Xavier Carrigan is a Democratic candidate in Iowa’s third Congressional district.

I appreciate Bleeding Heartland’s analysis of ballot access challenges in Iowa’s 2026 cycle. There are real lessons there for candidates, especially around timing, margins, and understanding the rules.

I want to be clear on one point up front: I understood the rules.

I spent significant time making calls, asking questions, and working through the requirements to ensure I was operating correctly. Like many candidates, I also had to navigate inconsistent or unclear guidance at times, and I worked through that as responsibly as I could.

Where my campaign differs is not in whether I understood the process, but in how I chose to approach it.

I respect candidates like Travis Terrell and others who successfully made the ballot. Their campaigns reflect one path to getting there.

My campaign took a different path by design.

From the beginning, I made a conscious decision to run on a shoestring budget and build from the ground up. I wasn’t trying to replicate the traditional model.

I was building on a model I’ve already proven can work.

In Ohio, I earned 22 percent of the vote in a congressional primary during COVID while working 60 hours a week as a truck driver. That race was a three-person primary against candidates who had more time, more established networks, and greater access to campaign infrastructure. Even in that environment, we were able to compete.

This campaign was about refining that approach in a new environment, with higher barriers and a different political landscape.

Not every campaign is trying to follow the same playbook. Some of us are working to prove there is another way through it.

When I started in Iowa, nobody knew who I was. There was no base, no network, no infrastructure waiting for me. Over the course of months, I built that from zero. I spent time across the district at county fairs, central committee meetings, and community events. I reached out to county leaders and showed up wherever I could.

There were days early on where I stood for hours at events and barely anyone stopped to engage. To go from that to more than 1,600 people willing to sign and support this campaign is not something I take lightly. That didn’t happen because of money or name recognition. It happened because people connected with what we were building.

The final weeks of the campaign were not a sign of disorganization. They were a concentrated push to meet the threshold.

Between late February and mid-March, we held town halls across the district, and volunteers began stepping forward in real numbers. People who had just learned about the campaign chose to take ownership of it. That kind of momentum does not come from funding. It comes from connection.

By the time we approached the filing deadline, I knew we were close and pushing to meet the threshold. I was also honest with my volunteers about that. I told them directly: we are right on the line, and I don’t know if we have enough, but I owe it to you to submit what we have.

Because this campaign was never about me. It was about the people who chose to believe in it.

And that’s exactly what we did.

Not as an acceptance of falling short, but because the people who stepped up deserved to see their work carried through and evaluated on its merits.

When the numbers came in, it confirmed just how close that final push brought us.

That’s the part I believe deserves more attention.

Not just that we fell short, but that a campaign built from nothing, with minimal funding, came within striking distance of qualifying under increasingly strict requirements.

Iowa’s ballot access laws have become more demanding. That reality requires discipline from candidates, but it should also raise a broader question about what kinds of campaigns these systems are built to support.

From the beginning, this campaign has been about giving people a choice.

Iowa allows write-in candidates, meaning voters are not limited to what appears on the printed ballot.

After the objection panel hearing, people reached out asking whether they could still support this campaign. The answer is yes.

I am continuing as a write-in candidate in the Democratic primary, and voters will have that option at the ballot.