‘Campaigns’

A TV and film star is throwing a $100,000+ fundraiser for a candidate for Iowa governor tonight, but the beneficiary isn’t the bleeding-heart Hollywood liberal you might expect.

Instead of asking conservatives to call home-state senators with pleas for votes against health care reform, the Republican National Committee is asking its membership to contact the offices of two Democratic senators deemed “critically important” to squashing any up-or-down vote on the reform bill.

The Register’s Kathie Obradovich reports that U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin will not make it to the Iowa Democratic Party’s Jefferson-Jackson dinner in person tomorrow night because he’ll be busy trying to pass health care reform in Washington, D.C. In his absence, the party will play a video greeting from him during the event.
Perhaps more notably, [...]

Former Iowa State University wrestling coach Jim Gibbons and state Sen. Brad Zaun, R-Urbandale, both announced intentions Thursday to challenge Democratic U.S. Rep. Leonard Boswell in 2010.

Iowa Democratic Party Chairman Michael Kiernan’s attacks against U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley are simply “insulting Iowans who disagree with the [Obama] administration’s political decision to bring terrorists to the United States,” an aide to the senator told the Iowa Independent Thursday.

U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley’s comparison of civilian trials for terrorists to the murder trial of O.J. Simpson is “false and disrespectful,” Iowa Democratic Party Chairman Michael Kiernan said Thursday.

Not only is U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin confident that the Senate Democratic Caucus will be able to block filibuster attempts on a health care reform bill, but he is looking forward to the jockeying that will come from both political parties once the bill is signed.

Harkin said he “can only hope” that Republicans who have opposed reform efforts will make the legislation a theme in their speeches on the campaign trail.

“I hope it is an issue next year,” he said.

Now that Democratic leaders in the Senate have unveiled their health care reform plan, Democrats have “rounded third [base] and we’re heading to home,” U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Cumming, said Wednesday night.
During an interview with MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, Harkin said no one in the Democratic caucus wants to be the person who derails health [...]

The question of possibly housing Guantanamo Bay detainees at a prison facility on the Iowa-Illinois border isn’t something that deserves consideration, according to U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, who said today that he opposes such individuals ever entering the country.

A little more than half of Americans believe health care reform would do more harm than good, according to a University of Iowa Hawkeye Poll released Wednesday.
The national phone survey of 772 adults, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percent, found that 52 percent believe government action would do more harm [...]