Gerald Ott of Ankeny was a high school English teacher and for 30 years a school improvement consultant for the Iowa State Education Association. This post first appeared on Substack.

On October 27, I watched the debate between Democratic challenger Sarah Trone Garriott and Republican incumbent Zach Nunn, who are competing to represent Iowa’s third Congressional District. 

Moderators Amanda Rooker and Jodi Long, both journalists at KCCI-TV, acquitted themselves as the professionals they are. In fact, their skills rival any team of moderators the networks might assign for a presidential debate, so congratulations to Amanda and Jodi. Job well done. 

If I have a bone to pick, it might be that centering the debate on the participants’ past voting records was of little importance to me. Nunn sits in the majority party in the U.S. House of Representatives, and Trone Garriott is from the minority party in the state Senate where Republicans hold a huge majority. Apples and oranges. 

So, discussion of any specific vote—like boys in girls bathrooms—was not persuasive. It is well known that Trone Garriott’s personal disposition is to protect and defend minorities from the bigotry of the majority. Republicans like Nunn do not recognize the legitimacy of LBGTQ individuals, especially transgender people. Nunn is on record supporting numerous bills to deny human rights and dignity to LBGTQ people.

A new ad says Trone Garriott supports “gender fluidity,” which means she’s okay with a person telling her they feel uncomfortable with the gender assigned by their genitalia. I can imagine a person baring their soul to her. Hard to imagine a constituent having a similar conversation with Nunn, who must think “gender dysphoria” is a fake malady.

As with her Democratic colleagues, Trone Garriott’s concern is for the one transgender girl, her well-being, her success in school—and her future prospects in an often hostile environment. And that she be included in a school’s academic, social, and extra-curricular activities on the same basis as her cisgender classmates.

Feeling unwelcome, being isolated, badgered or bullied, outed without permission can lead to gender dysphoria, a medical condition. On October 21, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to allow the Trump administration to immediately enforce new medical restrictions for transgender people in federal prisons.

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth ordered treatments to continue and pointed out that untreated gender dysphoria can cause severe side effects like depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts.

Nunn’s ads go on to make obscene claims about Trone Garriott’s positions on sex change and drug-related therapies. She is opposed, adamantly so. The state legislature has no business intervening with children’s care. That’s the bailiwick of parents and qualified medical personnel.

As do many other Democrats, she wants the sports-participation questions taken out of the heavy hands of state legislatures. Every sport is different. Michigan, for example, uses a special panel to decide these questions on a case-by-case basis.

In the state Senate, Trone Garriott supported a bill to add provisions to Iowa’s pre-existing mandate for sex education in public schools. The bill would add age-appropriate instruction by learning the names of body parts, recognizing and reporting abuse, and showing empathy for human differences in our huge, diverse society. The Republicans nixed the bill, of course, and Nunn ridiculed her for her audacious support of all children.

In this debate, time spent debating these particular issues was time wasted. 

Imagine a mobile suspended above a baby’s crib. Every real issue drops from the top of the mobile like the tentacles of an octopus. For Republicans the center of the mobile is President Donald Trump. To keep Trump suspended, Nunn and his GOP colleagues must accede to his wars, tariffs, abandonment of allies in favor of enemies, abuse of immigrants, ballrooms, extortions, vengeances, bigotry, and so on, to every cruel, inane, or insane act without whimper. 

So, this election is the most important of my lifetime. For whatever reason, the U.S. has fallen under the grip of the most corrupt, vengeful, kleptocratic man in the history of our nation. He has withdrawn from our alliances and supped with our enemy in ways that weaken our nation and harm our peoples. 

Congress has the power to shackle the egregious acts, but Congress has not done so. On the contrary, Congress follows his corrupt lead with the sycophantic allegiance reserved for a king, dictator, authoritarian, or unitary regime. All the Republicans have conspired to shield him from accountability, and they rubber-stamp his every act.

Zach Nunn is a part of that conspiracy. It is for this reason that Nunn needs to be replaced. This is true irrespective of whatever bipartisan good he may have supported. 

I have proudly voted for Sarah Trone Garriott. She will be a part of a new, sorely needed Democratic majority. 

In The New York Times Opinion Section this week, columnist Jamelle Bouie wrote:

We may well be less than a week away from a Democratic sweep of Congress. There are prominent voices within the larger Democratic coalition who think it is counterproductive, even foolish, to pivot to hearings, investigations and political accountability. In their telling, most Americans are tired of the noise. The only thing they want from Congress is good government.

I want good government, too. But good government, now or in the future, is impossible without accountability. To set that aside is to condemn the United States to another national exercise in corruption and authoritarian rule. And I would hazard that after nearly two years of abject lawlessness — including summary killings by agents of the state — there are many tens of millions of Americans who also want to hold the administration and its allies responsible for their actions.

Our nation’s experiment in executive aggrandizement has gone too far. If accountability means anything, it must mean binding both the president and the presidency with law. It is the essential task of the next Democratic majority, and the next Democratic presidency for that matter, to begin the reconstruction of American democracy with the rule of law in mind.

That Trump is something like the apotheosis of the dysfunction of the American system does not mean that he is the end of the story. He may well be the beginning of something much worse. Our job is to make him a blip in the history of American democracy and not the opening act of its demise. 

I concur with Bouie‘s call for accountability. Special counsel Jack Smith tried, but Trump found a way to slip from the jaws of law and order. What happened on January 6, 2021 was a serious crime on so many levels, and Trump avoided the consequences of his crimes … by running for president and winning. 

Fool me once (2016) shame on you. Fool me twice (2024) shame on me … for not being persuasive enough with our neighbors who think this conman should have been returned to the White House. 

Sarah Trone Garriott will stand for accountability, but Zach Nunn will not.

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Top image: Screenshot from KCCI-TV’s video of the third Congressional district debate on October 27.