(KIWA Staff Photo)
Statewide Iowa (RI) — Greene County Attorney Thomas Laehn — the first Libertarian elected to office in Iowa — has qualified to run for Iowa’s open U.S. Senate seat.
Laehn grew up in the northeast Iowa town of Allison, graduated from Drake University, earned a master’s degree from Louisiana State University, and taught constitutional law and political philosophy at McNeese State before returning to Iowa. He earned his law degree from the University of Iowa in 2017 and has won two terms as Greene County Attorney.
Laehn’s name will appear at the top of Iowa’s General Election ballot alongside U.S. Senate candidates Ashley Hinson and Josh Turek, who won their party’s primaries last week.
Candidates who are not the Republican or Democratic nominees faced a June 2nd deadline to file nominating paperwork with the Iowa Secretary of State’s office. However, Tuesday was the deadline for people to challenge whether signatures on those petitions were legit, and Laehn’s paperwork was not challenged. He submitted nearly 10,000 signatures, almost three times as many as required.
Three other Libertarian candidates do face challenges that could make them ineligible for the General Election: Nicholas Gluba of Lone Tree, who filed to run for governor; Rick Stewart of Cedar Rapids, who filed in Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District; and Marco Battaglia of Des Moines, who filed in Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District. All three have run in previous elections.
