Iowa’s Attorney General Is Taking Checks From the Industries She’s Supposed to Watch

The race for Iowa Attorney General has agriculture executives and major agribusinesses like Bayer, Versova Holdings and Iowa Select Farms spending big in hopes of keeping the incumbent in office, according to the latest publicly released campaign finance reports.

Current Iowa attorney general Brenna Bird was elected in 2022 as the first Republican to hold the seat for nearly five decades. She is challenged by Nate Willems, a Democrat and former Iowa state representative.

Critics of Bird, including her opponent, say she has been soft on holding agriculture companies accountable during her time in office. She has been accused of offering “sweetheart deals” to Iowa polluters, including Agri Star, a large kosher meatpacking plant with an extensive history of water pollution. She secured a $50,000 fine for the Postville, Iowa meatpacking company for violating wastewater discharge regulations over 60 times. Chief U.S. District Judge C.J. Williams called her actions a “slap on the wrist” in his findings, but ultimately dismissed a legal case from a citizen water group.

Bird has raised nearly double what her opponent has this year, with major donations coming from all across the country and agribusiness spectrum. She has received large donations from the owners and CEOs of the country’s largest ethanol company, Iowa’s largest pork producer, and a top egg company recently accused of price fixing, as well as from a former agricultural advisor to President Donald Trump.

The influence of agriculture companies on Iowa politics has been top of mind for many Iowa voters this year. Residents are grappling with a drinking water quality crisis, linked to industrial agriculture, and the state’s rising cancer rate. Water quality in Iowa has been a focal point of the contested races for the governor’s office and secretary of agriculture.

Iowa’s Attorney General office represents and defends the interests of everyday Iowans and farmers, according to its website. Bird has settled antitrust claims against major agricultural and food companies Versova Holdings and Corteva during her tenure. She has also joined other states’ attorneys general in a fight to stop major accounting firms from including climate disclosures in their financial reporting.

Bird has a track record of prioritizing her corporate agriculture donors, Jennifer Breon, senior Iowa organizer for the environmental watchdog group Food & Water Watch, writes in an email to Sentient Media.

“It’s in the best interests of the agribusiness industry to back an Attorney General that views maximizing industry’s profits as more important for Iowa than public health,” Breon writes.

Bird Campaign Gets Support From Ethanol, Hog Giants

Bird’s reelection bid has raised about $12 million, with the majority of her funds coming from the Republican Attorneys General Association, a national group dedicated to electing Republican attorneys general.

Outside of political groups, major donations have come from executives of large agriculture and livestock companies, including leaders of companies fined for environmental pollution and antitrust actions her office helped settle.

Jeff Broin is the CEO of POET, the largest ethanol and biofuel company in the world. He is also the top individual donor to Bird’s campaign, donating a total of $100,000 directly to her campaign since September 5, 2024. Iowa produces an estimated five billion gallons of ethanol a year, making it the largest producer in the country.

POET, headquartered in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, operates grain bins and ethanol plants across Iowa, with an estimated $8 billion in revenue. The Environmental Protection Agency fined a subsidiary of POET $90,000 in 2022 for repeated air pollution at a Menlo, Iowa plant.

The company was also fined $10,000 by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources in July 2024 after its Shell Rock, Iowa bioprocessing facility released “excessive pollutants” into the air. The facility released nine times the acceptable amount of the toxin acetaldehyde, which is “reasonably anticipated” to cause cancer in humans, for several years.

The ethanol giant has threatened to sue Bird’s opponent, Willems, for a campaign ad regarding the Shell Rock facility’s pollution history. Willems’s campaign ad noted that Bird did not pursue additional legal action against the facility and later accepted donations from POET’s CEO to her campaign. The company sent a cease and desist letter to Willem’s campaign in September asking him to take down the advertisement.

POET did not respond to a request for comment.

Bird’s campaign has also received donations from the president of an egg company her office helped settle a federal antitrust lawsuit against. Bird was one of 17 attorneys general who worked alongside the U.S. Department of Justice to reach a settlement for alleged price-fixing of eggs.

