Two months after announcing his run for Iowa Secretary of Agriculture, Democrat Wade Dooley ended his campaign on Wednesday.
“This is my first foray into statewide campaigning, and it’s been an eye-opener,” Dooley said in a written statement. “The amount of time, staff and money that it takes is truly daunting. And at this point in our lives, all of that is too much.”
Dooley is a sixth-generation farmer in Marshall County and the owner of Dooley Ag Stewardship Inc. in Albion, which sells seed and cover crop mixtures.
“Instead of helping our communities grow and family farms succeed, leadership in Des Moines has been more concerned with helping big businesses and political insiders who are doing just fine,” Dooley said in the Jan. 13 news release announcing his candidacy.
On his campaign site, Dooley said that as ag secretary he would “bring a practical, results-focused approach — willing to try new ideas, measure what works, and change course when something isn’t working — while working across differences to get things done for Iowa.”
In his statement on Wednesday, Dooley thanked the volunteers who worked on his campaign, and explained he “needed to put family first, especially with the impending birth of their first child.”
Dooley’s withdrawal leaves Chris Jones as the only Democrat running for Secretary of Agriculture. Jones is the author of The Swine Republic: Struggles with the Truth about Agriculture and Water Quality and one of the state’s best-known advocates for taking effective action to restore Iowa’s polluted waterways.
After earning a Ph.D. in analytical chemistry, Jones spent his career working on water quality issues in private industry, at public utilities and as a research engineer at the Iowa Flood Center, part of the Iowa Institute of Hydraulic Research (IIHR), the University of Iowa’s Hydroscience and Engineering center. At the center, Jones oversaw the sensor system that monitors water in the state’s rivers, before retiring in 2023. He informally launched his campaign for Secretary of Agriculture in November.
At the official launch event for his campaign at Confluence Brewing in Des Moines on Jan. 15, Jones spoke about the need to make fundamental changes to the industrial-style agriculture that have led to Iowa being dominated by two row crops, corn and soybeans, and CAFOs.
“I’m 65 years-old, and the water has been bad here my entire life,” he told the capacity crowd at Confluence.
He reminded the audience that Des Moines Water Works opened its nitrate removal facility in 1992, in response to dangerously high levels of nitrate pollution in both the Des Moines River and the Racoon River.
“That’s 34 years ago… and we’re still talking about the same things, year after year,” he said.
Politicians of both parties have refused to address the problem beyond appropriating money for voluntary schemes to reduce the agricultural runoff that is the overwhelming source of nitrate pollution in Iowa’s waterways.
“It’s not like the source of the problem is mysterious,” Jones said. “It’s not like the solutions are mysterious. It’s just that we lack the will and the courage to do what needs to be done.”
According to Jones, a fundamental problem is that Iowa’s farmers are making reasonable decisions about what they need to do keep their farms running, but are doing so in a bad system that has led to severe environmental degradation, a fragile state economy and the hollowing out of rural Iowa.
“We need a different decision-making framework here for farmers, where they can still be prosperous but they can farm in a way that gives us the environmental outcomes that we want,” he said.
On his campaign site, Jones has a detailed 26-point plan designed to move farming away from the corn/soybean/CAFO model to one that will help create greater diversity in rural Iowa along with a healthier environment and better quality of life in the state.
Jones will face Republican incumbent Mike Naig in the November general election.
In a statement after Dooley announced the end of his campaign, Jones said he had spoken with Dooley and “thanked him for his campaign and advocacy for sustainable farming practices in Iowa.”
“I look forward to working with Wade, Democrats, Independents and Republicans across Iowa to build a mass movement for clean water and a more prosperous and sustainable agriculture system in Iowa.”
