Big Tech has fought consumer data privacy laws in statehouse after statehouse across the country.
Now a Democrat running for Congress in Iowa just showed exactly how that fight gets won.
One vote from her time in the state legislature reveals whose side she was really on.
The Iowa Democrat Who Broke With Ninety One Colleagues
Christina Bohannan served in the Iowa House from January 2021 to January 2023.
In 2021, the Iowa Legislature took up a consumer data privacy bill.
It let Iowans see what personal data companies had collected on them and demand it be deleted.
It gave them the power to opt out of targeted ads and stop companies from selling their information to the highest bidder.
The bill passed 91 to 2.
Bohannan was one of the two no votes.
She never explained why.
A Portfolio Built on the Same Companies She Protected
Bohannan's own financial disclosures list up to $280,000 tied up in Apple, Alphabet, and Meta stock.
Those are exactly the three companies a real privacy law would force to change how they handle your information.
Apple tracks your phone.
Alphabet owns the search engine that logs everything you type.
Meta runs Facebook and Instagram, two of the biggest data harvesting operations in the country.
Bohannan voted no on reining in the very corporations sitting in her own portfolio.
Republican National Committee spokesman Zach Kraft didn't dress it up. "This isn't public service, this is corruption."
Big Tech funds armies of lobbyists in state capitols from Sacramento to Hartford, working to gut privacy bills before they ever reach a floor vote.
Not Her First Break With the People She Wants to Represent
This isn't the first time Bohannan's votes in Des Moines have raised eyebrows back home.
She backed a bill letting certain sex offenders petition to have their names scrubbed from Iowa's public registry.
She broke with 26 fellow Democrats to do it, and she declined to explain that vote too.
She fought Iowa's Back the Blue Act, a law written after officers were hurt in the 2020 riots.
She urged Iowans to donate to bail assistance organizations.
She has said she was "very active" in a group pushing to abolish ICE and turn Iowa communities into sanctuary cities.
She pushed a mandate forcing healthcare license applicants to sit through implicit bias training, even as Iowa hospitals struggled to find enough staff to keep the lights on.
One unexplained vote might be an accident.
Six of them start to look like a record.
Miller Meeks Owns No Stock and Wants a Ban
Her opponent, Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, owns no individual stocks.
Miller-Meeks backed legislation that would bar every lawmaker in Washington from trading stocks at all.
The U.S. House passed that stock trading ban in July – 232 to 198 – with thirteen Democrats crossing over to support it.
Bohannan wasn't one of them, because she isn't in Congress yet.
This is the third time Miller-Meeks and Bohannan have squared off, and the race is rated a toss up.
Bohannan lost by fewer than 1,000 votes in 2024, after losing by a wider seven-point margin in 2022.
Every vote she cast in Des Moines is getting a second look now.
Bohannan says she would divest her portfolio if elected and claims she supports a ban on lawmakers trading stocks.
That's an easy promise to make about a vote that hasn't happened yet.
It's a lot harder to explain the one she already cast.
Iowans don't need a law professor to explain conflicts of interest to them – they can read a disclosure form themselves.
And that form shows a lawmaker who voted with Big Tech's balance sheet instead of her constituents' privacy.
This is exactly why Congress finally moved on a stock trading ban of its own this year.
Lawmakers in both parties have watched colleagues rack up stock trades tied to bills sitting on their own desks, and voters have had enough.
Bohannan wants Iowans to send her to Washington on the strength of a promise to fix something Miller-Meeks never had to fix in the first place.
Ninety one Iowa lawmakers found a way to put their constituents first.
Christina Bohannan found a way to protect Apple, Alphabet, and Meta instead.
Sources:
- Jasmyn Jordan, "IA Dem Congressional Candidate Christina Bohannan Voted Against Consumer Data Privacy Bill While Holding Up to $280,000 in Apple, Alphabet, Meta Stock," Breitbart, July 29, 2026.
- Emma Colton and Bradford Betz, "Iowa Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks Beats Dem Challenger in State's 1st Congressional District," Fox News, November 27, 2024.
- Breitbart News, "Republican Miller-Meeks Wins Reelection After Recount in Close Iowa Congressional Race," Breitbart, November 28, 2024.
- Staff, "House Approves GOP's Stock Trading Ban, Voter ID Bill in Mostly Partisan Vote," Washington Times, July 22, 2026.
- Breitbart News, "Democrat Congressional Candidate Christina Bohannan Silent on Making It Easier for Sex Offenders to Remove Name from List," Breitbart, June 16, 2026.
- Breitbart News, "Dem Law Professor Running for Congress Opposed Iowa Back the Blue Law After 2020 Riots Injured Officers," Breitbart, April 18, 2026.
- Breitbart News, "Christina Bohannan Pushed Implicit Bias Training for Healthcare Workers," Breitbart, April 24, 2026.
