This press release was pro­vid­ed by Ene­mies With­in the Church’s own Pas­tor Cary Gor­don, and orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished here

Once list­ed by the Des Moines Reg­is­ter among the “50 most sought-after Repub­li­can influencers…in the lead-off pres­i­den­tial vot­ing state” and a for­mer Sioux City Jour­nal “News­mak­er of the Year,” Sioux City’s Cary Gor­don weighs in on the Iowa Cau­cus con­test between Trump and DeSan­tis. “Are we going to turn this into the Hunger Games?”

Sioux City Iowa’s Cary Gor­don, an influ­en­tial voice dur­ing past Iowa elec­tion cycles, who made waves when he pub­licly chal­lenged the IRS and ACLU to sue his church for putting too much reli­gion into his pol­i­tics, is speak­ing out again. “I’m very trou­bled about the spec­ta­cle of a nation­al elec­tion process and how Amer­i­can life might dete­ri­o­rate dur­ing the com­ing months of this new year if we don’t get the Iowa Cau­cus vote right. When I con­sid­er the poten­tial pow­der-keg our pop­u­lar vote sys­tem could pro­duce in the cur­rent polit­i­cal envi­ron­ment that is rife with dis­trust and fear, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit my grave con­cerns.”

Gor­don has occa­sion­al­ly appeared on the pub­lic scene across his tenure as a pas­tor at Cor­ner­stone Church* for the last 29 years to com­mu­ni­cate some­thing that he believed was impor­tant. He first appeared on the pub­lic radar in late 2001 after the trag­ic mur­ders of 7 Sioux City res­i­dents, includ­ing a moth­er and all five of her chil­dren, crimes remem­bered as the worst and most high-pro­file ser­i­al mur­ders in the his­to­ry of the State of Iowa. He again ascend­ed the pub­lic stage in 2006, form­ing the com­mit­tee “Sioux Cit­i­zens for Respon­si­ble Gov­ern­ment” — a group that suc­ceed­ed in a for­mi­da­ble strug­gle to change the coun­cil-man­ag­er styled local gov­ern­ment of the City of Sioux City, mak­ing it pos­si­ble for the res­i­dents to vote for the direct elec­tion of their may­or for the first time in their life­times. Mem­o­rably, he rose in 2010 as an out­spo­ken leader against judi­cial oli­garchy, play­ing a crit­i­cal role in what became a suc­cess­ful state-wide cam­paign to oust three Iowa state supreme court jus­tices from the bench. Those judges were respon­si­ble for cre­at­ing “gay mar­riage” at a time when state laws strict­ly defined mar­riage as the exclu­sive union between one man and one woman. Final­ly, Gor­don was the face of the high­ly acclaimed doc­u­men­tary film, “Ene­mies With­in: The Church,” released in 2021.

Gor­don, recall­ing recent his­to­ry, remarked that the tur­moil that upset so many Amer­i­cans dur­ing the pre­vi­ous elec­tion cycle, where wide­spread accu­sa­tions of vot­er fraud were ram­pant, has played a seri­ous role in jar­ring hon­est peo­ple into a place of fear and uncer­tain­ty. “Amer­i­cans deserve to have an elec­toral process they can trust and rely upon for truth and jus­tice.” Cit­ing the Her­itage Foundation’s Elec­tion Fraud Data­base¹, Gor­don not­ed: “1,490 proven instances of vot­er fraud and 1,274 crim­i­nal con­vic­tions is a very legit­i­mate con­cern we all share.”

The Sioux City pas­tor stat­ed that, while there is no debate on whether vot­er fraud exists, it does remain debat­able whether the last election’s vot­er fraud scan­dals actu­al­ly con­nect­ed into a much more high­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed form of what is called sys­temic vot­er fraud.² “There is ‘vot­er fraud’ and then there is ‘sys­temic vot­er fraud.’ Those two are not the same thing in the sense that one is ran­dom and decen­tral­ized, and the oth­er is extreme­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed, requir­ing a mind-bend­ing amount of very high-lev­el coor­di­na­tion.”³ The feel­ings of anger and uncer­tain­ty remain. “The issue before us is that many peo­ple believe (whether it can be proven or not in a court case) that a high­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed form of vot­er fraud — sys­temic fraud — was suc­cess­ful­ly unleashed against them dur­ing the pre­vi­ous elec­tion, and they wor­ry there will be sys­temic vot­er fraud upend­ing their votes again this com­ing Novem­ber.”

