California U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff campaigns for congressional candidate Liz

Iowa state Sen. Liz Mathis, D-Hiawatha speaks to supporters Sunday as she welcomes U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., at the Linn County Democrats and Liz Mathis Campaign for Congress office in northeast Cedar Rapids. (Jim Slosiarek/The Gazette)

CEDAR RAPIDS — For House Democrats, the road to maintaining and winning a durable majority very well may run through Iowa, said California U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff.

Schiff, chair of the House Permanent Select Committee of Intelligence and a member of the Jan. 6 Select Committee, campaigned Sunday in Cedar Rapids for Democrat Liz Mathis of Hiawatha for Iowa’s 2nd U.S. Congressional District.

Mathis, a state senator, is running against incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson.

Schiff and Mathis met with supporters at Mathis’ campaign headquarters near Lindale Mall before going door knocking.

“We cannot hold the line — not just or our majority, but for democracy — if we can’t win in districts like this,” Schiff said.

Schiff has assumed a prominent role on the committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection, his latest in a high-profile congressional investigation of former President Donald Trump. Schiff was also among the U.S. House Democrats who led the monthslong impeachment inquiry and Senate trial into whether Trump abused his office by attempting to withhold aid to Ukraine in exchange for an investigation into Joe Biden, then a candidate for the presidency. The Senate ultimately voted to acquit Trump.

“Of all the corrosive things I think of the last administration, there’s probably none more destructive than the four-year, relentless assault on the truth,” Schiff said of Trump’s and other Republicans’ baseless assertions of a stolen 2020 presidential election. “On the very idea that if you don’t like the facts, that you’re somehow entitled to your own alternate facts. … If you can persuade people that our elections are somehow rigged just because you lose, if you can persuade people you can’t rely anymore on elections to decide who should govern, that what is left but violence?”

State Sen. Liz Mathis, D-Hiawatha speaks to supporters Sunday as she welcomes U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., at the Linn County Democrats and Liz Mathis Campaign for Congress office before canvassing in her election campaign for Iowa’s 2nd U.S. Congressional District. (Jim Slosiarek/The Gazette)

Hinson, who voted to certify the 2020 presidential election results, condemned the Jan. 6 attack and shortly after the insurrection was a co-sponsor of a bill calling for a bipartisan inquiry into what happened. The Marion Republican, however, ultimately voted against creating an independent, bipartisan commission to investigate, arguing it might interfere with ongoing prosecutions. Hinson at the time said she still wanted to “get to the bottom” of what happened, but would later say a congressional inquiry was unnecessary as many…