Tag: Leonard Boswell

(From the diaries – promoted by DavidNYC)

The U.S. Census Bureau confirmed this week that Iowa will lose a Congressional district following the 2010 census unless we experience unprecedented (for Iowa) population growth in the next two years:

During the past eight years, Iowa has gained as many people – about 76,000 – as states like South Carolina and Virginia gained between 2007 and 2008 alone.

To retain the congressional seat, the state would have to gain nearly twice that number by 2010, according to projections by Election Data Services, a Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm that analyzes the impact of demographics on politics.

So, Iowa will be left with four Congressional districts. No one knows what the new map will look like, but it’s likely that the 2012 race in the new third district will determine whether Iowa Democrats (who now hold a 3-2 edge in U.S. House seats) gain a 3-1 advantage or have to settle for a 2-2 split.  

Note: A non-partisan commission draws up the new Congressional map after each census in Iowa, so Democratic gerrymanders will not take place, even if Governor Chet Culver wins re-election in 2010 and Democrats hold their majorities in the state House and Senate.

However, if the Democrats maintain control of the legislature, they have the option of rejecting the first and/or second map produced by the non-partisan commission. Republicans in the Iowa legislature rejected the first map proposed after the last census.

Most of what’s now the fifth district, represented by Republican incumbent Steve “10 Worst” King, is likely to become the new fourth district. It makes no difference whether the new counties added to IA-04 come from the current third or fourth districts–that is going to be a safe Republican seat.

Given the voting trends in eastern Iowa, I assume the new first and second Congressional districts will still be relatively safe for Democrats. (Remember, fewer than 10 Republicans in the whole country represent districts with any kind of Democratic partisan lean.) Either Bruce Braley or Dave Loebsack may need to move if the new map throws Waterloo (Black Hawk County) in the same district as Mount Vernon (Linn County), but that should not present much of a problem.

The big question mark is what happens to IA-03. Polk County will remain the largest county in the district, but it won’t be as dominant in the new district as it is now. A majority of the votes in the current third district come from the county containing Des Moines and most of its suburbs.

In which direction will IA-03 expand? If the counties added to it come mostly from the southwest, Republicans will have a better chance of winning the district. One reason Greg Ganske beat longtime incumbent Neal Smith in the 1994 landslide was that Smith’s fourth district had lost Story and Jasper counties, and gained a lot of southwestern Iowa counties, following the 1990 census.

If IA-03 includes more counties from the southeast, Democrats would be better positioned to hold the seat, although it’s worth remembering that Ottumwa resident Mariannette Miller-Meeks carried seven southern counties in her unsuccessful challenge to Loebsack in IA-02 this year.

Speaking at an Iowa Politics forum in Des Moines last month, Miller-Meeks said she was leaving her ophthalmology practice at the end of 2008. She strongly suggested that she will run for office again. Whether that means another bid for Congress or a run for the state legislature was unclear.

Miller-Meeks has little chance of winning a district as strongly Democratic as IA-02, but I could easily see her taking on Leonard Boswell if Wapello County ends up in IA-03 after the next census. The Des Moines Register has endorsed Boswell’s challengers before and would back any credible Republican opponent against him.

The Republicans’ best chance in a third district stretching to the south, though, would be to run someone with strong Polk County connections to keep down the Democratic margins there. I don’t have any idea which Republicans have their eye on this race.

If IA-03 expands to the north, it’s good news and bad news for Democrats. Story County and Marshall County are reasonably strong territory for the party. On the down side, current fourth district incumbent Tom Latham lives in Story County. Latham is a mediocre Republican back-bencher; what else can you say about a seven-term incumbent whose big achievement on health care, according to his own campaign, was co-sponsoring a bill that never made it out of committee?

However, Latham has obviously used his position on the Appropriations Committee to build up a lot of goodwill in the district. He just won re-election by 21 points in a district Barack Obama carried by 8 percent, and he even carried Story County.

I don’t care to run Boswell or a non-incumbent Democrat (in the event of Boswell’s retirement) against Latham in a redrawn IA-03. I’m not saying Democrats couldn’t hold the seat in those circumstances, but I feel it would be a tough hold.

We would be better off electing a new, ambitious Democrat to Iowa’s third district in 2010, so we can run a rising star in the majority party against Latham, if it comes to that. Actually, we’d have been better off if Boswell had retired in 2008, allowing someone new to compete for this seat as a two-term Democratic incumbent in 2012. But what’s done is done.

Anyone think there’s a chance Boswell will reconsider his promise to run for re-election in 2010?

If Democrats still control the state legislature after 2010, should they reject the first new Congressional map suggested by the non-partisan commission if that map puts Story County in IA-03?

What kind of map would give Democrats the best chance of holding the third district?