Gor­don said that the irony was not lost on him that the uncer­tain­ty par­tic­u­lar­ly felt by sup­port­ers of for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump appears to be dri­ving the same toward what he called an avoid­able cliff: “The same peo­ple who are most con­cerned about sys­temic elec­tion fraud may actu­al­ly select the can­di­date that is the least like­ly to calm the coun­try dur­ing anoth­er con­tentious elec­tion sea­son. I real­ly hope we can avoid anoth­er chaot­ic elec­tion cycle by choos­ing some­one capa­ble of being win­some.”

Hope­ful that Iowans will choose an unen­cum­bered can­di­date, Gor­don said some­one with con­sid­er­ably less per­son­al and legal bag­gage than the for­mer pres­i­dent would be both pre­ferred and wise. “We need a can­di­date with a rep­u­ta­tion of integri­ty, reli­a­bil­i­ty, and sta­bil­i­ty who meets the min­i­mum qual­i­fi­ca­tions for lead­er­ship described for elect­ed and appoint­ed offi­cials in the world’s first and pre­em­i­nent rep­re­sen­ta­tive repub­lic:

“You will also choose able men who fear God from among the peo­ple, hon­est men who are not filled with greed, and you will make them lead­ers of thou­sands, hun­dreds, fifties, and tens.” — Exo­dus 18:21

“We must change course now — at the very begin­ning of this nation’s very first pres­i­den­tial con­test. If Iowans will demon­strate a change of direc­tion in the pres­i­den­tial race — right now — I believe the rest of the nation will fol­low our exam­ple, and we can avoid unnec­es­sary tur­moil lat­er this year and move for­ward as the Amer­i­can peo­ple.”

Gor­don released a record­ed video mes­sage, along with a thor­ough, three-page let­ter to walk oth­er strug­gling vot­ers through his per­son­al and trans­par­ent process of dis­cern­ing between the pre­em­i­nent choic­es avail­able to Iowans. “Lis­ten­ing to Don­ald Trump talk about killing babies soon­er (but not too soon),⁴ while lis­ten­ing to Democ­rats talk about killing babies lat­er (but not too much lat­er), is not the kind of dem­a­goguery we ought to have to endure in this coun­try. No mat­ter which side of that hor­ri­ble debate gets their way, the babies just keep get­ting slaugh­tered.”

Gor­don says that how Amer­i­cans view and val­ue the life of the unborn will affect every oth­er part of the human psy­che and the future of the nation. “Ideas have con­se­quences.” He fears that Amer­i­cans may keep elect­ing and re-elect­ing peo­ple who are con­tent to con­tin­ue the kind of abor­tion-per­mis­sive dia­logue empha­sized by Pres­i­dent Trump dur­ing his sit-down inter­view with Kris­ten Welk­er on Meet the Press, a debate on human life that is sat­is­fied to mere­ly fight over how late it’s still alleged­ly ok to go ahead and kill unborn chil­dren, unwill­ing to dis­cuss pro­hi­bi­tion. Said Gor­don, “We risk turn­ing ‘The Hunger Games’ into a self-ful­fill­ing prophe­cy and will some­day elect a prover­bial Pres­i­dent Cori­olanus Snow. I intend to do what I can to encour­age every­one to stop the depraved insan­i­ty.

“On Jan­u­ary 15th, my fam­i­ly will be cau­cus­ing for a pres­i­den­tial can­di­date who meets that min­i­mum stan­dard described in the Bible — a vot­ing stan­dard that proved itself infi­nite­ly supe­ri­or to how Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cals are appar­ent­ly choos­ing can­di­dates today. Evan­gel­i­cals make their way through can­di­date choic­es like a lit­tle kid in an ice cream shop. They won­der which fla­vor to choose. They most­ly base their final deci­sion on sub­jec­tive instincts and emo­tion­al pref­er­ences. We have to re-learn how to obey our Bibles. We must choose only between can­di­dates who meet that objec­tive plumbline like, for exam­ple, Ryan Bink­ley or Ron DeSan­tis. We need to move on from the past and forge a new way for­ward if we are going to get this nation back on track.”

*For iden­ti­fi­ca­tion pur­pos­es only.

1. https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud ↩︎
2. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2103619118 math­e­mat­i­cal analy­sis pro­vid­ed by the Pro­ceed­ings of the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences (PNAS) estab­lished in 1914 as the fore­front of sci­en­tif­ic research. ↩︎
3. https://codeocean.com/capsule/0007435/tree/v2 ↩︎
4. https:/ /www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-bring-country-together-abortion-meet-the-press-rcna105311 ↩︎