About

Iowa First Check tracks where the candidates for Iowa governor appear, what they propose, how their claims compare with public records, and how Iowa has changed during the past decade. It draws on public records, campaign materials, government data and published reporting — every figure links back to where it came from.

This project is not a campaign site, an advocacy landing page or an opinion blog. It does not tell readers how to vote, and it does not claim a neutrality it can't support — it claims sourcing, and shows its work so readers can check it.

Independence

Iowa First Check is an independent project. It is not affiliated with any candidate, campaign, aircraft owner, data provider or news organization. It receives no payment or coordination from any campaign, and does not accept requests to remove accurate, sourced information.

How it's built

The site itself is static HTML, CSS and JavaScript — no server-side database, no login system, nothing that phones home about who's reading it. Data collection and publishing run through open Python scripts, documented in the project's source repository, so the process is auditable end to end. See Methodology for how each dataset is collected and what it can and can't show.

Corrections

If something here is inaccurate or missing important context, the fix is to check the linked source and correct the record — not to soften a true fact because it's inconvenient for one side. Every dataset behind this site is downloadable from the pages that use it.