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CARROLL — As he campaigns in western Iowa, 5th District congressional candidate Rob Hubler says it’s becoming clear to him the economy is surpassing the war in Iraq and the standard-fare menu of social issues as the chief concern for voters.
Hubler, a Council Bluffs Democrat, is challenging three-term GOP incumbent U.S. Rep. Steve King of Kiron.In past elections, socially conservative middle-class voters have gone against their pocketbooks and lined up with corporate Republicans who’ve made politically expedient appeals on abortion, gay marriage and other social issues.
This time, with rising gas prices and a generally tough economic picture, voters may not have the luxury of looking past basic needs at the polls.
“I believe that is a dynamic,” Hubler told Iowa Independent in an interview in Carroll. “They’re making a choice that the economy is a primary issue for them.”
Hubler sets forth the top three issues in the sprawling 32-county district as follows:
1. The economy
2. The Iraq war
3. Health care
Hubler said the economy is almost 2-to-1 over Iraq with voters, and that in southwest Iowa the economy comes up to the near exclusion of Iraq.
“It’s kind of regionalized,” he said.
Hubler believes economic anxieties reveal the concerns western Iowans have with a congressman who doesn’t deliver federal money for his district.
Figures from the Citizens Against Government Waste congressional (CAGW) “Pork Book” show that King is by far the weakest breadwinner of Iowa’s congressional delegation. King brought home just $9.8 million in 2008 in what the group calls “pork-barrel” spending.
While ostensibly a measure of what this conservative organization deems “waste” or “pork” spending, the report can’t help but reveal the effectiveness of senators and representatives in working the system to get money for their constituents. By contrast, U.S. Sens. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, are runaway leaders for the Hawkeye State, bringing back $321.4 million and $302.8 million, respectively, by CAGW’s “pork” standards. Western Iowa’s former congressman, Tom Latham, now over in the 4th District, delivered seven times as much as King — $67 million. Since Latham, too, is a Republican, King can’t counter that this is about partisan politics in a Democratically controlled Congress.
That said, two first-term Democrats in Iowa, U.S. Reps. Bruce Braley and Dave Loebsack, brought back $27.5 million and $53.5 million, respectively, in 2008, CAGW reports. That’s far more than third-termer King who has a GOP powerhouse, Grassley, with whom to team up for the interests of western Iowa’s many small towns that are in dire need of economic-development assistance.
“Show me the money,” Hubler says. “(King) does not perform as a congressman, period. He does not know what the definition of a representative is.”
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