Art Cullen.

Chris Jones fancied himself trolling for walleyes in the backwaters of the Upper Mississippi River near Lansing in his retirement.

Instead, the 65-year-old found himself disembarking at Philadelphia for the NetRoots conference on his way to a goal of raising $1 million in his uphill Iowa Secretary of Agriculture campaign against Republican incumbent Mike Naig.

“I might be the dog catching the bumper,” said Jones, who was run off from state employment as a water researcher because he kept finding that the water is polluted by agri-industry.

Jones could win. It’s a long shot, considering he is running against a former Monsanto lobbyist who farms near Cylinder, a Republican incumbent in a state that hates change.

Jones jumped off the airplane two days after a primary election that saw Zach Lahn claim the Republican nomination for governor. Lahn campaigned as a “regenerative” farmer from Belle Plaine worried about the connections between agri-industry and cancer. He says that Big Ag is stealing our family farm legacy and rotting rural communities. It is as if Lahn and Jones are singing from the same hymnal.

“Why are we doing this if nobody is happy?”

That is the Jones refrain. The average Zach is not making money. Cancer is spreading. It is in the air: Dr. James Merchant, founding dean of the University of Iowa College of Public Health, tells me that the links between lung cancer and livestock confinements are clear and growing. The Iowa Legislature just approved $3 million for child cancer research. The University of Iowa last week launched a $10 million study on cancer causes, with $5 million coming from Sharon and Kyle Krause (formerly of Kum and Go).

Lahn’s opponent, Democratic State Auditor Rob Sand, proposed an additional $20 million into Iowa cancer research. Sand, too, is making links between ag chemicals and cancer.

This is the conversation Iowa has needed for about 40 years.

“People don’t want to die of cancer from living here,” Jones said. “They’re fed up and they’re connecting the dots.”

More hogs and hens cooped up leads to disease in the herd and the humans. How much more load can Iowa handle? Voters are starting to ask questions that were heretical in GOP circles just a few years ago. “What? You don’t want to subsidize ethanol production and CO2 pipelines through your land?” A troupe of northern Iowa farmers who call themselves “The Lobe Rangers” are calling out the toxic construct in a social media schtick that attracts a growing list of followers.

The conversation began to change in 2015 when the late Bill Stowe, then CEO of the Des Moines Water Works, prosecuted an indictment of agricultural pollution of the Raccoon River. The lawsuit against Buena Vista, Calhoun and Sac counties was dismissed but the conversation never stopped. Jones got in trouble for saying as a state employee that we produce as much manure as 125 million people.

Last summer Des Moines imposed mandatory water conservation because of nitrate pollution. At the same time, Polk County released a report from the state’s leading academic scientists essentially confirming Stowe’s allegations made a decade previous. People packed into Sheslow Auditorium at Drake University to demand change a year ago this month.

If earnest, Lahn finds himself in direct odds with Secretary Naig on the same ticket.

“Absolutely it helps me,” Jones said of the milieu.

We’ve been writing about nitrate in the Raccoon River for 37 years. We have been ridiculed, boycotted and banished over it. We live to tell, as does Jones. Finally, the issue is getting some traction, when a former Koch employee like Zach Lahn testifies.

Jones says that door-knockers hear that education is the Number One issue for the November general election. Water quality and cancer are right behind. Seventy-five percent of Iowans agreed with Bill Stowe (who died of pancreatic cancer at age 60) but it took this long for the politics to catch up.

Jones is riding the wave. Naig endorsed Randy Feenstra for governor. Bad bet.

The Iowa Democratic Party immediately tried to label Lahn a carpetbagger whose principal residence is in Kansas. For a carpetbagger, he seems to get what animates Iowa voters. Lahn hit a nerve when he talked about the fact that we are driving young people off for lack of opportunity. That is rooted in ag consolidation, which is predicated on petrochemicals. Lahn made a living at the hands of the Koch Brothers, kings of nitrogen fertilizer. Irony and politics share a pillow when the money all spends the same.

Jones is the one without the money, running into the wind and against the odds. Naig is tending the rose garden with Roundup, gathering up his funds to defend and prop up a statistically fatal status quo. That approach didn’t work for Feenstra. Jones is not measuring the curtains, but he thinks this might be a moment.

Art Cullen is editor of the Storm Lake Times Pilot newspaper, where this column first appeared on Friday, June 5. It is republished here through the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. Please consider subscribing to the collaborative at iowawriters.substack.com and the authors’ blogs to support their work.