Iowans may remember Tulsi Gabbard from her billboards that advertised her presidential campaign long after the 2020 Democratic presidential caucuses were over.
Gabbard, a former U.S. Representative from Hawaii who centered her opposition to long foreign wars in her run for the Democratic presidential nomination, has since left office and the Democratic Party.
Invited by the state Republican Party to speak and have an interview with the state GOP Chair Jeff Kaufmann on Friday night in Davenport, Gabbard said she harbored “no regrets” in becoming an independent.
She announced her departure in October 2022, citing the party leaders’ positions on foreign policy and social issues. She then went on to endorse and campaign for a slate of Republican candidates in the midterm elections, including Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake.
“You talked about how the Republican Party is the party of free thought and free speech, that debate is welcome,” she said, referencing comments made as she was being introduced. “The Democratic Party used to be that way. That was the party I joined 20 years ago.”
Gabbard was first elected to the Hawaii statehouse in 2002 at the age of 21. She enlisted in the Hawaii National Guard, deploying to Iraq in 2004-2005 and was stationed in Kuwait from 2008 to 2009.
Before her bid for the White House, Gabbard became the first Hindu and was among the first female combat veterans elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. She served as Hawaii’s 2nd District representative in Congress from 2013 to 2021 and as the vice chair of the Democratic National Committee for the first three years of her congressional service. She resigned that post in the national party in 2016 to endorse Bernie Sanders in that year’s presidential race.
On Friday, Gabbard called the upcoming 2024 election “the most important election of our time” because of what she called “direct duress and attacks on our fundamental God-given rights and freedoms.”
She said she feared government intervention in Christian churches and was critical of the indictment of former President Donald Trump, saying she thought he was being held to a higher standard than other politicians.
Trump was indicted on 37 counts of mishandling classified documents. The indictment alleges he showed military documents to individuals without security clearance and sought to conceal the records from his own lawyers as they tried to comply with the federal government’s request for them back.
Gabbard has steered further to the right on social conservative issues, and that reflected in her speech Friday night.
She was critical of allowing transgender girls to play girls sports, saying “there’s no longer such a thing as a woman; we as an entire category are being erased from our society.”
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