So in the spirit of overzealousness that tends to enthrall political junkies everywhere when there isn’t a real campaign to watch, I decided that I should probably read as much into the whole thing as I could.

The basics

Vander Plaats opposes a gas tax increase like Gov. Chet Culver.

Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey, who is seen as another serious Republican candidate for governor, told the Iowa Independent that he was open to the idea, which has been supported by traditionally conservative groups like the Farm Bureau.

“I think generally with [agriculture] folks, a pay-as-you-go gas tax makes the most sense to address those road concerns,” Northey said. “I think everyone has been looking around for other options and there is no magic pot of money sitting around to do those things.”

Vander Plaats said he was surprised that some conservative groups were supportive of a gas tax increase, and he described it as a “real problem” within the Republican party:

“What I mean is these groups and individuals are so caught up in the ‘system think’ that they need to get outside the box and think of a different way,” he said, later adding: “Iowans have had it with the increased taxes. They’ve had it with the increase in government. They’ve had it with having their lives controlled. They want someone who will lead the state of Iowa, not just grow the size of government.”

How will the issue play itself out?

Bob Vander Plaats

While the merits of a gas tax increase are debatable on policy grounds, the political realities of advocating any kind of tax increase at the beginning of a Republican primary are pretty easy to grasp.  Republican primaries tend to penalize candidates who want to raise taxes, and they tend to reward candidates who want to lower taxes.

Let’s trudge a little deeper into the weeds.

If Northey decides to run for governor in 2010, he could probably survive his openness to a gas tax increase if it stays out of the Iowa Code and remains an abstract idea.  Once he gets onto the campaign trail, he could back away from supporting a gas tax increase in the near future, and Vander Plaats would not be able to use the issue to any significant advantage.

Bill Northey

The more interesting scenario would happen if a gas tax increase passes this year.  Northey would have trouble coming out against this particular increase after his expression of openness to it just last week, and he would be caught between a rock and the Farm Bureau if he tried.

With a gas tax increase on the books, Northey could lose support among anti-tax fiscal conservatives. Northey will probably need to win over the more fiscally conservative wing of his party if he hopes to defeat Vander Plaats, whose strongest support will likely come from the socially conservative wing of the GOP.

Now, put yourself in Culver’s shoes: Northey is a popular Secretary of Agriculture, and he won his position by an impressive margin in 2006, a year that saw significant gains for Democratic candidates everywhere else on the ballot.  Vander Plaats is a serious candidate, but he has no government experience and a history of losing campaigns.  Whom would you rather face in the 2010 general election?

Culver says he opposes an increase in the gas tax, but he has not explicitly threatened a veto yet.  Some lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have signaled support for the idea, and bills have been introduced in both chambers of the state legislature.  If a bill ends up on the governor’s desk for a signature, the chance to hang an albatross around Northey’s neck — one that could knock him out of the GOP primary and stall his burgeoning political career — could prove tempting.

I’m not saying it’ll happen, but who knows?

“As a Republican House member from Iowa, (Nussle) was part of the Gingrich transition team that ushered in the Contract with America” in 1994, writes Mike Allen at Politico. “Nussle has to lay low for now because he’s working on the transition. Attribute all this to Nussle sources.”

“Mr. Nussle is also very close to Rudy Giuliani, who hasn’t lost his appetite for national office,” writes Marc Ambinder at the Atlantic. Nussle headed Giuliani’s Iowa campaign after losing the 2006 governor’s race to Chet Culver, until taking the Budget job.

Ambinder is pessimistic about Nussle’s chances: “If Newt runs, he’s the odds-on-favorite to win.”

Chris Cilizza of the Washington Post makes a case for placing the White House budget director and former Iowa congressman on the short list of possible candidates to chair the RNC as the party rebuilds from John McCain’s defeat and the loss of House and Senate seats in Tuesday’s election.

“Iowa — and the Midwest generally — is a central political battleground in 2010 and beyond, Cilizza writes as an argument for Nussle. But he continues: “Nussle is abrasive (at times) and has made a fair number of enemies during his political career.”

“Initially considered one of the party’s strongest candidates nationwide,” in his 2006 race for governor, Cilizza writes, “Nussle’s campaign underperformed.”

Thus it is in politics. Both parties, in cold political Darwinism, leave the weak to die. It happened to me in my own legislative race 12 years ago. But at the moment, the grumbling appears louder on the Republican side.

