Tag: Small Business

UPDATE: The DCCC  added IA-04 to the Red to Blue list on October 14 and moved IA-05 up from Races to Watch to Emerging Races.

There have been no public polls in the race between Republican incumbent Tom Latham and Becky Greenwald in Iowa’s fourth Congressional district, and neither candidate has released any results from internal polling.

However, Latham may be increasingly concerned about holding this D+0 district amid what looks like a landslide victory for Barack Obama in Iowa.

Until this week, Latham’s campaign messaging touted his record and mostly ignored his challenger. But on Monday he went negative, issuing this statement blasting Greenwald’s support for the recent bailout package. (She came out against the first bailout bill the House considered but supported the version that cleared the Senate before coming up for a House vote.)

Latham voted against both bailout bills, one of very few times he’s ever refused to support something the Bush administration wanted. For months, Greenwald has been hitting him on his lockstep Republican voting record. He is clearly grateful to have this issue to separate him from the White House and Republican leadership in Congress.

Last week Latham and Greenwald held two radio debates, and Latham brought up his no votes on the bailout at every opportunity. I commented at Bleeding Heartland that the bailout was the only thing that kept the second debate from being a rout for Greenwald.

During and after the debates, Greenwald brought up Latham’s consistent Republican voting record on lots of issues, including the deregulation of the banking sector which has contributed to the current economic problems. She also linked Latham to John McCain’s failed approach on health care reform and hammered him for supporting a privatization scheme for Social Security.

Latham denies he has backed privatizing Social Security, but to paraphrase Josh Marshall, he uses classic Republican “bamboozlement” language on this issue. He has supported private investment accounts, which could be devastating to seniors’ income in a bear market.

Greenwald has challenged Latham to televised debates as well. He declined one invitation and is dragging his feet on rescheduling an Iowa Public Television debate that was postponed while Congress was considering the bailout.

The third quarter financial reports for Latham and Greenwald are not available at Open Secrets yet. As of June 30, Latham had a big cash on hand advantage, in part because he sits on the House Appropriations Committee and in part because Greenwald had to get through a four-way Democratic primary (she won with more than 50 percent of the vote).

Greenwald’s summer fundraising must have been reasonably strong, because she went up on tv in September, got the endorsement of EMILY’s List, and was put on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s “Emerging Races” list.

No doubt Latham still has a money edge, because he has been advertising more extensively on tv and radio throughout the district. His first two television commercials focused on a bill he co-authored to address the nursing shortage and the need to “crack down on Wall Street greed” and help Main Street businesses.

Most House race rankings still put IA-04 in the “likely Republican” category, but this is a district to watch, especially in light of the big Democratic gains in voter registration and Obama’s double-digit statewide lead over McCain, confirmed by at least ten polls.

If Latham does hold on to his seat, I think he should send Nancy Pelosi a thank-you note. Here’s Latham’s voting record on corporate subsidies. Here’s Latham’s voting record that relates to government checks on corporate power. Here’s Latham’s voting record on corporate tax breaks in general (including sub-categories on tax breaks for the oil and gas industry and for the wealthiest individuals).

Yet despite his long record of standing with corporations rather than middle-class taxpayers, the bailout has allowed Latham to position himself this way going into the home stretch of the campaign:

“Reckless Wall Street CEO’s made a mess and they asked Iowans to pay to clean it up,” noted Latham for Congress spokesperson Matt Hinch. “Tom Latham stood up in Congress and protected Iowans by twice voting no on this massive Wall Street bailout. Tom Latham believes that, as a matter of principle, it is wrong to spend hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to reward, benefit and bailout those on Wall Street who created this mess.”

Highlights of Becky Greenwald’s endorsed Wall Street bailout plan includes:

* The largest corporate welfare proposal in U.S. history all at taxpayer expense;

* Gives the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, and Wall Street veteran and former Goldman Sachs CEO, Henry Paulson a no-strings checkbook with $700 billion in taxpayer funds to spend as he sees fit;

* The Washington Post reports that there is a strong possibility of conflicts of interest, since the same companies who created the mess on Wall Street will, “be managing the assets while also selling their own troubled securities to the government.”;

* Taxpayer funded pork in the bill included tax breaks for rum, sports entities, television and the manufacturer of wooden arrows for children;

* And, no guarantee by Secretary Paulson that his plan will actually work.

“Becky Greenwald would reward the same greedy CEO’s who caused this crisis,” continued Hinch. “Becky Greenwald would spend $700 billion of Iowans’ money to fix Wall Street mistakes and greed. No accountability and no guarantee it will even work. It’s clear that Iowans can’t trust Becky Greenwald with our tax dollars.”

I don’t know whether this tactic will work for Latham, but I do know that if he were very confident, he would be sticking to a positive message.

