Iowa Democrat Preaches Border Security While Campaigning at Bookstore That Wants ICE Abolished

There’s something almost comical about watching a politician promise one thing while doing the exact opposite, except when you realize these are the people asking to represent you in Washington, the comedy turns sour pretty quick.

Zach Wahls wants Iowa voters to believe he’s different. He’s running for U.S. Senate on what he calls “old Democratic values” like hard work and family. His campaign website makes a big show of promising to “secure the border and fix our broken immigration system.” He talks about law and order on social media. Sounds reasonable enough, right? The kind of moderate Democrat who might actually listen to concerns about immigration instead of dismissing them as bigotry.

Then Saturday happened. Wahls held a campaign event at Dog-Eared Books in Ames, Iowa. Not just any bookstore, mind you. This place sells merchandise with “ABOLISH ICE” plastered on it. They’ve got signs right by the front door declaring “ICE IS NOT WELCOME HERE” in letters big enough you can’t possibly miss them. The store donates money to anti-ICE nonprofits and created a whole logo featuring a dog holding a protest sign demanding ICE be abolished. They’re selling stickers with it.

You know what’s wild? When reporters asked Wahls if he knew about the bookstore’s radical track record and whether he regretted choosing this venue, he just went silent. No response. Nothing. That’s not the behavior of someone who made an innocent mistake. That’s someone who knows exactly what he’s doing and hopes voters won’t notice the contradiction.

The store also hosts drag story time for kids and promotes books that got banned from schools specifically because of sexually explicit content. Now look, you can have whatever opinion you want about those activities, but they’re not exactly what comes to mind when someone invokes “old Democratic values.” Those old values used to mean something closer to respecting community standards and the concerns of working families, not pushing the envelope on what’s appropriate for children in every possible direction.

This is the problem with so many Democrats right now. They’ve figured out that their actual positions don’t play well outside deep blue cities, so they try to talk like moderates during campaign season. But their actions tell the real story. Wahls could’ve held this event anywhere. Iowa has plenty of venues. He specifically chose a place that actively campaigns against the very immigration enforcement he claims to support.

The bookstore connection runs deeper too. They’ve hosted events for Wahls’ wife before and sell her romance novels. So this wasn’t some random venue his campaign stumbled into. These are relationships. Friendships, probably. Which makes the whole thing worse because it means Wahls is either lying to Iowa voters about his real beliefs or he’s lying to his own social circle about what he’ll actually fight for in Washington.

Either way, it’s dishonest. And it’s exactly the kind of thing that makes regular people lose faith in politics altogether. When someone tells you they believe in law and order while standing in a store that wants to abolish federal law enforcement, you’re not dealing with nuance or complexity. You’re dealing with someone who thinks you’re too stupid to notice what’s right in front of your face.

Iowa deserves better than this. Every state does. We need representatives who say what they mean and mean what they say, not politicians who shapeshift depending on who’s watching. The old Democratic values Wahls claims to champion included integrity. Maybe he should start there.

Related: California Voters Want Election Integrity and Gavin Newsom Is About to Lose His Mind