I look forward to reading your absurdly early speculation about the 2012 races in the comments.

For those who are interested in the national implications of the post-census reapportionment, DavidNYC created a chart showing which states are likely to gain or lose Congressional districts.

Chris Bowers has already created a 2012 electoral college map, and even with one fewer electoral vote, Iowa will remain important to Obama’s re-election chances. You should click over and read the whole post yourself, but the good news is that Obama has a clear path to 270 electoral votes in 2012 even if he loses Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Indiana and North Carolina.

UPDATE: Iowa blogger John Deeth looked ahead to the 2012 Iowa races in this post last week. He concluded that in order to win three out of the four Congressional districts, Iowa Democrats will need to 1) beat Latham in 2010, and 2) get Boswell to retire in 2012. Click over to read how he reached that conclusion.  

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.

The markers that identify a likely retirement are a bit hazy and sometimes they move quickly.  A likely retiree may be a bit up in years, in bad health, not fund raising, facing a difficult race, facing opposition within his own party.  He or she may even be facing legal troubles. Among the likely contenders are Bill Jefferson, Vic Snyder, Leonard Boswell.  Age and seniority alone might make John Dingell a possibility but I think that he will have to die in office or be seriously disabled.

Jefferson comes from a safe district but he has been indicted and has just $29,000 cash on hand.  Considering his possible legal bills that is frightening (see Don Young for instruction).  It is likely that post Katrina, the Republicans will try to conbine Jefferson’s LA-2 and Melancon’s LA-3.  This could be the time for an ambitious and less tarnished NOLA pol to push Jefferson out.

Boswell is sitting pretty with over $700,000 cash on hand.  Still, he’s 67 and has experienced bad health.  I saw a tape of him in 2006 and he looked grandfatherly and sluggish.  Boswell is facing energetic progressive legislator Ed Fallon in a primary.  Fallon carried the Des Moines based district when he ran for Governor.  Unlike in 2006, Boswell is not facing a top tier Republican challenger like Jeff Lamberti.

Vic Snyder pulled a miracle, again.  For the third straight quarter, Snyder has failed to raise even a nickel.  Zip, zero, nada.  He’s got a comfortable seat representing Little Rock.  Snyder can self fund a bit.  The man is both a physician and a lawyer.  He has no opponent and got nearly 60% of the vote vs. Andy Mayberry in 2006.  

Al Wynn is being out fund raised by Donna Edwards.  He certainly has friends in the telecom business.  I figure Wynn to go down fighting but Maryland’s primary is on February 12.  One spin of the dice and the precarious Mr. Wynn could be retired within the week.

Dennis Kucinich is being out raised, too.  He’s got several opponents and Cimperman is well funded and feisty.  Dennis is facing a March 3 primary.  Retire into the sunset like Tancredo or Duncan Hunter?  Nah.  Be defeated?  Possible.

Yvette Clark is young, a freshman.  Still she doesn’t have a ton of cash and suffered from bad health earlier in the session.  The seat was highly competitive when open, but just among Democrats.  Clark is a maverick who was early pushing impeachment.  New York’s primary is not until September.

Ed Fallon, a liberal former state representative, might be getting ready to challenge Rep. Leonard Boswell in IA-03, according to the Iowa Independent. Right now, the only tea leaves are a handful of “Fallon for Congress” domain names that were recently registered (the admin contact is Fallon’s home address).

Boswell is a fairly conservative Dem who seems to be perennially endangered despite the fact that he sits in a 50-50 district. Health troubles have also plagued him in recent years. The Independent contrasts the two men:

Fallon, who represented a Des Moines state house district from 1992 to 2006, finished an unexpectedly strong third in the 2006 gubernatorial primary with 26 percent.  He led the field in the 3rd Congressional District.  Fallon was seen as one of the most liberal members of the Iowa House, and if there was a 99 to 1 or 97 to 2 roll calls, Fallon was usually on the short end.

Boswell, on the other hand, is one of the more conservative Democrats in Congress.  Rankings at Progressive Punch show Boswell as the 214th most liberal of 233 Democrats in Congress, and actually had him behind Republican Jim Leach for 2006.  Boswell’s Progressive Punch score moves up to 170th when only this year’s votes are included. He recently voted with fellow Iowa Democrats Bruce Braley and Dave Loebsack in a failed effort to block $70 billion in funds for the Iraq war, in contract to earlier votes for war funding.

I’m inclined to think this could be a fairly serious challenge, if Fallon does indeed pull the trigger. You don’t often see former state legislators jump into primaries like this, and if Fallon can successfully argue that Boswell is out-of-step with his district, he might gain traction. However, Iowa’s primary is just six months away, so Fallon would have precious little time to seal the deal in what will already be an uphill battle.

Personally, I’m going to reserve judgment here, but this could be a compelling race.