Libertarian Marco Battaglia is no longer seeking a place on the November ballot as a candidate for the U.S. House in Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District. Battaglia, who was in his fourth run for office, has given up his campaign due to a medical emergency, according to a statement on Monday from the Libertarian Party of Iowa (LPI).
“Out of respect for Marco’s privacy, we will not be sharing additional details,” LPI Chair Stephanie Berlin said. “Right now, our focus is on supporting Marco while ensuring the party fulfills its responsibilities under Iowa law and continues to provide voters with a Libertarian choice on the ballot this November.”
The statement said the party has a nominating convention scheduled for Sunday to select a candidate to replace Battaglia in Iowa’s 3rd District.
Battaglia was not actually on the ballot when the Libertarian Party announced he’d ended his campaign. On June 8, two Republicans associated with the reelection campaign of Zach Nunn, the incumbent Republican in the 3rd District, filed a challenge to his candidacy. Annie Kuhle, a Republican strategist advising the Nunn campaign, and Wes Enos, Nunn’s deputy chief of staff, claimed the paperwork he filed to appear on the ballot was invalid because the nominating papers listed the candidate’s name as Marco Battaglia.
Battaglia’s legal name is Mark T. Andersen. It’s the name he uses in his full-time job as a correction officer, but as a musician and a podcaster, he goes by Marco Battaglia. He used the stage name in his three previous runs for office — for attorney general in 2018, for lieutenant governor in 2022 and for Congress in the 3rd District in 2024.
On June 15, the State Objection Panel met to consider the challenge to Battaglia, as well as challenges to the Libertarian candidate for governor, and the party’s candidate in Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District.
The candidate and LPI Chair Berlin argued that he was best known as Marco Battaglia, and had used that name in all his other runs for office without any objection being filed. The two Republicans on the panel, Attorney General Brenna Bird and Secretary of State Paul Pate, voted to uphold the challenge and keep Battaglia off the November ballot. The panel’s lone Democrat, Auditor Rob Sand, voted to allow Battaglia on the ballot, since he had appeared under that name in previous elections.
Battaglia appealed the decision, but on July 29, a Polk County District Court judge upheld the panel’s decision.
“If a candidate cannot add words or extraneous marks to his legal name as it appears on the ballot, it defies common sense that the law would allow the candidate to use a name on the ballot altogether different and unrelated to his legal name,” Judge Patrick Smith wrote in his decision.
Battaglia said he would appeal the court’s ruling. That appeal won’t happen now.
This is the second time Battaglia has been removed as a candidate by the State Objection Panel. Like this year, he was running as the Libertarian candidate for Congress in the 3rd District in 2024, and that year, the panel ruled that neither he nor the two other Libertarians running for Congress — Nicholas Gluba in the 1st District, Marco Battaglia and Charles Aldrich in the 4th District — qualified as candidates because the LPI had failed to follow state law in its process for nominating candidates. The case ended up before the Iowa Supreme Court, which sided with the panel.
The challenges to the 2024 nominations were filed by Republican voters. Like this year, the State Objection Panel’s decision was 2-1, with AG Bird and Sec. Pate voting to bar the Libertarians from the ballot, and Auditor Sand voting to allow them to appear.
Battaglia ran a write-in campaign in the 2024 general election, but failed to attract enough votes to affect the outcome.
According to Battaglia, even before the State Objection Panel hearing, state and national Republicans were pressuring him to drop out of the race in order to improve Nunn’s chances of beating Democratic challenger Sarah Trone Garriott. Battaglia said taht on June 7, Zach Nunn and Annie Kuhle came to his home to try to persuade him to leave the race. He refused.
The next day Battaglia received a surprise phone call from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
“He was very polite,” Battaglia told the Des Moines Register. “He basically just did a very casual politician, ‘You should drop out,’ situation.”
Battaglia later texted Kennedy to tell him he would not drop out.
Three days later, Kennedy called Rick Stewart, the Libertarian candidate in Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District, to try to persuade him to drop out in order to improve the chances of the district’s Republican candidate. Kennedy strongly suggested Stewart would get a position in the Trump administration if he dropped out. Stewart did not drop out, but he did record part of the conversation with Kennedy. He shared that recording with the Washington Post.
The State Objection Board also heard a challenge to Stewart’s candidacy during its June 15 meeting. Linn County Republican Chair Bernie Hayes claimed that Stewart’s nomination papers were invalid because the candidate listed his first name as both Richard and Rick. The panel unanimously rejected the challenge. Hayes appealed the decision, but his appeal was rejected by Polk County District Court Judge Smith.
