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Nancy Amos is running for the Republican nomination in Iowa Senate District 42. You can find more information on her candidacy here.

1. What is the proper role of government:

The proper role of government is to protect its citizens, but it is not to micro-manage or control their lives and to pay everybody’s bills. The government, it’s good if they create the laws we live under, but they shouldn’t be trying to control everybody’s behaviors. I mean, laws are good, but you know, this ‘we’re going to tell you how much money you can make and what jobs you’re going to have’ — I don’t think they should be socialistic if that makes sense.

2. What issues do you consider non-negotiable:

“Pro-life — from conception to the grave. There’s no getting around that. Second Amendment. The Constitution. We have to keep upholding the Constitution, especially our First Amendment and Second Amendment rights.”

3. What concerns do you have about how the COVID-19 situation was handled by the government, if any:

We’ve never shut down for any other virus in our lifetime. We rushed to shut down and then they did a bailout. It’s fine to help people who need the help, but then why do you need to give however many millions to Kennedy Art Center? Then they turned around and fired everybody. Let’s make sure the money goes to the proper people who need it. One of my concerns right now is the farmers. Not that they can’t get their crops in, but the dairy farmers who are dumping milk because they can’t get the price they need for their milk. The COVID thing is making it worse. We need to reopen the economy, otherwise we’re going to really be screwed in the long run. Maybe that’s what the Democrats want, I don’t know. It’s scary times. If you’re sick, stay home. People should use precautions. Another question is who pays for it, because China is the one who is behind it. They knew about it in November. The World Health Organization knew about it in November as well and did nothing.

4. At what point do you believe a human life is guaranteed the legal protections of being an American citizen and what would you do to ensure those protections are provided?

At conception. As soon as you determine a heartbeat-like the Heartbeat bill. Our rights don’t supersede theirs. They’re a separate, tiny human being and vulnerable, so they need to be protected. I suppose through legislation and then hoping the judges don’t keep pandering to the ACLU and Planned Parenthood because they filed a suit. All those supplies that Planned Parenthood in Iowa is using could’ve been used for the hospitals — the personal protective equipment — instead of them being open. There was no need for them to be open. It’s an elective procedure.

I’ve had friends who have had miscarriages, and myself included. They still call it an abortion, but that’s not correct. Maybe we ought to rename that. You can’t have a baby floating around in there and not have infections and get ill. To me, that would be the only exception when the baby has already died.

5. Would you support a religious freedom and restoration act in the state of Iowa?

“I always support religious freedom. So, that would be a simple yes. I think pastors ought to be able to talk about who the candidates are, who is running — especially if they’re pro-life and have the freedom not to tell people who to vote for but to say, ‘hey, this is what we have.’ Our church does a thing where it presents the differences between the parties and they hand you a card. You research the candidates on your own, but yeah, I’m always for religious freedom.

6. Would you support mandatory E-Verify in Iowa?

I would support that. I just think there’s problems with it. A lot of them have fake IDs already and it’s hard to tell that from the real deal. I dealt with that in Minnesota all the time. But yeah, if they could E-Verify, I think every business should E-Verify and make sure. That would’ve helped the girl who died up by Brooklyn (Mollie Tibbetts). They were supposed to E-Verify and they didn’t have E-Verify in their business. He’d been here illegally for a long time. I think something like that needs to be set up where they can verify before they come in.

7. Would you support banning traffic cameras, why or why not?

Oh absolutely. They say the cities are going to lose money. Oh, OK. Cedar Rapids is the worst with the traffic cameras. And, you know, it violates your Sixth Amendment rights.

8. What, if any, measures would you support to curb gun violence?

We already have laws in place, enforce the laws we have. And, this is why I’m fighting for mental health, because you know, a lot of the gun violence we have is people who are mentally ill out on the street where they shouldn’t be or not taking their medicines. We have strict enough background checks. I don’t want to see background checks rushed to where you could have the gun the next day. Make sure everything is covered when you do a background check. We don’t need laws, we have laws. They need to be enforced. And we don’t need to ban all these different things. A responsible gun owner knows how to use what they have and keep it locked up when they’re not using it. I grew up around guns. My dad was a hunter, so we had all kinds of rifles and guns. We would never have dreamed of taking a gun to school. That would’ve never happened.

9. What percent of the state’s budget do you believe should go toward education?

“It wouldn’t be over 50 percent, you know. Between 38-45 percent. And get rid of the programs that don’t work like No Child Left Behind, which cost a lot of money to put in place. Common Core too. Common Core was put in place in order to raise test scores and that has not happened, so get rid of the wasteful spending in the schools. We need to focus on the basics.

10. Would you support education savings accounts?

Oh, absolutely.

11. What do you think of Iowa’s current tax structure?

Corporate income taxes are ridiculous. We have the highest corporate income taxes of any state in the nation. So, if we want companies to come here and invest and move back here and build and grow in Iowa, we need to lower the corporate income tax. We need to lower income taxes period and then, part of Kim Reynolds’ 1-cent thing is part will go to mental health, which will make the property taxes go down. I think property taxes are way too high for my town. I’m paying as much for property taxes in Mount Pleasant as people pay in Iowa City. I think some of the taxes need to be lowered, especially the corporate income tax.

12. Are there any state regulations you would like to see removed?

My husband is a trucker. I think some of those — right now during this whole COVID thing — they’re relaxing a lot of these regulations. If they can relax all these different regulations during this COVID thing, do we really need the regulations at all? Are they really serving any purpose, because if we could do without them, why do we have them in place?

13. What are your views on climate change and what, if anything, should the government’s role be in addressing climate change?

Climate change has been around forever. And nothing we do is really going to slow it down or stop it. I mean, granted we could do better with pollution and all of that and take care of ‘mother earth,’ but the government needs to stay out of it. I just don’t buy that all this green technology they’re trying to come up with is going to do anything for us except create regulations, which are going to strangle the farmers in Iowa.

14. Do you support expanding use of medical marijuana? Would you support the recreational use of marijuana?

Absolutely not on recreational because I was a drug counselor and it is a gateway drug. People will say no it’s not, yes it is. Everyone I had as a client started with marijuana and went into harder drugs after. I’m for medicinal because it works for seizures, it works for pain. I just have to figure out the gram use and how high that can be. And then it has to be regulated. It could be done through prescriptions in pharmacies in Iowa. I don’t want to say, OK, this passes to do medicinal, but then you can’t buy it anywhere. To me, that makes no sense. I know (Democrat Sen. Rich) Taylor is a big, ‘Oh, we should do that because Illinois did that.’ Why do we want to be like Illinois?

Senate District 42:

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