A poll released Monday shows nearly
half of Iowans would retain Iowa Supreme Court Justice David Wiggins.
Forty-nine percent of respondents to a
Des Moines Register Iowa Poll said they want to retain
Wiggins, while 41 percent said they did not.
Conservatives angry at the state
Supreme Court's unanimous 2009 ruling which brought gay marriage to
the Midwest have targeted Wiggins for ouster. In 2010, voters axed
three judges from the bench. The remaining three justices are up for
retention votes in 2016.
A “No Wiggins” bus tour rolled
through 17 Iowa cities last week. Boarding the bus were former
Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal,
National Organization for Marriage (NOM) President Brian Brown and
Iowa Rep. Steve King.
Bob Vander Plaats, the president of The
FAMiLY LEADER, is spearheading the campaign to oust Wiggins.
At
an event last month, Vander Plaats compared marriage equality to
slavery.
“It is the court that should be
independent – free of politics – to uphold the constitution, not
to trample on the constitution, not to insert politics in the
constitution, and not to run the leftist agenda through the court
system,” he said.
Vander Plaats then went on to describe
the impact a ruling can have: “One opinion, Dred Scott:
Blacks are property. One opinion, Roe v. Wade: We've killed
sixty million babies off a court's opinion. One opinion, the Varnum
opinion and you are now seeing same-sex marriage infiltrate this
state.”
Wiggins released a one-sentence
statement in response to the poll.
“In my conversations with people
around the state, I get the sense that Iowans are getting more
comfortable with the present state of the law,” he said.
(Source: Des
Moines Register.)