Waukee Pastor Jeff Mullen, who’s looking to knock Republican Pat Ward out of the Iowa Senate in a contentious primary, is standing by radio ads that accuse Ward of spending taxpayer money on abortions.
“Every word of the ad is true,” Mullen said in a Des Moines Register report.
Ward and Mullen are engaging in a duel of radio ads in a campaign for what some have called the most Senate primary in the state in the newly drawn Senate District 22.
The June 5 primary pits Ward, a moderate who has championed adding sexual orientation to the Iowa Civil Rights Act, against Mullen, a pastor at Point of Grace Church in Waukee who once preached that homosexuality is “immoral and unnatural.”
After the Mullen ad ran earlier this week, Ward released her own, not only correcting her voting record, but shaming Mullen as a pastor and candidate for distorting it.
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“Pat Ward’s voting record?” her ad says. “Well, it’s not what Jeff Mullen would have you believe and as a church pastor he should know that the only truth is the whole truth,” the ad says.
Ward said that she returned to the Senate while still recovering from serious injuries received while cleaning up from a storm specifically so she could vote in favor of a budget-bill amendment putting additional limits on state-funded abortions.
That’s a reversal of a position she took in 2006, the one Mullen says he’s criticizing in his ad.
In 2006, Ward was among 42 Iowa senators supporting taxpayer-paid abortions for those on Medicaid in the event of incest or rape.
Neither Ward nor Mullen immediately returned phone calls placed by Patch.
