(Villisca) Villisca City Councilman Tripp Narup running on the Democratic ticket for Iowa House District #18. He is challenging incumbent Tom Moore of Griswold, seeking a sixth term in the Iowa House. He worked for a large publishing company in St. Louis. In 1995, he moved to Clarinda and retired five years ago in Villisca.
Narup’s friends encouraged him to run for City Council, and he is now in his second term.
At the state level, Narup feels the state continues to underfund education. He is adamantly opposed to the Voucher system, a tax-funded education savings account made available to K-12 students statewide that can be used to fund tuition fees at private schools.
While Narup is fine with the legislation that raised Iowa’s starting and veteran teacher wages, he is not fine with the 2.5 percent allowable growth the state deals out to schools each year. He says this does not cover the rate of inflation, and for southwest Iowa, he says this is a huge problem because smaller rural school districts are losing students due to a decrease in population.
Tripp Narup says he is opposed to the six-week abortion ban; he says from a healthcare standpoint, he would much rather that decision be made by a doctor and the woman involved, and not in Des Moines. Narup opposes the Flat Tax. He feels it will deplete the state coffers by around one billion dollars. Additionally, Narup opposes book bans in schools and does not consider that up to eight people in a school district (librarian, principal, superintendent, and five-member school board) decide what books belong in a library.
Iowa House District #18 includes Cass, Montgomery, and 2/3 of Page County.