I’ve written about Ryan Melton’s campaign for congress here before and posted his newsletters. Correct me if I’m wrong but as far as I can tell, Melton is the only Democrat running for congress in Iowa that sends out an informative, educational newsletter. In fact, I don’t believe I’ve seen another newsletter from the other candidates. The only thing I see from the others are social media posts at typically Democratic events – I hope they are getting outside their comfort zones – and of course the frequent money-ask emails which there is absolutely no value in opening, and for those who can afford them, paid ads.  Which is a real shame. A political campaign should educate voters.

Ryan Melton’s campaign newsletter is one of the few political emails I receive that I am actually interested in opening to see what he has to say. It’s not that he doesn’t ask for donations. He does, but he first provides something of value describing what he’s hearing from voters and talking about his values and priorities. It’s not just a robo-mail offering some scary scenario then “if you want to prevent this donate to my campaign.”

Don’t get me wrong, I like all the Democratic congressional candidates. I want them all to win and have donated to them and will of course vote for Bohannan whose district I live in. I’m just saying when the only thing you see from the candidates is a mass email asking for money or a paid ad or social media post likely posted by a staffer, you don’t feel like you’re getting to know the person and it kind of feels like a disconnect. Just for the record, I do make it a practice to like and share everything the Democrats post wherever I see it.

I do realize IA-04 is very red and is an uphill battle for a Democrat. But Ryan Melton is working hard making the progressive case to voters in the district and it makes sense for Democrats to support his campaign.

Here is this week’s newsletter from candidate Ryan Melton. He obviously writes it himself and each newsletter ends with an invitation to volunteer as well as a donation request, the very last thing. This week he also includes a link to a panel discussion he was on, the nationally syndicated Arnie Arnesen show. you can click to listen below. If you would like to sign up for his newsletter, scroll down to a link to his email.

As he has pointed out, he’s not being told what his talking points should be. His words are his own.  Authenticity is a good thing.

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This is Ryan Melton, Democrat running for the U.S. House in Iowa’s 4th Congressional District. During my 2024 campaign, I’ll send you a weekly email to keep you in the loop while not overwhelming your inbox. Typically, the newsletter will be a review from the week prior: Where we went, what issues of note were on the minds of those I met with, where we’ll be in the next week, etc.

Where we went and what people were concerned about:

Last week was my first light week schedule-wise in quite some time. On Monday, I turned in our 2200+ signatures to get on the ballot as the only Democratic candidate running in the 4th Congressional District after months of hard work alongside my amazing volunteers who helped gather signatures with me. I decided then to take the weekend to visit my grandparents in Nebraska that I hadn’t seen in quite some time, and I’m grateful I did. Before I left though, I was on Arnie Arensen’s nationally syndicated radio program, which was recorded Friday and aired today. I’ll post the link below in the media/links section.

Last week on the campaign trail, the hot button issues folks cared about the most were:

The number one issue that came up last week was poverty. I’m a believer that mitigating and. in an ideal world, eliminating poverty is a worthwhile goal. I also think we have the resources in our nation of plenty to make significant strides here if there was the political will to do so. I firmly believe we should raise the federal minimum wage to an eventual living wage, we should strengthen labor unions, and we should create a tax system in which the wealthy pay their fair share.

However, when we have over 30 million people in poverty in the U.S., many of them children, when we have more people working harder for less even as the productivity levels of our workers have climbed over the years, when we have seen such a dramatic increase in the wealth gap nationally as over half the nation struggles paycheck-to-paycheck, it is clear that those in power in legislatures across the country have decided to accept poverty and to amplify it. This is true despite the fact that notable reductions in poverty would result in notable reductions in baseline stress and desperation, which we know would lead to reduced health care costs, substance abuse, crime, etc. We should reduce poverty just because it’s the right thing to do, but it would create a better society as well.

On my socials this week in response to my views, I heard from some that those in poverty are lazy, that they deserve their lot, that increasing wages would automatically lead to inflation so we can’t do that, and that social safety net programs marry people to those programs and keep them in poverty. I grew up in poverty, surrounded by people who worked hard at their full time jobs and yet still had to receive some government assistance because they weren’t paid enough, who certainly weren’t lazy. I’d argue also that an argument that increased wages automatically means inflation is actually an argument critical of the status quo, because I firmly believe we shouldn’t have a baseline where corporate power is so absolute that we can’t boost tens of millions out of poverty for fear that corporations will then notably increase their prices. Finally, growing up in my poverty -stricken neighborhood in Omaha, no one was content. No one wanted to remain in that struggle, and getting some food assistance benefits didn’t change that. If anything, those food stamps helped give folks the small boost they needed to put themselves in a stronger financial position.

I will continue to focus on highlighting and mitigating poverty throughout this campaign.

Let’s keep fighting the good fight together.

Our schedule for this week:

This weekend, I’ll be hitting county conventions in Story, Hamilton, and Marshall counties, speaking at each one, and will be speaking with my friends Penny Vossler and Margaret Liston, state house and state senate candidates respectively, in Boone at the Dutch Oven Bakery at 1 pm Saturday.

Recent press/social media posts of note:

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/staff74238/episodes/2024-03-18T09_33_02-07_00

We again are rejecting all Corporate PAC money, so we really rely on, and are extremely grateful for your support. We’ll spend your donations on ways to expand our reach to as many voters as possible, including:

-Post cards and other mailers and postage

-Hand out cards for events

-Text messaging campaigns

-Transportation costs for events and door knocking

-Campaign website costs

-Radio ads, Social Media Ads, and (hopefully) TV ads

-Our campaign managers

Finally, if you have anyone else in mind that would like to be added to our email list or who would be interested in volunteering, let us know at melton4iowa@gmail.com!

Let’s keep fighting the good fight together!

Ryan Melton

Donate to help our campaign!

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