‘Queen of DEI’ running for Congress ripped her rural state as ‘backwards’ on podcast

Christina Bohannan, a Democratic candidate in a battleground Iowa district, is facing scrutiny from Republicans over past remarks in which she said the state would be viewed as “backwards” without diversity training in schools and argued the nation’s founders were motivated by preserving slavery during the Revolutionary War.

Bohannan, a law professor and former Iowa state representative, is making her third attempt to unseat incumbent Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, R-Iowa, in the state’s 1st Congressional District after losing by less than a percentage point in 2024. The razor-thin margin has set up a high-stakes rematch this cycle, as Republicans work to defend one of their most competitive seats while highlighting Bohannan’s past positions on diversity, equity and inclusion.

“DEI Queen Christina Bohannan thinks George Floyd is a role model, and George Washington should be cancelled,” Republican National Committee spokesperson Zach Kraft said in a statement to Fox News Digital. “Iowans will channel the spirit of 1776 to reject this two-time loser once again so she can return to her day job calling everyone and everything racist.” 

Bohannan made the remarks now under GOP fire on the podcast “Under the Dome” in 2021.

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Bohannan, then a state representative, said she was “really concerned” about a bill in the Iowa legislature banning diversity training, including implicit bias training, from being taught at public schools and universities. She said that implicit bias, an unconscious attitude a person may have toward someone based on race, is “very real,” and is “serious.”

“I think that it is going to be very divisive if passed,” Bohannan said at the time. “I think that it’s going to send a very bad message about Iowa and that it is going to seem like are kind of this backwards state that doesn’t understand there are things like systemic racism.”

Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds signed that bill into law in June 2021.

Bohannan also said on the podcast that she was “glad” that a Republican-backed bill banning the 1619 Project, a New York Times initiative that suggests slavery is central to the nation’s founding, failed during the legislative session.

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The 1619 Project focuses “on the fact that there were some Revolutionary leaders who became supportive of that Revolution because they wanted to preserve the institution of slavery,” Bohannan said, noting there were other reasons for the revolution, such as taxation.

Fox News Digital reached out to Bohannan for comment.

Bohannan has supported diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, as well as police reform and migrant rights groups, for years.

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While in the Iowa legislature, she co-sponsored a bill requiring implicit 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 pushed students to support the Black Lives Matter movement in the wake of the killing of George Floyd. In a letter to students, she listed five different funds students can donate to, including the Minnesota Freedom Fund and the National Bail Out Fund, which both support defunding the police.

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During a candidate forum in 2020, at the time of Bohannan’s first congressional campaign, she said she was “very active” in Worker Justice of Eastern Iowa, a group focused on abolishing ICE, the Washington Free Beacon reported. A year prior, Bohannan donated money to the Prairieland Freedom Fund to help bail illegal immigrants out of jail. The Prairieland Freedom Fund seeks to establish a “world without police.”

Fox News Digital reached out to Miller-Meeks’ campaign for comment.