Republican Jim Carlin says he “cannot in good conscience” ask his supporters to vote for U.S. Senate nominee Ashley Hinson, who finished 48 points ahead of Carlin in this month’s GOP Primary. In an statement to supporters, Carlin suggested it’s time for conservatives to use their leverage, withhold their votes, and let Hinson lose.
Two Republicans who served alongside Carlin in the Iowa House say Carlin cannot claim to be a champion of the party’s grassroots after he sided with his fellow trial lawyers and cast his vote against tort reform when he was a state legislator. “From my perspective, Jim Carlin is both a sore loser and a selfish brat,” said House Majority Leader Bobby Kaufmann, a Republican from Wilton.
State Representative Steven Holt, a Republican from Denison who’s chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said Carlin’s “burn-it-all-down mentality” would lead to the election of Democrat Josh Turek, which could flip control of the U.S. Senate to Democrats. “Conservatives should never help elect liberals and that’s what Jim Carlin is asking people to do,” Holt said. “It would make it harder to secure the border…it would make it harder to confirm conservative judges and it would make it harder to advance President Trump’s agenda.”
Kaufmann suggested Carlin is “thumbing his nose at Trump,” who endorsed Hinson nine months ago. Carlin also ran against fellow Republican Chuck Grassley, who got Trump’s endorsement eight months before the 2022 Primary. “So my message to Jim is have a little class,” Kaufmann said, “stop having a temper tantrum and quit aiding and abetting Chuck Schumer in his bid to put a liberal in the United States Senate representing Iowa.”
Carlin was elected to the Iowa House in 2016 to represent a district in the Sioux City area and he served six years in the Iowa Senate after winning a special election in December of 2017.
