Vulnerable Dem's campaign pitch clashes with 'radical' voting record on top culture war issue

By Fox News · Fox News

Sarah Trone Garriott, a Democratic candidate for Congress in Iowa's 3rd Congressional District, is trying to reassure voters that she doesn’t support men having access to women’s locker rooms — a stance she believes her opponents have tried to obfuscate. "I’m a mom with two kids in Iowa public schools. Their education and safety literally keep me up at night. So, when my opponent cherry-picks and twists my record, I have to set it straight," Trone Garriott said in a recent campaign video . "I oppose letting men in women’s locker rooms," she added. WASHINGTON MOTHER SAYS SHE FOUND ADULT MALE SHOWERING IN WOMEN'S LOCKER ROOM DURING CHILDREN'S SWIM MEET However, Trone Garriott's voting record from her time in the Iowa legislature is clashing with her assertions, complicating the picture for her as she attempts to flip one of the country’s most competitive House seats and topple incumbent Rep. Zach Nunn, R-Iowa. Even before Trone Garriott captured the Democratic nomination to run in the district earlier this year, Republicans have sought to highlight parts of her record that seem to show she has championed positions farther left than the campaign she’s currently running. Many have bashed a Muslim prayer she offered up on the Iowa Senate floor and how, as a Lutheran minister, she officiated a satanic wedding . However, it was Trone Garriott’s stance on bathroom policy that Vice President J.D. Vance zeroed in on in a campaign speech for Nunn earlier this year. "His opponent voted to push biological males in girls’ sports as early as kindergarten. She was voting against banning gender transition surgeries for minors," Vance said. Vance, like other Republican critics, referred to two key votes Trone Garriott cast in the Iowa Senate: one, passed in 2023, prohibits elementary and secondary schools from letting someone enter a bathroom "that does not correspond with the person’s biological sex." A second bill, which became law in 2022, sets the eligibility rules for school an…