army National Guard as both an enlisted soldier and a JAG officer, earning a Bronze Star for her combat deployment to Afghanistan in 2010-2011. She was crowned Mrs. Iowa 2018 and spent that year supporting veterans’ causes.
She is also an attorney, graduating first in her class at Drake University Law School in 2004. She has served as an assistant director in the Pension Risk Transfer Department at Principal Financial Group since 2019.
Obviously Jill is a busy person. So why would she decide to run for public office?
“While I have always been interested in politics and have considered running in the past, the current political climate has caused me to change my position from I want to run someday to I need to run now,” says Jill. “I care deeply about protecting all students and ensuring a strong future for the Johnston public schools. I have a passion for public service and want to bring my enthusiasm and motivation to the Johnston School Board.”
Perhaps most importantly to progressive Johnston residents, Jill stands for ideals like preserving DEI initiatives, accepting and protecting all students, and rejecting book banning.
Jill cites the recent Johnston School Board decision to not remove gender identity from the list of protected students as a victory that caused other school districts like Urbandale and Iowa City to follow suit. This issue also highlights the value that she would bring to the district as the only attorney member of the board.
“While there are sometimes tenets of law and regulation that are black and white, many are not,” says Jill. “It is in these areas where risk is best examined. Currently, I feel a lot of the advice the Board is getting is pitched in terms of black and white, when really it’s more of a grey area. Decisions should be examined from all sides based on the risk incurred by the board. I believe I can provide some assistance in this area because it’s what I have done since becoming a lawyer in 2004.”
Johnston has three school board slots up this fall, all currently held by Moms for Liberty-recruited conservatives elected four years ago. In 2023 a group of progressive Johnston residents were successful in recruiting and supporting a slate of four candidates who beat the Moms for Liberty candidates by a margin of two to one with an aggressive, grassroots campaign. The goal is to do the same this fall with a slate of three strong, progressive candidates.
When Democrats cultivate, recruit and support excellent, progressive candidates like Jill for local elected office they are not only making their communities better, but they are building the Democratic bench. They are also reflecting a clear rejection by many communities of the extreme conservative agenda of groups like Moms for Liberty, touted and cheered by our governor and legislative leaders over the past six years.
Editor’s note: Bleeding Heartland welcomes guest commentaries supporting progressive or Democratic candidates for the November 2025 city and school board elections. Please reach out to Laura Belin if you are interested in writing.
4 Comments
you can either support the future of public schools
or you can support sending tax dollars to the private sector. Public schools don’t exist to serve parents they serve the public good including the children. Iowa desperately needs candidates like
dirkiniowacity Tue 26 Aug 10:54 AM
appears we have one
Dem candidate for governor willing to take a clear position on vouchers and another who continues to change the subject rather then directly answer the question of whether or not they are a good idea:
https://www.thegazette.com/campaigns-elections/sand-stauch-address-what-they-would-do-about-iowa-private-school-funding-as-democratic-governor/
dirkiniowacity Tue 26 Aug 11:34 AM
some more good Iowa candidates joining Stauch
“While the education reform zombie may be reemerging, well funded as ever, a growing number of Democrats are showing us what it sounds like to run as an unabashed advocate for public schools. There’s Graham Platner, the challenger to Susan Collins in Maine, who calls out the endless attacks on public schools and teachers as “the tip of the assault on all things public.” Or how about Nathan Sage in Iowa, who puts the defense of public education at the center of his populist platform:
Public schools are the heart of our Democracy, and Republicans are tearing them down brick by brick, while treating our heroic public school teachers like dirt. They are underfunding our public schools and are diverting billions of taxpayer dollars to private schools and into the pockets of billionaires behind them.
To this list I could add Josh Cowen and Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, or Catelin Drey in Iowa, who, if she pulls off a win in today’s special election to fill a state senate seat in a district that Trump carried by 11 points, will end the GOP’s supermajority in that chamber. Drey, by the way, is running as a pro-public-education-candidate and an outspoken opponent of Iowa’s controversial universal school voucher program. Plenty of influential Democrats will insist that that message is a loser. That the way for Democrats to win is to run against public schools—to talk about what failures they are, why we need to get tougher on them, and how maybe we don’t actually need them after all. I think they’re wrong, and that voters agree.”
https://educationwars.substack.com/p/is-public-education-over
dirkiniowacity Tue 26 Aug 12:07 PM
dirkiniowacity
I’ll be watching polls and other indicators to see which Democratic gubernatorial candidate seems most likely to be able to win the general election. If that turns out to be Stauch, I’ll vote for her. If it’s Sand, I’ll vote for him. After voting for more than fifty years, I’ve learned that even the greatest primary candidates have little impact on public policy unless they win general elections.
PrairieFan Tue 26 Aug 4:20 PM