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Ryan Melton
Ryan Melton (Democratic Party) ran for election to the U.S. House to represent Iowa's 4th Congressional District. He will not appear on the ballot for the general election on November 3, 2026.
Biography
Ryan Melton was born in Omaha, Nebraska. He earned a bachelor's degree from Iowa State University in 2005. He earned a graduate degree from Kansas University in 2008. His career experience includes working as a supervisor in the area of personal lines insurance.[1]
Elections
2026
See also: Iowa's 4th Congressional District election, 2026
General election
The general election will occur on November 3, 2026.
General election for U.S. House Iowa District 4
The following candidates are running in the general election for U.S. House Iowa District 4 on November 3, 2026.
Candidate | ||
 | Randy Feenstra (R) | |
 | Dave Dawson (D)  | |
 | Stephanie Steiner (D) | |
 | Ashley WolfTornabane (D) | |
| Kyle Larsen (R) | ||
| Chris McGowan (R) | ||
| Ryan Rhodes (R) | ||
| Christian Schlaefer (R) | ||
 | Matt Windschitl (R) | |
| Jermaine Decker (Independent) | ||
| ||||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
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Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
- Ryan Melton (D)
Endorsements
Ballotpedia is gathering information about candidate endorsements. To send us an endorsement, click here.
2024
See also: Iowa's 4th Congressional District election, 2024
Iowa's 4th Congressional District election, 2024 (June 4 Republican primary)
Iowa's 4th Congressional District election, 2024 (June 4 Democratic primary)
General election
General election for U.S. House Iowa District 4
Incumbent Randy Feenstra defeated Ryan Melton and Charles Aldrich in the general election for U.S. House Iowa District 4 on November 5, 2024.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Randy Feenstra (R) | 67.0 | 250,522 |
 | Ryan Melton (D) | 32.7 | 122,175 | |
 | Charles Aldrich (L) (Write-in) | 0.0 | 0 | |
| Other/Write-in votes | 0.3 | 1,127 | ||
| Total votes: 373,824 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Democratic primary election
Democratic primary for U.S. House Iowa District 4
Ryan Melton advanced from the Democratic primary for U.S. House Iowa District 4 on June 4, 2024.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Ryan Melton | 99.2 | 6,482 |
| Other/Write-in votes | 0.8 | 52 | ||
| Total votes: 6,534 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
- Jay Brown (D)
Republican primary election
Republican primary for U.S. House Iowa District 4
Incumbent Randy Feenstra defeated Kevin Virgil in the Republican primary for U.S. House Iowa District 4 on June 4, 2024.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Randy Feenstra | 60.1 | 26,781 |
 | Kevin Virgil | 39.6 | 17,661 | |
| Other/Write-in votes | 0.3 | 125 | ||
| Total votes: 44,567 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Endorsements
Ballotpedia did not identify endorsements for Melton in this election.
2022
See also: Iowa's 4th Congressional District election, 2022
General election
General election for U.S. House Iowa District 4
Incumbent Randy Feenstra defeated Ryan Melton and Bryan Holder in the general election for U.S. House Iowa District 4 on November 8, 2022.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Randy Feenstra (R) | 67.3 | 186,467 |
| Ryan Melton (D) | 30.4 | 84,230 | |
 | Bryan Holder (Liberty Caucus) | 2.2 | 6,035 | |
| Other/Write-in votes | 0.1 | 276 | ||
| Total votes: 277,008 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
- Ryan O'Leary (Independent)
- Kyle Grossman (L)
Democratic primary election
Democratic primary for U.S. House Iowa District 4
Ryan Melton advanced from the Democratic primary for U.S. House Iowa District 4 on June 7, 2022.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Ryan Melton | 99.7 | 20,794 |
| Other/Write-in votes | 0.3 | 69 | ||
| Total votes: 20,863 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Republican primary election
Republican primary for U.S. House Iowa District 4
Incumbent Randy Feenstra advanced from the Republican primary for U.S. House Iowa District 4 on June 7, 2022.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Randy Feenstra | 98.9 | 51,271 |
| Other/Write-in votes | 1.1 | 596 | ||
| Total votes: 51,867 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Campaign themes
2026
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Ryan Melton did not complete Ballotpedia's 2026 Candidate Connection survey.
