An attempt to add a conservative candidate to the ballot for Iowa attorney general appears to have failed, dealing a blow to rightwingers seeking to make the death of student Mollie Tibbetts an election issue in November.

Tibbetts, 20, was out running near Brooklyn, Iowa when she was last seen, on the evening of 18 July. On Tuesday, it was announced that her body had been discovered in a cornfield, about 12 miles from town.

Cristhian Bahena Rivera, a 24-year-old dairy farm worker from Mexico who apparently used a false identity to conceal the fact he was an undocumented immigrant, was charged with her murder.

A funeral mass was held for Tibbetts on Sunday, in the gymnasium of BGM high school in Brooklyn, a city of 1,500 where she grew up. Hundreds of people attended. Bishop Thomas Zinkula of Davenport, Iowa, led proceedings.

Tibbetts’ father, Rob, told the audience in his eulogy to remember her by “celebrating something wonderful”, such as a couple who had just married the day before.

Cristhian Bahena Rivera is charged with first-degree murder in Tibbetts’ death. Investigators say the 24-year-old Mexican farmworker led them to a cornfield Tuesday where Tibbetts’ body had been left since her 18 July disappearance.



With the midterm elections expected to produce resounding Democratic victories, Republicans nationwide have attempted to cast Tibbetts’ death as the result of flawed immigration policies.

In a White House video, Donald Trump alluded to his hugely controversial policy of separating immigrant children from their parents when he said: “Mollie Tibbetts, an incredible young woman, is now permanently separated from her family.”

More starkly still, former House speaker and prominent Trump supporter Newt Gingrich told Axios: “If Mollie Tibbetts is a household name by October, Democrats will be in deep trouble. If we can be blocked by Manafort, Cohen, etc, then GOP could lose [the] House badly.”

Despite appeals by Tibbetts family members and friends that such nakedly political activity should stop, an attempt was mounted locally to put Patrick Anderson, of Des Moines, on the Iowa ballot for attorney general as a non-party candidate. The incumbent Democratic attorney general, Tom Miller, is running unopposed.

State law does not allow non-party candidates to use any part of the names of the Republican, Democratic or Libertarian parties – the only three parties recognised in Iowa. The attempt to run Anderson therefore planned to list “GOP” beside his name. Short for “Grand Old Party”, the term is used interchangeably with “Republican”.

The group needed 1,500 signatures from at least 10 Iowa counties and began its effort on Wednesday. On Saturday, elections assistant Wes Hicok told the Associated Press the group turned in pages of signatures ahead of a 5pm deadline.

“On a cursory look, it appears that they have not met the minimum threshold,” Hicok said.

A formal review of the paperwork is due to take place on Monday.

Miller entered the national debate over immigration policy in June when he joined 20 other Democratic attorneys general in calling for the federal government to stop separating children from their parents when they enter the country illegally.



George Anderson, an organizer of the effort and Patrick Anderson’s son, told the AP: “This has to do with the upholding of immigration law. I’m not sure the current Iowa attorney general is committed to that.”