(Griswold) Incumbent Iowa House District #18 Representative Tom Moore is seeking his sixth term in the upcoming election. This time, he faces a challenge from Tripp Narup, a current Villisca City Councilman and Democrat. Moore focuses on serving the people in his district and southwest Iowa to the best of his ability.
Moore highlights several controversial issues in the area, including wind farms, solar projects, and carbon pipelines.
He also emphasizes the pressing need to reduce property taxes, which have significantly increased due to inflation and impact homeowners and landowners.
With 33 years of experience as an educator, Moore takes pride in the improvements made in education, such as adding 150 teachers, which eliminated the Praxis II Exam. He also notes the passage of the highest pay increase for starting and veteran teachers as another accomplishment.
In addition to education, Moore supports the region’s rural hospitals, which he considers an integral part of rural Iowa. He has also been actively involved in mental health and suicide prevention initiatives in the area.
Villisca City Councilman Tripp Narup is running on the Democratic ticket for Iowa House District #18. He is challenging incumbent Tom Moore of Griswold, who is 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 OK 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 inflation rate, 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 two-thirds of Page County.
