State Senator Jim Carlin, who is the only Republican running for the 2022 United States Senate seat in Iowa as of right now, spoke Thursday night at Arnold’s Park. He addressed the crowd of 350-plus during an event with Sidney Powell and Tana Goertz.
Carlin told the crowd how he ended up in northwest Iowa 31 years ago.
“My why in this process is children,” he said.
He recounted a story from about 20 years ago in his law practice. He received a call at about 5 p.m. from a woman who was “frantic.”
“She said ‘I want to sue Planned Parenthood,'” he said. “And I said, ‘well, so do it. Why do you want to sue Planned Parenthood?'”
The woman said she had an ultrasound eight weeks ago and just found out she only has one week to have an abortion.
Carlin asked why she wanted to have an abortion. She told him her husband just left her, she has three other kids and works at a pizza place.
Carlin asked if she had considered adoption. She said no. He asked if he helped her by giving her $500 per month to carry the baby to term and a couple months afterward if she’d take him up on it.
She showed up 10 minutes later. He gave her the check and said he’d see her next month.
“Next month came and went and I didn’t see her,” he said. “And I thought, ‘I guess we lost that baby.’ A year later I got a card in the mail and a picture of a baby girl and a very emotional thank you. She had given up that baby for adoption.”
Fifteen years later he was door-knocking to run for the Iowa House.
“A man greeted me like he knew me which, when you’re in politics is kind of scary,” Carlin said. “He invited me in and several minutes later this woman walks in and I said you look familiar to me. And she said, ‘Jim, (it’s me).’ And I thought, ‘you’re the mom.'”
She took Carlin into her kitchen where a picture was on the fridge of a 15-year-old girl on a horse on a farm in Nebraska.
“You know what, it’s moments like those where you think to yourself if I don’t do anything else in my whole life, at least I got to be part of that. That’s the opportunity everybody in this room has,” he said. “When you look on the horizon 20 years from now, do you see your grandchildren free? I don’t. And I can’t stomach the idea that I didn’t fight with every fiber of my being for them, for children.”
Carlin said it is important to stick up for children and fight for them now.
“If we need motivation because our minds are so full of mush, the next time your grandson or granddaughter comes over, look in their eyes. Look them in the eye and say, ‘you know what, I’m going to stand up for you’ and mean it and do it. This election that we’re going to talk about, I waited from Election Day until Jan. 6 and I’m thinking, when are the subpoenas going to come? When are we going to see the evidence? And the people we relied on to tell us the truth never even bothered to look at the truth. We can do a whole lot better than that,” he added.
He asked how many people in the room sent Sen. Chuck Grassley communications regarding the election.
“And what was the response,” Carlin asked. “Nothing. And then he stopped disclosing where he was going to be so that we couldn’t talk to him about it. He didn’t listen and I will. And I will fight for you. And if you look up my record in the state legislature, I didn’t go down there to push a green button, I came down there to stand up for people. And that’s why I’m running.”
When Goertz spoke later in the evening, she said that Carlin’s story got her vote.
“If Jim’s story didn’t touch you right here in your heart or have a little tear well up and have you go ‘oh my gosh.’ Wow, if that story didn’t touch your heart and if that story didn’t get your vote — you’re heartless. You’re heartless,” she said. “So let’s just say it got your vote, because it got mine, are you willing to do what you need to do to get him in office?
“You’re going to tell every person you know that story. You’re going to tell every person you know that he saved a life. Do you hear me? It’s not just, ‘I’m going to vote for him.’ You tell everybody, you tell everybody that story and that’s how it grows.”