2024
Ryan Melton completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2024. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Melton's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.
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- First, I was arguably the first candidate for office in Iowa to run against the carbon capture pipelines and the eminent domain abuse, public health threat, excessive water use, and waste of tax payer money they'd bring. My opponent, Randy Feenstra, on the other hands, is a public supporter of these pipelines and has taken a lot of money from the godfather of Summit's pipelines, Bruce Rastetter.
- I'm looking to address the water quality and cancer crisis that are afflicting our district. We have the 2nd highest cancer incidence rate in the country, and we're the only state with a rising cancer incidence rate, and yet our electeds typically don't talk about it, afraid they'll upset special interests groups and corporate donors. Too many people are sick and dying here, we need to ask the tough questions and bring everyone to the table in a non-judgmental way to solution the problem together.
- The vast majority of the 36 counties in our 4th Congressional District have seen decades of population decline. This hollowing out has been driven by an emphasis on driving away small and mid scale farmers, young people, and unionized labor to cement Republican Party political power in rural Iowa. As a result, we now are last as a state in mental health care bed availability rate, last in OB-GYN availability rate, our public ed rankings are plummeting, we have one of the worst cases of expert/college grad brain drain in the country, and our per capital household income is lower than most of our surrounding states. My opponent is amplifying these trends by rejecting any community improvement earmark money in Congress.
2. Corporate money in politics for the reasons previously cited.
3. Health care: We need a single payer universal health care plan
4. Rural collapse: We're facing a massive aging out of our farmers and a ramp up in consolidation of landownership and power in ag, which harms everyone else in rural Iowa more and more.
Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.
2022
Ryan Melton completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2022. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Melton's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.
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- People should vote for me because I'm running for the right reasons. I'm running for them. When you compare my stances against Randy Feenstra's, it is clear I'm the candidate of the people and for the people.
- People will see that I have a history of being a quick learner. I want to get to know the people of our district so I can advocate for them.
- People understand that what happened on January 6, combined with the other anti-democratic efforts we're seeing at all levels, is untenable. We can not allow this to be the new norm. I'm the only candidate that recognizes the urgency of this moment.
-Affordable and Accessible Child Care
-Paying our teachers and child care workers what they deserve, as they often are paid well below their worth, causing retention issues that will have significant downstream impacts in our communities
-Keeping public money in public education, and properly funding our public schools
-Promoting competition in Agriculture to fight back against the trend toward monopoly that not only harms our farmers, but our supply chain, our environment, and the well-being of our communities
-Federally mandated living wage and paid family medical leave
-Defending the rights and well-being of at risk populations, such as People of Color, Women, the Disabled, and the LGBTQ+ communities
-Making college more affordable and working to mitigate the debt load that's impairing the spending potential and financial independence of our people.
-Protecting voting rights and pushing back against the weakening of our democracy
She also is on disability benefits after decades of working through mental and physical health struggles that she often didn't have the money or health care access to solve for. It was a long, stressful struggle to obtain those benefits, as her family had to help her quite often to obtain them. Since she's on a low fixed income, she doesn't have transportation, so needs to rely on my wife and I to get to doctor's appointments, the store, etc. She's a fighter, and I'm proud of her. But what if she didn't have family support? Many don't. There are so many gaps that our vulnerable people can fall through. We need to focus on properly allocating resources to help our people in need, to solve for our social safety net gaps, as people like my mom have worked hard for the communities they've been part of.
Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.
