Once listed by the Des Moines Register among the “50 most sought-after Republican influencers…in the lead-off presidential voting state” and a former Sioux City Journal “Newsmaker of the Year,” Sioux City’s Cary Gordon weighs in on the Iowa Caucus contest between Trump and DeSantis. “Are we going to turn this into the Hunger Games?”
Sioux City Iowa’s Cary Gordon, an influential voice during past Iowa election cycles, who made waves when he publicly challenged the IRS and ACLU to sue his church for putting too much religion into his politics, is speaking out again. “I’m very troubled about the spectacle of a national election process and how American life might deteriorate during the coming months of this new year if we don’t get the Iowa Caucus vote right. When I consider the potential powder keg our popular vote system could produce in the current political environment that is rife with distrust and fear, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit my grave concerns.”
Gordon has occasionally appeared on the public scene across his tenure as a pastor at Cornerstone Church* for the last 29 years to communicate something that he believed was important. He first appeared on the public radar in late 2001 after the tragic murders of 7 Sioux City residents, including a mother and all five of her children, crimes remembered as the worst and most high-profile serial murders in the history of the State of Iowa. He again ascended the public stage in 2006, forming the committee “Sioux Citizens for Responsible Government” – a group that succeeded in a formidable struggle to change the council-manager-styled local government of the City of Sioux City, making it possible for the residents to vote for the direct election of their mayor for the first time in their lifetimes. Memorably, he rose in 2010 as an outspoken leader against judicial oligarchy, playing a critical role in what became a successful state-wide campaign to oust three Iowa state supreme court justices from the bench. Those judges were responsible for creating “gay marriage” at a time when state laws strictly defined marriage as the exclusive union between one man and one woman. Finally, Gordon was the face of the highly acclaimed documentary film, “Enemies Within: The Church,” released in 2021.
Gordon, recalling recent history, remarked that the turmoil that upset so many Americans during the previous election cycle, where widespread accusations of voter fraud were rampant, has played a serious role in jarring honest people into a place of fear and uncertainty. “Americans deserve to have an electoral process they can trust and rely upon for truth and justice.” Citing the Heritage Foundation’s Election Fraud Databasei, Gordon noted: “1,490 proven instances of voter fraud and 1,274 criminal convictions is a very legitimate concern we all share.”
The Sioux City pastor stated that, while there is no debate on whether voter fraud exists, it does remain debatable whether the last election’s voter fraud scandals actually connected to a much more highly sophisticated form of what is called systemic voter fraud.ii “There is ‘voter fraud’ and then there is ‘systemic voter fraud.’ Those two are not the same thing in the sense that one is random and decentralized, and the other is extremely sophisticated, requiring a mind-bending amount of very high-level coordination.” iii The feelings of anger and uncertainty remain. “The issue before us is that many people believe (whether it can be proven or not in a court case) that a highly sophisticated form of voter fraud – systemic fraud – was successfully unleashed against them during the previous election, and they worry there will be systemic voter fraud upending their votes again this coming November.”
Gordon said that the irony was not lost on him that the uncertainty particularly felt by supporters of former President Donald Trump appears to be driving the same toward what he called an avoidable cliff: “The same people who are most concerned about systemic election fraud may actually select the candidate that is the least likely to calm the country during another contentious election season. I really hope we can avoid another chaotic election cycle by choosing someone capable of being winsome.”
Hopeful that Iowans will choose an unencumbered candidate, Gordon said someone with considerably less personal and legal baggage than the former president would be both preferred and wise. “We need a candidate with a reputation of integrity, reliability, and stability who meets the minimum qualifications for leadership described for elected and appointed officials in the world’s first and preeminent representative republic:
“You will also choose able men who fear God from among the people, honest men who are not filled with greed, and you will make them leaders of thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens.” – Exodus 18:21
“We must change course now – at the very beginning of this nation’s very first presidential contest. If Iowans will demonstrate a change of direction in the presidential race – right now – I believe the rest of the nation will follow our example, and we can avoid unnecessary turmoil later this year and move forward as the American people.”
Gordon released a recorded video message, along with a thorough, three-page letter to walk other struggling voters through his personal and transparent process of discerning between the preeminent choices available to Iowans. “Listening to Donald Trump talk about killing babies sooner (but not too soon),iv while listening to Democrats talk about killing babies later (but not too much later), is not the kind of demagoguery we ought to have to endure in this country. No matter which side of that horrible debate gets their way, the babies just keep getting slaughtered.”
Gordon says that how Americans view and value the life of the unborn will affect every other part of the human psyche and the future of the nation. “Ideas have consequences.” He fears that Americans may keep electing and re-electing people who are content to continue the kind of abortion-permissive dialogue emphasized by President Trump during his sit-down interview with Kristen Welker on Meet the Press, a debate on human life that is satisfied to merely fight over how late it’s still allegedly ok to go ahead and kill unborn children, unwilling to discuss prohibition. Said Gordon, “We risk turning ‘The Hunger Games’ into a self-fulfilling prophecy and will someday elect a proverbial President Coriolanus Snow. I intend to do what I can to encourage everyone to stop the depraved insanity.
“On January 15th, my family will be caucusing for a presidential candidate who meets that minimum standard described in the Bible – a voting standard that proved itself infinitely superior to how American evangelicals are apparently choosing candidates today. Evangelicals make their way through candidate choices like a little kid in an ice cream shop. They wonder which flavor to choose. They mostly base their final decision on subjective instincts and emotional preferences. We have to re-learn how to obey our Bibles. We must choose only between candidates who meet that objective plumbline like, for example, Ryan Binkley or Ron DeSantis. We need to move on from the past and forge a new way forward if we are going to get this nation back on track.”
Amen
We have been submitting to advice like his for decades and doing so has brought us to where we are now.