Showdown in IA-03

One key race that hasn’t been getting a great deal of attention is Ed Fallon’s progressive challenge to Blue Dog Democratic Congressman Leonard Boswell in IA-03. The primary is June 3rd, and Fallon is poised to retire the six-term conservative.

Boswell hasn’t got a lot to show for his 12 years in Congress. He has introduced two bills that became law — a good one on helping prevent suicide among veterans and changing the name of the federal building in Des Moines. He is pushing hard for a third bill to cap his career — getting a zip code for a Des Moines suburb. The negative side of his legacy, however, is more impressive.

Boswell broke with the majority of House Democrats repeatedly to support the Bush agenda. Some of these minority voted include: the vote to go to war in Iraq, five years of funding for the war without timetables for withdrawal, the reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act, the Military Commissions Act that suspended habeas corpus and gave Bush the authority to determine what counts as “torture”, the so-called “Bankruptcy reform” of 2005 that made it harder for middle class folks to get debt relief, giving the president “fast-track” authority to push trade deals through Congress, three so-called “free trade” agreements and permanent trade relations with China, many votes unfriendly to the environment (that have given him a lifetime voting score of 57% from the League of Conservation Voters), etc. He was also the deciding vote in support of the Bush version of a prescription drug plan for seniors. Boswell helped it pass 216-215, even though House Democrats opposed it 195-9.

The list goes on and on.

Ed Fallon, on the other hand, is a progressive Democrat who is running on a platform of global climate change (he supports the Safe Climate Act), universal health care (he supports the Medicare for All Act), campaign finance reform (he supports voluntary public financing of elections), budget reform (including the abolition of earmarks), fair trade, and reducing poverty.

Fallon won the IA-03 when he was in a three-way race for the Democratic gubernatorial race in 2006. He was the first candidate this year to sign on to all four pledges of Larry Lessig’s Change Congress movement and has been endorsed in this race by Democracy for America, Progressive Democrats of America, Blue America, eQuality Giving, the Progressive Coalition of Central Iowa, and the Stop the Arms Race PAC.

Fallon has never taken money from PACs or paid lobbyists, whereas Boswell got 74% of his contributions last year from PACs, the highest percentage of which came from corporate PACs.

The only independent poll gave the race to Boswell last month, but this was the same polling outfit that underestimated Fallon’s performance in the gubernatorial race by half. Polk County, which includes Des Moines, includes the district Fallon represented in the Iowa General Assembly and usually constitutes over 70% of the primary vote. Fallon won the county in the three-way race by a ten point margin over his closest opponent. The conventional wisdom is that the primary is the election, as only token GOP opposition is expected in the November general.

Information on Fallon is available at his website: www.fallonforcongress.com.