James Dean, the president of Versova Holdings, has donated $40,000 to Bird’s campaign since January 1, 2025. Versova Holdings is one of the largest egg production companies in the country, with egg farms located across Iowa, Ohio, Washington and Oregon.

Versova was one of three egg companies named in a federal antitrust settlement announced earlier this year. The company paid an $800,000 settlement for allegedly inflating egg prices for grocery stores and restaurant companies during bird flu outbreaks. The federal egg settlement paid roughly $90,000 to the state, according to the Iowa attorney general’s office.

Versova Holdings did not respond to a request for comment.

In the pork industry, Deb Hansen, who with her husband owns Iowa’s largest pork production company, has donated multiple times to Bird’s campaign.

Campaign finance records show that Deb Hansen has donated a total of $30,000 to Bird’s campaign since 2025. Hansen and her husband Jeff own and operate Iowa Select Farms, which contracts pork production to farmers across the state, employing over 7,000 people.

Their names adorn the Jeff and Deb Hansen Agriculture Student Learning Center at Iowa State University after a $2 million gift to the university. The couple recently donated two million dollars to renovating the Iowa State Fair swine barn, a $20 million project, and the renovated facility will be named the Jeff & Deb Hansen Iowa Select Farms Swine Barn upon completion.

Iowa Select Farms did not respond to a request for comment.

Agriculture powerhouse and executive Bruce Rastetter, who advised President Trump on agriculture policy in 2016, has donated $35,000 to Bird’s reelection campaign since 2025.

Rastetter holds many titles across Iowa and global agriculture. He is the founder and executive chairman of Summit Agricultural Group, a farmland management and agribusiness company responsible for a controversial proposal for a carbon dioxide pipeline to crisscross the state, currently mired in legal challenges. The company did not respond to a request for comment.

Rastetter also founded the large pork company Heartland Pork, Iowa ethanol processing firm Hawkeye Renewables and Brazilian biofuels refinery network FS Bioenergia. Rastetter was a contender for the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture during the first Trump administration.

In addition to major agribusiness executives, the political action groups of major meatpacking and agribusiness companies have donated to keep Brenna Bird in office.

Bird received a combined $10,500 from the political action groups of three dominant seed, pesticide and fertilizer companies: Bayer (which merged with Monsanto in 2018), Corteva and Archer Daniels Midland. Tyson Foods, the nation’s largest meatpacking company, donated $2,500 to her campaign through its PAC.

Major Union, Environmental Lawyer Back Willems

Willems, Democratic nominee for attorney general, has raised about $6 million. His campaign’s largest donations have come from the Democratic Attorneys General Association, a political group meant to elect Democratic candidates. His campaign has also received large sums from prominent environmental lawyers.

His two largest individual donors, Alejandro Foung and Fred Hubbell, donated $75,000 and $70,000 to his campaign, respectively. Foung is an investor and philanthropist based in California who is the president of Climate Cousins, a climate solutions and environmental foundation. Hubbell is a notable Iowa lawyer who, alongside his wife Charlotte Beyer Hubbell, founded the University of Iowa College of Law Hubbell Environmental Law Initiative. Mark Heising, an investor and chair of the national climate and environmental advocacy group Environmental Defense Fund, has also donated $50,000 to Willems’s campaign.

United Food & Commercial Workers, the largest private sector union in the country, donated $45,000 to Willems’s campaign. This union represents a variety of workers across the food supply chain, including meatpacking workers, restaurant and grocery store staff.

“The attorney general is supposed to be the people’s lawyer,” Willems writes in a statement to Sentient Media. Bird, as the incumbent attorney general, “has failed to hold corporate polluters accountable,” he continues.

“When a company pollutes Iowa’s air, land or water, the job is to protect Iowans by holding them accountable,” he writes. “That means we need real penalties that deter corporate polluters from repeating this behavior.”

Bird’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.