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Christina Bohannan, a Democratic candidate in the battleground state of Iowa, is facing scrutiny from Republicans over past remarks in which she said the state would be viewed as “backward” without diversity training in schools and said the nation’s founders were inspired to preserve slavery during the Revolutionary War.
Bohannan, a law professor and former Iowa state attorney, is making his third attempt to unseat incumbent Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, R-Iowa, in the 1st Congressional District after losing by less than a percentage point in 2024. The razor-thin margin made it a razor-thin high-stakes battle to secure its majority seat as a Republican who highlighted Bohannan’s past positions on diversity, equality and inclusion.
“DEI Queen Christina Bohannan thinks George Floyd is a role model, and George Washington should be impeached,” Republican National Committee spokesman Zach Kraft said in a statement sent to Fox News Digital. “Iowans will channel the spirit of 1776 to reject this two-time loser to go back to his day job of calling everyone and everything racist.”
Bohannan made these comments now under fire from the GOP on the “Under the Dome” podcast in 2021.
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Christina Bohannan, candidate for Iowa’s 1st Congressional District, holds a press conference following a visit to Washington County Hospitals & Clinics on July 30, 2025 in Washington, Iowa. (Julia Hansen / Iowa City Press-Citize)
Bohannan, then a state representative, said he was “deeply concerned” about a bill in the Iowa Legislature that would ban diversity training, including overt bias training, from being taught in public schools and universities. He said implicit bias, the ignorant attitude a person may have about someone because of race, is “very real,” and “bad.”
“I think it’s going to be very divisive if it’s passed,” Bohannan said at the time. “I think it’s going to send a very bad message about Iowa and that it’s going to look like it’s kind of this backward state that doesn’t understand that there are such things as systemic racism.”
Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds signed that bill into law in June 2021.
Bohannan also said on the podcast that he was “glad” that a Republican-backed bill to ban Project 1619, a New York Times initiative that suggests slavery was central to the country’s founding, failed during the legislative session.
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Christina Bohannan, a candidate for Iowa’s 1st congressional district, listens during an affordable housing panel discussion on Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2024 in Iowa City, Iowa. (Iowa City Press-Citizen)
The 1619 Project focuses on “the fact that there were leaders of the Revolution who supported that Revolution because they wanted to preserve the institution of slavery,” said Bohannan, noting that there were other reasons for the revolution, such as taxation.
Fox News Digital has reached out to Bohannan for comment.
Bohannan has supported diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, as well as police reform and immigrant rights groups, for years.
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While in the Iowa legislature, he co-sponsored a bill requiring transparent bias training for health professionals, but the bill never made it out of committee.
As chairwoman of the University of Iowa law school’s DEI Committee, she encouraged students to support the Black Lives Matter movement after the killing of George Floyd. In a letter to students, he listed five different funds that students can donate to, including the Minnesota Freedom Fund and the National Bail Out Fund, both of which support police refunds.
Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks speaks during a news conference at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on Dec. 16, 2025. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
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During a 2020 candidate forum, during Bohannan’s first congressional campaign, he said he was “very active” in Worker Justice of Eastern Iowa, a group focused on ending ICE, the Washington Free Beacon reported. Last year, Bohannan donated money to the Prairieland Freedom Fund to help free illegal immigrants from prison. The Prairieland Freedom Fund wants to establish a “police-free state.”
Fox News Digital has reached out to the Miller-Meeks campaign for comment.