My mom’s inspiration for a new business came from her nonprofit management and fundraising classes.  The idea: to have charities use car magnets to energize their supporters and raise money and awareness of their causes. Car magnets, she thought, could transform people’s cars into forums for engaging their communities. So we set out to create affordable magnets whose convenience, production values, and image quality would blow bumper stickers out of the water.  When we started the business this year, everyone asked us, “why don’t you do political magnets too?”  So we did.  We designed a line of Barack Obama magnets – both with the campaign’s slogans and typefaces and with artists’ and designers’ original designs.  We’re reaching out to congressional candidates in competitive races now.  I think that car magnets can powerfully amplify the message of progressive causes, particularly for candidates running in expensive, uphill races.  I would love to have your feedback about how you think we could help progressive candidates and causes.

We are currently negotiating licensing agreements to create and sell magnets for some major nonprofit organizations, including a number of zoos, aquariums, and museums. Nonprofits and charities are still the keystone of our long-term plans. We also do custom magnets for just about anything, no matter how small the order – we’re creating lines of car magnets for local businesses and even a local children’s soccer team.  But everywhere we talked about our business, people asked us the same question: “why aren’t you making political stuff?” Good question!  The 2008 political scene, particularly Barack Obama’s campaign, is generating historic levels of political engagement.  So, in May, we threw ourselves into creating political magnets.  We focused on Obama, naturally.  We incorporated some of the campaign’s (non-copyrighted) themes, like Gothic font and “Change We Can Believe In.”  We also commissioned designers and artists to create original Obama artwork and designs.  And our stuff looks good, if I do say so myself.  

Now here’s why I think car magnets can really help progressive activists and causes.  Reaching out to voters through local volunteers is the best way to Get-Out-The-Vote (see Obama, Barack and http://www.prospect.org/cs/art…  The reason why is simple.  People trust their friends, their neighbors, and even their fellow commuters far more than any advertisement.  And authenticity and trust are the keys to winning someone over and generating enthusiasm – in politics, in nonprofit fundraising, in life.  Displaying a car magnet announces that you not only volunteered but paid to raise awareness about your favorite museum or charity or political campaign. That creates a real personal connection between you, the driver, and the viewer, your audience.  With the personal touch a car magnet gives your message, you can powerfully demonstrate the grassroots enthusiasm behind your favorite causes.

Moreover, car magnets’ physical qualities and communication style help them powerfully amplify a progressive message.  Most Americans spend over 15 hours a week in their cars – over two hours a day! And they pay attention to their surroundings.  A good car magnet can hit many thousands of viewers a day.  A car magnet never stops working – downtown, highways, arterials, parking lots, shopping centers, even at home.  And unlike a TV ad or a door-to-door salesman, a car magnet doesn’t invade people’s time or personal space, which people really appreciate. Plus, people tend to recoil from bumper stickers, fearing their permanence, low production values, and one-time-only use.  Car magnets have none of those problems – their easy-on, easy-off quality gives people huge possibilities for creativity.  People remember the written word well, but they remember an image-based message – a picture, a logo, an artistic design – even more well.  I think there is a huge, untapped demand for what car magnets can offer, and that they can contribute enormously to progressive causes.

Many of our hopes rest on creating viral and word-of-mouth enthusiasm.  Our Holy Grail demographic target is high-awareness voters, especially activists and political campaign donors. We want to reach these people through the Netroots.  We are also contacting high-intensity Congressional campaigns too, particularly those involving Netroots darlings like Scott Kleeb and Rick Noriega.  

So I would love to hear your comments and thoughts on our car magnet business.  I haven’t included our business’s name or website address in this diary because I didn’t want to violate online community etiquette.  So I have some questions for readers.  First, are people here interested in what our car magnet business can do for progressive causes?  How would people here react to me creating diaries discussing the car magnets (Obama, congressional candidates, etc.) that we sell on our website?  Would that be taboo?  If we bought advertising and became a sponsor of this blog, would we have more legitimacy in creating self-promoting diaries?  Are there any progressive, nonprofit, or charitable organizations that you support and care about that would benefit from promoting themselves by distributing car magnet to their supporters? We enjoyed an overwhelmingly positive reaction to our Obama magnets at places like our state Democratic Convention and the Obama “Unite for Change” house parties.  But we know that face-to-face and online work in different ways.  So any advice at all would be hugely appreciated.  

Here’s one last thing I would like your feedback on.  We sell car magnets of both Democrats and Republicans – McCain along with Obama, Republican candidates along with Democratic candidates.  Here’s our reasons why: first, we wish to encourage civic and community engagement for everyone – progressive, liberal, moderate, conservative, independent, or whatever – as long as it’s respectful and positive.  We think increasing civic engagement enriches our communities and our lives.  Second, we think that becoming a partisan website would endanger our ability to help nonprofits and charities.  Nonprofits and charities, above all else, must seem like honest brokers to fundraise effectively, and associating with partisan websites would alienate large segments of the population.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you from the bottom of my heart for reading so much.  I’ve always been impressed by the spirit of civic engagement expressed on Netroots websites like this one, and I’d love to hear what you have to say.  

Decatur7@gmail.com