Campaign website
Melton's campaign website stated the following:
| “ |
Health Care & Prescription Drug Prices We are one of the only industrialized nations without guaranteed, universal health care. If we really are a district that values the dignity of life, we would prioritize the implementation of universal health care. Our rural hospitals are at risk of closure, something that Medicare for All would help to solve. With Medicare for All, we could see any doctor we wanted to see, instead of having to go far out of the way for “in-network” treatment. Additionally, a Medicare for All system would help alleviate crippling medical debt that hinders our independence to live the lives we deserve. It is clear our current prescription drug pricing model is not working for Iowans. Fixing this and making it possible for our people to access the medications they need to live their lives will be a top priority. It is unconscionable that Big Pharma has the ability to hike up the prices for prescription drugs that people rely upon, without regard for their well-being or ability to pay those prices. Within a Medicare for All framework, we would allow Medicare to negotiate better prescription drug prices. While we are working towards Medicare for all, we need to continue to strengthen the Affordable Care Act. While the act has done plenty of good things, we still have burdensome deductibles and other concerns we need to prioritize resolving. Every Iowan should have affordable access to all necessary health care services and affordable prescription drugs.
We need to continue to fight for affordable, accessible child care and a continuation of the Child Tax Credit monthly pay out program. The program that was implemented in 2021 lifted 3 million children out of poverty. We also severely underpay our child care workers. We should appropriately compensate care-givers to draw more of our best and brightest into the field. This would help address child care availability issues, which is a big problem in the 4th district. Hundreds of thousands of Iowans live in child care deserts, which suppresses the ability of households to gain financial independence and to live the lives they want. We should also be funding grant programs in these and other high-need industries to provide for education/training/start up costs to help people meet regulatory requirements so we can safely fill availability and accessibility gaps quickly. Every Iowa Family should have access to quality, affordable child care.
We need to pay our teachers more to attract and retain quality educators so we can provide our children with the educational opportunities they deserve. Iowa ranks as low as 46th in the nation for starting teacher pay. We need to embrace and be grateful for our teachers, in word and in deed. We also need to ensure each school is provided with the resources they need to provide for those who have disabilities. Teachers should be empowered to teach an accurate history of our nation. We can not shy away from our history, as those that do are doomed to repeat it. We also need to prioritize anti-bullying education efforts and drive accountability in this space so our students and teachers have a safe environment. Again, if we truly are going to be a district that respects the unconditional value of life, we should be paying our teachers commensurate with the impact they have on the future of our community and our nation. We need to fund Iowa schools and provide adequate pay, resources and support to our teachers.
We have long had a problem in Iowa regarding our lack of mental health and addiction treatment services. With all Iowans learning to navigate life during a pandemic on top of the already existing stressors we face, it is time to re-evaluate how we treat and fund mental health services. I will prioritize bolstering our mental health and addiction treatment capacity to protect our citizens. I will also fight for federal legislation making it harder for corporations that sell opioids to avoid legal consequences for knowingly disseminating their product in a harmful way. In addition, we need to treat addiction/drug use like a medical condition and not a crime. When people fear legal repercussions, they are far less likely to seek the help they need. Mental health care and addiction treatment services should be treated as a medical necessity.
Financial stress often makes it harder for us to raise our children the way we would like to, increases mental health issues, and prevents us from pursuing the lives we wish to live. Per the USDA, rural communities have not seen as much success in recovering from the Great Recession as urban areas have. This is not simply attributable to the fact that there’s a higher rate of retirees per capita in rural areas. As such, it is important to advocate for the revitalization of our rural communities. We need to continue to prioritize programs to revive main-street districts, funded by grants. We will also work to spur job creation in the 4th district, by prioritizing infrastructure improvements like high speed internet so Iowans have access to expanded work-from-home job opportunities. Future Ready Iowa is a great example of a governmental program that can facilitate partnerships between businesses and local communities to create job training and career opportunities. We also need to fight back against the ever-increasing consolidation of power in the hands of a few large agricultural corporations that leads to negative downstream impacts for our rural communities and economies, by promoting competition in ag so our smaller scale farmers have a fighting chance. I will also fight for a federally-mandated living wage. It is not acceptable that any Iowan can work 40 hours per week and still not be able to pay for basic needs. Additionally, I will fight for unions and place focus on workplace safety. We are also on the wrong side of history when it comes to federally-protected paid family leave. Our people shouldn’t be unsupported in this space as they are looking to create and support their families. We also need to foster a financial independence mindset for our people. To do this, housing needs to be more affordable and accessible, as we’re seeing rent inflation as corporate landlords are becoming more common. We’re also dealing with a supply-and-demand crisis when it comes to homeownership, as supply chain and other issues are hindering the building of new homes, and crushing medical, college, and credit card debt is making it harder for our younger people to buy homes as first time homeowners. The citizens of our district want to be financially independent and are willing to put in the work to make that happen, but there are too many barriers to entry that I will work to address. While some prefer to rent, many wish to own their homes to build their financial independence and have been working hard to build their savings to make this happen. They deserve our help. A district with more financially independent citizens will help bolster our ability to fight back against power consolidation and anti-democratic efforts. Iowans deserve more support in their pursuit of financial independence without having to leave our district.
