Michael Bridgford
Background
- A first-time candidate who has held no elective office. The Iowa Secretary of State's list records him as the No Party candidate for the district, filed June 1, 2026, and his FEC candidate record carries 2026 as his only election year.
- His campaign describes him as an independent worker who pays for his family's health insurance himself, and uses that cost to separate himself from both opponents.
What they say they want to do
- Limit House members to four terms and senators to two by constitutional amendment.
- Ban members of Congress, their spouses and dependent children from trading individual stocks.
- Reach a Social Security compromise that lifts the payroll tax cap while protecting current retirees and those within ten years of retirement.
- Authorize year-round nationwide E15 permanently rather than by annual waiver.
What the official record shows
- Holds no legislative record this desk can compare: he has served in neither Congress nor the Iowa Legislature, and the Secretary of State's list records his filing for this office on June 1, 2026, the day before the close of the February 23 to June 2 filing period that same document states for No Party and petition candidates.
- His committee's only report of the cycle, the July Quarterly received July 15, 2026, records $189,523.47 in receipts and exactly one contribution from a political committee: $5,000 from the Forward Party, dated June 1, 2026.
- The same filing itemizes $122,505.25 of the candidate's own money: $22,505.25 in line-11D contributions from him, which the FEC's summary of the cycle puts at $22,671.10, and two loans from him, $60,000 incurred April 20 and $40,000 incurred June 30, 2026, neither repaid.
Campaign money from other committees, by type
| Other PACs (no organization type recorded) 1 committee | $5,000 |
|---|
Source: Federal Election Commission
Itemized receipts from political committees in the 2026 cycle filing through June 30, 2026, grouped by the same rule used for the other two candidates: the FEC's recorded organization type or designation of the contributing committee. His filing itemizes one such contribution, $5,000 from the Forward Party, which the FEC records as a qualified hybrid political action committee with no organization type, so it falls in the same row that holds the other candidates' unclassified committees. The single row is the whole table and equals $5,000.00, the FEC summary's other-committee plus party contributions. Every other figure here is a sum of the filing's own itemized rows, not the matching line on the FEC's summary of the cycle, and the two can differ by whatever the filing did not itemize. Not in the table, by the same rule applied to the others: $22,505.25 of itemized line-11D contributions from the candidate, where the summary says $22,671.10; $100,000 in two candidate loans carried on Schedule C; and $61,852.37 of contributions from individuals, of which $15,152.37 is itemized from two limited liability companies.