Zach Wahls

Portrait of Zach Wahls
Troy Shehan / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.0SourceCC BY-SA 2.0Original image stored without alteration.

Zach Wahls is an Iowa Democratic politician and LGBTQ-rights advocate. First elected to the Iowa Senate in 2018, he represents District 43 and previously led the Senate Democratic caucus. He co-founded Scouts for Equality.

What DI has documented

DI has documented statements by Zach Wahls on Campaign Finance, Free Speech, and U.S. Politics. Read the quotations, original sources and related cases below.

Topics in this coverage

Statements by Zach Wahls

Portrait of Zach Wahls

Zach Wahls

Role at the time: Iowa state senator and U.S. Senate candidate

Condemned

Statement summary

Wahls criticizes unlimited corporate election spending and proposes a state response to Citizens United.

“The point is straightforward: Iowa’s democracy should belong to Iowans, not to corporate dark money and not to anonymous political spenders. I’m fighting for this because I believe the public’s business should be done in public, and because Iowans deserve a government that works for them, and when we reduce the corrupting influence of corporate money in our politics, we can create space to actually solve problems, lower costs and rebuild trust.”
Open source (opens in a new tab)Zach Wahls and David Sires propose an Iowa response to Citizens UnitedWahls quotation beginning The point is straightforward; follows his direct identification of Citizens United as the target
Why we used this label

Wahls criticizes the corporate election influence he connects to Citizens United and proposes limits in response. Support for those limits is opposition to the ruling.

A participant is a subject of the case. A speaker has a statement documented in it. A commentator has an opinion or editorial documented in it.