When Iowans go to cast their votes, we should guarantee their voices will be heard, their voting access will not be hindered in undemocratic ways, and that the candidates on the ballot are not bought by corporate interests and lobbyists. Our democracy is teetering on the brink. I will fight for federal legislation to protect voting rights and for campaign finance reform to ensure there’s not undue corporate influence on our elections. I will seek to protect our public servants and make sure we bring harsher penalties to those that make threats of violence against them. I will also fight for federal legislation to bring harsher penalties for government officials that knowingly disseminate misinformation that damages the respect and integrity of our elections. I will fight for reform preventing elected and appointed government officials from engaging in stock market activities beyond managed retirement accounts to prevent undue corporate influence in our democratic processes. Iowans deserve accessible voting for candidates who are not beholden to corporate interests.
We’ve long failed our military vets when it has come to their health care, housing access, and other needs. Randy Feenstra recently voted No in January 2022 on HR4673, which would have automatically signed up eligible military veterans with their consent into the VA health care program. Despite Feenstra’s lack of support, the bill passed through the House, which will save vets time and stress when applying for the VA benefits they earned, as well as provide education on what benefits are available to them. Over 160 house Republicans voted no on this common sense legislation. Another priority here would be addressing gaps in VA care so our veterans are better protected. We need to remove red-tape that hinders our vets from accessing all of the benefits they have earned.
I support the USDA efforts through SAS and other programs to promote innovation in sustainable agriculture, to ensure we do our best to support our farmers while not abusing our natural resources. We need to address the environmental impact of CAFO-style agriculture. Communities should be empowered and have a voice in the placement of CAFO facilities that impact home values and pose other risks to the health of communities nearby. I will advocate for easier access to and incentivization to use modernized tools and processes that will enable a higher level of water and air pollution capture from our farms. We need to balance the needs of our economy, our environmental resources and the quality of life Iowans deserve. Additionally, for decades, the consolidation of power in the hands of a few big ag corporations has led to a decline in the ability of our family and smaller scale farmers to thrive. Under the Trump Administration, Ag Secretary Sonny Perdue endorsed this trajectory as an acceptable and satisfactory outcome. However, I am not OK with the downstream negative impacts that would come from this end game, such as the hoarding of land ownership in the hands of a few, the degradation of our local economies as main street suffers from the resultant dwindling consumer base, the diminished ability of our homeowners to capitalize on the wealth in their homes as homebuyers decide not to live in our smaller communities, the inevitable creation of a new food supply chain that would become more vulnerable to disruption, and at some point, the arrival at a point of no return where we can no longer adequately push back against Big Ag in demanding environmentally-conscious agricultural processes. We need to balance the needs of our economy, our resources and communities so Iowa’s agriculture can continue to thrive.
