For those keeping track of House incumbents without declared challengers, it’s time to cross IA-01 and IA-05 off your list.
I learned from Sioux City Journal columnist Bret Hayworth that a Democrat has already filed Federal Election Commission paperwork to run against Representative Steve King in Iowa’s fifth Congressional district:
Mike Denklau has eyed the possibility of running in the strong Republican district since early 2009, and after traveling western Iowa recently he decided to go all-in.
On Oct. 15, Denklau will announce his candidacy 55 weeks out from the election in stops here in Sioux City, Council Bluffs and Des Moines. Denklau will turn 27 next month – he was raised in Blue Grass near Davenport and graduated from the University of Iowa with majors in political science and finance. He worked in New York for two banking firms through June 2009, including Lehman Brothers, until moving to Council Bluffs recently.
Hayworth notes that it’s not clear whether Rob Hubler, King’s 2008 opponent, will run again. Although Democrats cannot realistically hope to defeat King in a district with a partisan voter index of R+9, an energetic challenger may help drive up Democratic turnout across the district. There will be several competitive state legislative races in the 32 counties that make up IA-05.
Meanwhile, Craig Robinson reports at The Iowa Republican that Rod Blum of Dubuque is ready to challenge Representative Bruce Braley in the first Congressional district.
Blum has strong eastern Iowa roots. He graduated from Dubuque Senior High School in 1973, earned a bachelor’s degree from Loras College (Finance) in 1977, and received a Masters in Business Administration from Dubuque University in 1989. In 1989, Blum was one of the initial employees of Dubuque-based Eagle Point Software. In just five years, Eagle Point Software went public on NASDAQ and had 325 employees. In 2000, Digital Canal was created as a result of a leveraged buyout of Eagle Point Software. Digital Canal is a leading provider of home building and structural engineering software. Blum was also named the Iowa Entrepreneur of the Year in 1994.
While Blum has never run for elected office before, he has been making his political views known in eastern Iowa since 2001 as the Dubuque Telegraph Herald’s conservative columnist. Blum’s writings for the Telegraph Herald will be helpful for a couple of reasons. First, having a regular column in the local newspaper helps build credibility and name ID. Secondly, writing a political column means that he has well thought out positions on many of the issues facing our country today, something many first time candidates lack.
He’ll need more than conservative ideology and name ID in the Dubuque area to unseat Braley. Robinson notes that Republican Jim Nussle represented IA-01 before the 2006 election, but Nussle’s position as chairman of a House budget subcommittee helped him hang on in a Democratic-leaning district. That’s different from a Republican challenger trying to swim against the tide in a district with a partisan voting index of D+5. Republicans currently hold only two House disticts with that much of a Democratic lean: Delaware’s at-large seat, which the GOP will lose when Mike Castle runs for U.S. Senate next year, and Louisiana’s second district, which was a fluke in 2008 because of the Democratic incumbent’s apparent corruption.
Braley is a rising star and effective legislator with a spot on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. He won re-election with more than 64 percent of the vote in 2008. Even if 2010 turns out to be a Republican year, Braley’s not losing in a district with 35,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans.
To my knowledge, Republican Tom Latham (IA-04) is Iowa’s only incumbent in Congress with no likely challenger yet. Steve Rathje and probably Mariannette Miller-Meeks will run against Dave Loebsack in IA-02, while Dave Funk and Pat Bertroche are challenging Leonard Boswell in IA-03. I don’t expect either of those districts to be competitive in 2010.
I admire Mr. Denklau for running, but the end of that resume writes the ads themselves. Braley won’t have any trouble I suspect and hopefully Leonard (my favorite Iowa representative) can hang on. Boswell is my favorite by far despite living in Loebsack’s district.
I guess we really have to wait till King uses an actual racial slur on tape in order for Democrats to have a shot in the Fifth. The truth is though that such a thing might happen, but it will be down the road and probably when/if King runs statewide. People are probably scared off the Fourth as well after Latham’s victory last year.
…is “writing a political column means that he has well thought out positions on many of the issues facing our country today, something many first time candidates lack.”
Robinson just proved himself a dingbat.
Political columnists mostly are good writers, meaning specifically they excel at writing as a skill. That is not in the least a reflection of any thoughtfulness in the contents of their columns.
I marvel at people like William Kristol getting a column and invitations to spout off his opinions, all based on having been the top aide to the country’s most unpopular VP in my adult life and spending his years since doing nothing but spouting off about things he knows nothing about.
I have personal experience, too, with the failings of a political columnist. There once was a political columnist for one of the larger Eastern Iowa newspapers with whom I became “message board friends” and eventually found myself in e-mail exchanges with him about politics. This is a guy, now retired, who is very conservative and won state-level media awards for his writing. I was astounded in our lengthy exchanges at his level of ignorance. He entertained Obama was born in Kenya, ignoring so many links I sent him proving the contrary……until he finally dug up those same links later on his own, as if he never got them from me, and conceded the point that Obama was born in Hawaii. He insisted that Tim Johnson “stole” the 2002 Senate election from John Thune with fraudulent Native American votes…and then backed off when I humiliated him with links proving him wrong. I had to get pretty deep in the weeds in these exchanges; he claimed a handwriting witness couldn’t prove signatures were fraudulent on some voter registration forms or absentee ballot request forms, and I dug up proof that, to the contrary, the government’s expert witness testified the signatures were affirmatively valid, not that he couldn’t prove they weren’t valid. It was a series of e-mail exchanges I finally ended when I realized there was no point continually going down these rabbit holes with him.
The bottom line is that these political columnists, at least on the conservative side, are no more knowledgeable than the likes of Erick Erickson at Red State.