Republican Wisconsin congressional hopeful Derrick Van Orden was slapped with two fines for bringing a loaded gun to an Iowa airport last year, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.
In December, Van Orden entered a guilty plea for a citation he’d received in August after security officials at an airport in Cedar Rapids, Iowa found a loaded handgun in the candidate’s carry-on bag.
A magistrate ordered Van Orden to pay a $360 fine, and he was also fined by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) over the incident, per the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, though it’s unknown how much the TSA fine was.
Van Orden’s campaign said in a statement that the GOP candidate brought the firearm by mistake.
“Derrick was traveling with his family and this situation was purely accidental,” the campaign said. “He fully cooperated and apologized to TSA for adding to the stress of their job, thanked them for the work they do keeping us safe, and it has been fully adjudicated.”
Van Orden, who has been endorsed by ex-President Donald Trump, is the only Republican running in Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District, which is currently represented by retiring Democratic Rep. Ron Kind (D-WI). The Cook Political Report has rated the district as “lean Republican.”
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s report comes less than two weeks after Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) was cited for bringing a loaded gun to an airport security checkpoint for the second time.
The incident with Cawthorn prompted Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee to demand that the TSA take action on guns being brought to security screenings, particularly “repeat offenders” like Cawthorn.
