Mohrfeld, Watkins heat up campaign trail

LEE COUNTY – The race for the 100th District State Representative seat is heating up.
Both candidates, Blaine Watkins (R-Donnellson) and Matt Mohrfeld (D-Fort Madison) held meet-and-greets on Saturday. Watkins held a rally at Sweet Sally’s Ice Cream Bar on Main Street in Keokuk, while Mohrfeld met with voters at the home of Ian Hauck and Rebecca Bowker.
Mohrfeld has been holding house parties for the past six weeks around the county, the last one was at the home of Doug Seyb in Donnellson.
Watkins welcomed Lt. Governor candidate Derek Wulf of Hudson, Iowa. Wulf is gubernatorial candidate Zach Lahn’s running mate on the Republican ticket. State Sen. Jeff Reichman (R-Montrose) spoke at the event, as well.
In Keokuk, Watkins, who became the 100th District Representative on a special election following the death of Martin Graber, and then was re-elected in 2024, called his opponent a career politician.
He said he’s knocked on close to 2,500 doors to talk about his candidacy.
Watkins said the county is facing three hurdles; an exodus of young residents, older residents who are trying to eke out existences on fixed incomes or retirement plans who are getting priced out of the market, and creating a community for everyone.
“It’s not my job to build a restaurant. My job is to make sure you can build a community you want, and the only way to do that is to make it more affordable.”
Watkins said Lee County is 88th of 99 counties in median income.
“Taxes have gone up with no explanation from certain leaders. We have to make sure we can hold those public officials accountable,” he said.
“(Older residents) want to refurbish their house and all of a sudden they put new paint on it – and who shows up. Somebody making way too much money who wants to come and reassess their value for something they could never sell it for.”
Watkins said local politicians say they will just take more of people's money. He said over the past 10 years property taxes have gone up, on average, six percent in Lee County.
“That’s the exact reason why I’m running because I’ve seen my friends go to college, not have the opportunity to come back, and they stay up there.”
He also talked about water quality in Iowa and the “crap” farmers have taken for trying to do their jobs. He said every time he goes to Des Moines, he hears career politicians argue those constituents are just farmers in the district.
“The last I knew, it was farmers in the district that were feeding you,” Watkins said to applause.
“We have to go forward and continue to run as hard as we can. The moment we let off the foot feet, we lose. This isn’t an opponent we are running against, this is a machine. It doesn’t matter how much money or how much influence they have. What matters is you guys going and making your voices heard and doing what needs to be done for the next generation.”

Mohrfeld, who’s served on the Lee County Board of Supervisors, Fort Madison City Council, and as Fort Madison mayor, talked about cancer rates and health care, education and community colleges, and growing back rural Iowa.
He said cancer rates in Iowa are too high.
“We need to start by putting a bullseye on the wall that says, ‘this rate is unacceptable. It needs to come down’,” he said.
“There are 100 cogs on this gear and we need to start looking at them. Water quality plays into this, but it’s not the only one. Smoking plays into this, no doubt about it. Radon plays into this, and those are just the low hanging fruit.”
He added that people need to have access to the HPV vaccine, saying research supports that immunization. He said rural areas, specifically, need access to early detection and intervention.
“We have a lot of our friends that are dying from cancer that should be sitting here today,” he said. “We need to create an environment where we lower the cancer mortality.”
Mohrfeld said the companion piece to that is that rural Iowa is slowly becoming a health care desert. He said more counties in Iowa are without birthing centers than have them and he added Keokuk doesn’t have an emergency room.
“When I’m down there talking to people, they always bring up the loss of their hospital and their emergency room.”
He said the rural emergency hospital legislation can happen in Keokuk, but it’s moving too slowly. Mohrfeld said he doesn’t think the Insight people will get the facility up and running.
Insight, a Michigan-based healthcare system, has been lobbying for funding to reopen the former Keokuk hospital. They started taking a look at the hospital in late 2022 with a letter of intent.
Reichman introduced the state version of the REH bill back in 2023.
Mohrfeld said the city at least needs a triage and emergency center and he said Great River Health could be the solution.
He then turned to education and said the state needs to get back to being the best at it.
“We don’t suck at it,” he said. “We just aren’t the best at it right now.”
He extended the conversation beyond preK-12 and said the state's community colleges, specifically Southeastern Community College, are one of our greatest assets.
“We can turn out kids with machinist and CAD degrees and they can make what that mechanical engineer is making,” Mohrfeld said.
“These kids, they go to school here, they don’t have debt here, they intern here, and then they live here. When we talk about education, we have to not only look at K-12, but also community colleges.”