Sutherland man mounting a primary challenge

**Photo Kevin Virgil will challenge Congressman Randy Feenstra in the Republican primary this June.** Photo by Gordon Wolf

Kevin Virgil, of rural Sutherland in O’Brien County, said his opponent in the Republican primary for Iowa’s 4th Congressional District, Randy Feenstra, has failed to uphold the Constitution on many occasions.

He believes voters have taken note of this and that he can win over Feenstra and make inroads in Feenstra’s overwhelmingly Republican home county – Sioux County.

Virgil is a West Point graduate who served in the 82nd Airborne Division and the 75th Ranger Regiment. He went on to business school at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, and then pursued a career on Wall Street. After 9/11 he joined the CIA as a case officer. When Virgil returned home again, he spent over a decade starting and growing companies. He was the co-founder of Polysentry, a data analytics company that serves government and commercial customers.

So far, Virgil has visited 24 of the district’s 36 counties, including a stop in Crawford County on Tuesday where he spoke at Prime Times in Denison.

“The people there (in Sioux County) are increasingly aware of how he (Feenstra) has voted or failed to vote on their behalf over the last three years,” Virgil said. “There’s a lot of frustration there.”

He admitted his campaign knew from the beginning that Sioux County would be a outsized priority. It’s not the most populous county in the 4th District but it’s certainly one of the most important, he added.

Virgil has spent a lot of time in Sioux County and said there is a lot of dissatisfaction about how Feenstra is representing the district.

He continued that the 4th District is the most conservative district in Iowa and one of the most conservative districts in the nation.

Voters in the 4th District re-elected former Congressman Steve King for nine terms “because, whatever you thought about him or his opinions, you know that people were comfortable with how he always worked hard to pull the conversation at the national level in Congress in a conservative direction as hard as he could, and I think they appreciated that. Randy Feenstra has not done that,” Virgil said.

“Most egregiously in my opinion, and this is the issue that really converted me from a concerned citizen to an activist, people here are grappling today with efforts to build a carbon capture pipeline and how Summit Carbon Solutions has high level political connections in Iowa and across the upper Midwest,” said Virgil, “and they are seeking to force eminent domain judgements against private landowners, obviously without their consent. There’s no clear public benefit for that pipeline which therefore makes it a clear violation of the 5th Amendment.”

Virgil claimed that Feenstra worked to increase the value of the tax credits for CO2 removal from the atmosphere and that those tax credits make the pipeline financially viable.

“He hasn’t stood up for true conservatives either,” Virgil continued. “Back in January there was a continuing resolution (to fund the government) that was up for a vote and there were 106 conservative members of Congress as well as two Democrats who voted against funding the federal government because they wanted to apply pressure to the Biden Administration to close the border. Randy Feenstra did not vote with those conservatives.”

Virgil said he has three principles he intends to uphold when serving the 4th District.

“First, I intend to uphold my oath to the Constitution, and I’ve said many times that I will only vote for legislation that passes that litmus test. If there is something on the floor for a vote that doesn’t surpass that test, I will vote for a full stop. I fully expect to vote no a whole lot more than I vote yes, which I think is what Congressman King often did,” Virgil said.

He has received the endorsement of King.

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Virgil added a lot of other members of Congress and the Senate who he respects uphold that principle every day, just as he intends to do.

His second principle is the need to radically decentralize the federal government.

“People ask me what I think is the greatest national security threat we face today. It’s not the southern border, it’s not the Chinese Communist Party. It’s a federal government that’s completely out of control,” said Virgil.

“Today we have over 3 million full-time employees in federal government. That is the root cause of our $34 trillion deficit. It’s going to bankrupt us with all of the entitlements and all of the overhead that entails,” he added.

“Why is it that we employ the same number of people in the federal government today that we did at the end of World War II. There’s never been a sustained reduction in that head count,” Virgil continued. “Meanwhile, out here in the real world, the productivity has increased 225% in the last 80 years. What that means is that one person working today in a job out here on Broadway can do the same work today that two and one-half people could do 80 years ago. The world has learned how to be more productive thanks to technology and better processes, but the federal government has never learned how to do that. And what’s worse is I think that we now face that situation where there’s this increasing belief among government employees in many agencies that we are somehow here to serve them and not the other way around.”

Virgil said he supports a radical drawdown in the federal government and the expense of the number of people it employs. He believes there are many agencies in the federal government that simply don’t need to be there or that are unconstitutional.

“I intend that for as long as I’m in Congress, the number one issue that I intend to work for is to reduce the scope and the control that the federal government has over every American.”

Virgil’s third principle is transparency and accountability. He said that contrasts to Feenstra.

“Just to be accessible and accountable and transparent, it shouldn’t be that hard for a representative to stand in front of the people and be asked the hard questions and more importantly to listen,” Virgil said. “While people may not always agree with what I have to say, I can also promise that I’ll always make it extremely clear as to how I stand on an issue. Nobody’s going to have any doubt before an important vote how I intend to vote. I don’t think Congressman Feenstra has done a good job of that.”

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