Man Running to Replace Joni Ernst Campaigns on Border Security but His First Stop Raises Serious Questions

Democrats are obsessed with pushing “electable” candidates who can pull a fast one on voters in red states.

In Zach Wahls, Iowa Democrats think they finally found the "law and order" Senate candidate for the job.

His first campaign stop in Ames told a completely different story.

Wahls has built his entire pitch around securing the border – but the sign hanging in the window where he held his meet-and-greet just blew that pitch apart.

Zach Wahls Built His Iowa Senate Campaign on Border Security and Law and Order

Zach Wahls is a state senator from Coralville who went viral in 2011 giving a speech about growing up with two moms.

He has been dining out on that speech ever since.

Now he wants Iowa's open U.S. Senate seat – the one Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) is vacating – and he's running as the sensible, salt-of-the-earth Democrat who believes in "hard work and family, not handouts for billionaires and insiders."

His campaign website promises Iowans he will work to "secure the border and fix our broken immigration system."

He insists the nation must have immigration policy based on "law and order."

But at his first event in Ames, Zach Wahls walked straight through a front door with "ICE IS NOT WELCOME HERE" plastered in the window – and shook hands with constituents inside.

The Abolish ICE Bookstore Where Wahls Held His Campaign Event

Wahls chose Dog-Eared Books for a campaign event billed as "Reading and Running: A conversation with Zach Wahls and Chloe Angyal" – an evening with the candidate and his novelist wife, whose books the store also carries.

The store's politics were impossible to miss.

Right next to the front door, a sign read "ICE IS NOT WELCOME HERE" in bold capital letters.

After the Minneapolis ICE shootings involving Renee Good and Alex Pretti, Dog-Eared Books went further – designing a mascot image with an Abolish ICE protest sign and turning it into merchandise sold on the store's website.

The store also pledged 25% of its sales to the Immigrant Rapid Response Fund, a network of mostly anonymous philanthropic groups that includes the Soros-funded Headwaters Foundation for Justice.

Headwaters says it "believes in a future without ICE."

According to a Daily Caller investigation of tax filings, the Soros-backed charity has directed more than $3.3 million to at least 16 Minnesota activist groups now working to obstruct ICE operations – the same ICE agents Wahls claims to support keeping on the job.

Actually, many Democrats politicians would probably support keeping them on the payroll, they just don’t want them doing what taxpayers hired them to do.

Dog-Eared Books did not stop there.

The store has held drag story time events for children – at least one featuring a teenage drag performer – and openly promotes books pulled from Iowa school districts for sexually explicit content.

Among the titles on its shelves: Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe, widely removed from schools for graphic sexual imagery, and All Boys Aren't Blue by George Johnson, which Dog-Eared Books promotes on social media as "one of the most frequently banned books in Iowa."

Fox News Digital asked Wahls before the event whether he was aware of the bookstore's record and whether he regretted holding his campaign event there. Wahls did not respond before the event or after it.

The Soros-Funded Network Behind the Bookstore Wahls Chose

Donald Trump carried Iowa by 13 points in 2024.

Republicans hold every statewide executive office, both chambers of the state legislature, and the entire congressional delegation.

The GOP frontrunner for Ernst's seat, U.S. Representative Ashley Hinson, has already been endorsed by Trump, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, and multiple senior Republican congressional leaders.

Wahls knows he cannot win a general election in Iowa running as a radical leftist.

So he isn't.

He's running as the reasonable guy – the sixth-generation Iowan, the family man, the candidate who wants "law and order" at the border.

And at the moment no one was supposed to notice, he celebrated his campaign in a store selling Abolish ICE merchandise while a Soros-funded network bankrolled the activists working to shut down the very enforcement operations he claims to support.

That is not a mistake.

That is Zach Wahls telling two different audiences two completely different things – and hoping Iowa voters only hear one of them.

The sign in that window is the one he doesn't want you to see.

Sources:

• Alec Schemmel, "Senate hopeful who touts 'old Democratic values' holds event at store selling 'ABOLISH ICE' merch," Fox News, March 6, 2026.
• Hudson Crozier, "Minnesota Anti-ICE Activists Get $3.3 Million From Soros-Backed Charity You've Never Heard Of," Daily Caller News Foundation, February 1, 2026.
• "2026 United States Senate election in Iowa," Ballotpedia, accessed March 6, 2026.