We need to address the racial disparities that exist in our state when it comes to policing and imprisonment. People of Color face up to a 7x higher likelihood of arrest for marijuana possession than whites in Iowa, even though People of Color and whites use marijuana at similar rates. I am in favor of legalizing marijuana to help address this issue. I will advocate for restrictions on the types of offenses that justify a legal traffic stop, and of the types of situations in which law enforcement officers can initiate high speed chases that endanger innocent bystanders. We also need to support People of Color as they pursue the lives they wish to live, free of discrimination in education, employment, housing, voting, health care, and in our public spaces. I am also an advocate for our LGBTQ+ community, a community that is at a higher risk of violence and discrimination. We are seeing an emphasis on social wedge issues that distract from what we really should be trying to accomplish, and the LGBTQ+ community often bears the brunt of these efforts. Additionally, women face a higher risk of domestic violence in Iowa than the national average, and our state notoriously ill-equips our women with the legal protections they deserve. We also need to do a better job protecting our children, in such ways as adequately funding our child protective services. We also need to end private prisons, as it creates a harmful incentivization of imprisonment of our people. Many in our district suffer from mental health struggles that make them vulnerable in a variety of ways. I’ve already mentioned our need to increase access to services here, but we also need to empower our law enforcement officers with the training and support they need to properly respond to mental health calls. There’s much to be done here, and I look forward to getting to work. We need to protect our at-risk communities.
Gun violence is a uniquely American issue, and is one we have the collective will to resolve. Polls continue to show there is broad support for reasonable gun control legislation, such as universal background checks, closing gun show loopholes, enacting red flag laws to keep guns out of the hands of those who have shown an increased risk of violent tendencies, limiting magazine capacity, expanding mental health services, requiring gun owners to notify educational or legal authorities if anyone in the household exhibits a clear trend of violent tendencies, etc. I will support such efforts, not just for the safety of our people, but to also lift the burden that relatively unfettered gun ownership has on the decisions our law enforcement officers have to make every day. I will also be mindful about trying to find the right balance between gun control efforts and protecting the privacy and rights of our citizens. For example, when it comes to red flag laws, I would advocate for a fair and proper adjudication process via our court system to put in safeguards to protect against overreach. Climate change is threatening our very livelihoods in the district. We see the consequence in our ag sector with regularity, from unprecedented floods, derechos, droughts, and other recent impacts. We also see it in other ways in the district, as the push to lay oil and other pipelines that exacerbate the issue through our privately-owned land continues unabated. We need to prioritize a move towards clean, renewable energy sources. We need to listen to the science and to our experts, and there is a clear consensus among them that we are running out of time to address climate change. It is an existential threat. We also need to prioritize efforts to end the detrimental impacts of the Coronavirus pandemic. This isn’t simply a matter of individual choice. There are many other impacts we can see in our district. Supply chain issues exacerbated by the pandemic are impacting homeownership and are driving inflationary pressure on our goods. The virus is also impacting the consistency of our labor supply, is stretching our health care providers beyond their breaking point, and is forcing the delay of medical services beyond COVID that are leading to delays in the diagnosis and treatment other severe illnesses. Additionally, many of our residents in the 4th district are immunocompromised or at higher risk due to comorbidities that make them more susceptible to severe illness and complications. I will support common sense mask mandates in our schools and workplaces when supported by science and regional data, and prioritize affordable access to N95/KN95 masks that have proven to be the most effective in reducing the spread of the virus. We also need to continue to build on recent efforts by the Biden administration to provide reliable, at-home tests to all Iowans. I will also advocate for updated ventilation systems in our schools so our children have the healthiest environment in which to learn. I trust the science and will rely on our experts. Iowans deserve to feel safe in their homes, schools, workplaces, and public spaces.[2] |
” |
| —Ryan Melton's campaign website (2022)[3] | ||
Campaign finance summary
Note: The finance data shown here comes from the disclosures required of candidates and parties. Depending on the election or state, this may represent only a portion of all the funds spent on their behalf. Satellite spending groups may or may not have expended funds related to the candidate or politician on whose page you are reading this disclaimer. Campaign finance data from elections may be incomplete. For elections to federal offices, complete data can be found at the FEC website. Click here for more on federal campaign finance law and here for more on state campaign finance law.
See also
2026 Elections
External links
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Candidate U.S. House Iowa District 4 |
Personal |
Footnotes
- ↑ Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on February 21, 2022
- ↑ Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
- ↑ Ryan Melton For Iowa, “The Issues,” accessed August 27, 2022
