Kevin Virgil is a fifth-generation Iowan who told attendees at his campaign kickoff Thursday night in Gaza, Iowa the Fourth District does not have adequate representation in the United States House of Representatives. And his message was greeted with plenty of applause with many more head nods along the way.
State Rep. Zach Dieken was the first individual to speak. He encouraged those in attendance to pay attention, get involved and do their homework on the candidates.
“We need good people in Washington if this country is going to turn around at all,” Dieken said. “We desperately, desperately need American citizens to be involved.”
State Sen. Lynn Evans discussed meeting with Virgil at an event previously in Primghar and connecting over concerns with the carbon capture pipeline projects. Virgil then began writing on the topic and appeared on WHO Radio to discuss it.
“This guy rose pretty quickly,” Evans said. “However the IUB (Iowa Utilities Board) rules on this, it’s going to have a far more reaching effect than just carbon capture pipelines. If they say a private entity for private use can come in and use your property, what’s to say they can’t use your backyard to put up a Casey’s? Nothing against Casey’s — I stop at Casey’s every morning. But you understand the analogy there.”
Former conservative Congressman Steve King spoke at length about his experience in D.C. as well as the first few years of Randy Feenstra in Congress.
“I hear (Feenstra) is invisible,” King said. “County chairs say they never know when he is in the county or when he isn’t. He does his ‘Full Grassley’ for 39 counties but he’ll drop into a small business, do a photo-op and leave. They don’t even know he is in town. He doesn’t take questions. He’s invisible.
“And if you don’t meet with your constituents and listen to their criticism that means you’re also afraid of them. You just cannot be invisible and afraid of your constituents and think you’re going to represent the best people in America.”
The nine-term Congressman called Iowa’s Fourth District the most important congressional district in the country. King noted that the Fourth District has the power to determine the winner of the Iowa Caucus. And the Iowa Caucus has more power than any other state’s presidential primary.
Feenstra, however, votes “left of center.” He rewarded the FBI with hundreds of millions of dollars for a new headquarters.
“That’s not a hard vote,” King said. “Even if you’re squishy and spineless that’s not a hard vote.”
Virgil, who graduated from West Point and served in both the Army and the CIA, has a “tremendous” resume and will serve the Fourth District well King said.
King blasted Feenstra for siding with Bruce Rastetter and the donor class over Iowa citizens in the battle over their private property rights. Tax credits for the carbon capture pipelines were stripped from the debt ceiling deal, but Feenstra joined Iowa’s other House Republicans to demand failed former Speaker Kevin McCarthy put the tax credits back into the budget to earn their support.
If the tax credits were stripped, then Iowans would not be fighting for their private property rights and against eminent domain for the carbon capture pipeline projects.
King said he knows Iowa’s representatives were in McCarthy’s office at 2:30 a.m. virtually pounding on his desk to put those tax credits back in.
They didn’t demand anything else and they had never led on anything before, but they decided this was their hill to die upon. Even Gov. Kim Reynolds called McCarthy to implore him to put the tax credits back in, King said.
“Who was the one pulling the strings,” King asked. “Puppeteer Bruce Rastetter.”
King said Feenstra has never answered for that but will need to when he debates Virgil.
“This is going to be a lot of fun,” King said. “Kevin’s brain works well.”
He cautioned, however, that the “oligarchs” have invested heavily in Feenstra and they will defend that investment with everything they have.
“We’re going to raise as much money as we can, but we’ll need the grassroots to create a groundswell,” King said. “That’s going to happen because I know there’s an appetite out there for a strong, principled, patriotic, noble individual.”
Virgil held the event just 400 yards from the location where his great-great-grandfather homesteaded 148 years earlier.
“This is a very special place for me,” he said.
He talked about issues like the Iowa DNR quietly outbidding local farmers and local buyers when land comes up for auction and the carbon capture pipelines.
Amid the final lap of the 2024 Iowa Caucus, he warned attendees the President isn’t going to be the person who fixes the country. He said the reason the media has built a multi-billion dollar industry around the presidential election cycle is because it’s “nothing more than entertainment.”
“They want you to follow that because they know there’s nothing you can do to change that,” he said. “Change will never happen from the top down. It’s going to happen from the bottom up.”
Virgil said he lived just down the road from Loudon County in Virginia where the incident happened in the school bathroom and then at the school board meeting. He said that instance is one example of the people rising up at the local level and influencing a governor’s race.
He then criticized Feenstra, noting he has never met Congressperson Feenstra, but he has heard he is a nice man.
“We’re at a point in our nation’s history where the time for nice men running things is over,” he said. “We don’t need nice men serving in leadership roles today. Nice men are who got us into this mess. We need warriors and we need fighters in Congress and at the local, state and national level. That’s why I’m running for Congress. I am a fighter. I’m going to fight for you. I know exactly how to be loud and be loyal to the people that I serve.”
Virgil will govern based on three principles, he said:
- Is it constitutional?
- Does it put America First?
- Be honest and truthful.
He criticized Congressperson Feenstra for voting to renew FISA without any reforms and allowing the continuous, warrantless surveillance of citizens without their knowledge.
“That is a blatant violation of the Fourth Amendment,” Virgil said. “I will never support that and I will do everything I can to shut it down.”
He called the carbon capture pipelines “one of the most egregious violations of property rights” and the core reason he ran for Congress. Virgil noted he could not believe it was happening in conservative Northwest Iowa where a politically connected company is using eminent domain to take land from landowners for “no public purpose” whatsoever only to make a gain for themselves.
“I intend to shut that pipeline down,” he said.
He also wants to decentralize government and return to the states what is not expressly up to the federal government in the Constitution.
Now is the time to end the idea that politicians are the problem solvers, he said.
“When you look at the state of this country today, it’s time to look at ourselves and realize the only way we make it out is if we all take a much more active role in the government of our states and our communities,” he said. “I need an army of activists to help me. I intend to be loyal to the Constitution. I need to know I have an army of activists behind me.”
During the Q&A session, Virgil said he would 100 percent support a government shutdown if that’s what it takes to balance the budget. He also said he would do whatever he could to release the Jan. 6 political prisoners.
He said he isn’t sure how many Hamas terrorists and other terrorists have crossed the border, but he guaranteed it isn’t zero.
“When I’m elected to Congress one of the first things I’ll do is stand on the House floor and demand Mayorkas be arrested and tried for treason,” Virgil said. “Because that’s what this is.”