Iowa’s conservative blogosphere is grumbling that Christopher Reed, the long-shot challenger to Senator Tom Harkin, is being triaged out. The latest controversy centers around Reed’s charges on Steve Deace’s WHO radio show that that Caleb Hunter, executive director of the Republican Party of Iowa (RPI), is “actively telling Iowa voters not to support my candidacy because I have no chance to win.” Reed also said Hunter was telling donors their efforts were better spent on trying to win back the Iowa House, where Democrats now hold a 53-47 edge.

“The only groups that I have seen attempting to support Reed at all are the Iowa Right to Life and Iowa Christian Alliance,” writes the Iowa Defense Alliance blog, saying that the treatment of Reed reflects on the Republican State Convention’s battle over National Committee seats. “These are the same people that claimed that (Iowa Right to Life head) Kim Lehman couldn’t be a national chairwoman because she wouldn’t support all Republicans. Now the shoe is on the other foot. These same people are now doing what they claimed that Lehman would do,” Iowa Defense Alliance writes, calling RPI leadership “the Romney Party of Iowa.”

“Reed’s information is second or third hand,” writes Republican state central committee member David Chung at the Hawkeye GOP blog. “I do not know exactly what was said or where but it sounds as if it lost something in the translation.”

“(Former state Rep. George) Eichhorn was definitely the ‘insider’ candidate with more ties to party leadership, and I’m sure they weren’t too happy when their buddy got beat,” writes Nathan Greene at Battleground Iowa. “I don’t think Hunter was telling people not to vote for Reed, but he was certainly telling people he doesn’t think Reed has a chance, so people should send their money and their volunteer hours over to (House minority leader Christopher) Rants.”

“It’s one thing if the party doesn’t have the money to financially support Reed,” writes Greene. It is another thing altogether to actively attempt to sabotage his volunteer and fundraising efforts.”

The multiple posts on the party’s support, or lack thereof, have led to comment wars on the blogs. “You, Christopher, have raised less than $20,000 for your campaign for US SENATE – you need to just curl up and hide your pitiful, pitiful self — you are an embarrassment,” writes an anonymous ‘Steve’ on Battleground Iowa. “Go buy yourself another suit or haircut with your campaign funds,” he adds, repeating an often-noted criticism of Reed.

Clayton County Republican Chairwoman Gwen Eilers has gone so far as to send out a mass email urging Republicans to write in third-place primary candidate Steve Rathje instead of voting for Reed.

“It is no secret that RPI has limited funds this election cycle,” writes Chung. “I supported the decision to target these funds to those races where they are likely to be affect the outcome. These chosen few are not chosen for their ideological purity. If it were so, Reed would be at the top of the list. But a dispassionate view, looking to target key races, the U.S. Senate race is not one of them.”

Despite his near-invisibility, Reed is reaching as high as 40 percent in some polls, simply by being Not Tom Harkin. Yet, with Republican presidential nominee John McCain in the state Saturday, Reed’s name was not mentioned from the podium in Davenport, and no Reed signs were visible in the hall.

Instead, underscoring the Republican Party’s apparent priority, state Rep. Steve Olson said, “I believe we can take over the Iowa House.” Also speaking were state Rep. Jamie Van Fossen and two legislative challengers: Ross Paustian, House 84 challenger against first-term Democrat Elesha Gayman, and state senate challenger Shawn Hamerlink, opposing Sen. Frank Wood.

And with the presidential candidate of his party in his home county, sitting state senator and 1st Congressional District challenger Dave Hartsuch did not speak. National handicappers all rank the 1st District as safe for freshman Democrat Bruce Braley.

“Have any of you noticed that Barack Obama is part African-American?” Sebelius asked in response to a question about why the election is so close. “That may be a factor. All the code language, all that doesn’t show up in the polls. And that may be a factor for some people.”

The remark, delivered in the governor’s low key, folksy, out-from-behind-the-podium style, raised a couple chuckles but few eyebrows in the downtown Iowa City crowd, but Republicans took offense and responded in short order.

“Governor Sebelius’s remarks in Iowa City today are hurtful and divisive at best,” said Republican Party of Iowa Executive Director Caleb Hunter in a press release. “With less than 50 days to go, Democrats will continue to try and change the focus away from the issues that will decide this election.”

The rest of Sebelius’ remarks in Iowa City stuck closely to the Obama campaign’s talking points.

“The bottom line question is, do you think George Bush has been a wonderful president?” she told an audience whose questions focused as much on the horse race as on specific issues.

Sebelius takes questions at the Iowa City library.

One questioner argued that Obama was under-performing in polls because young voters with cell phones were under-reported, and Sebelius agreed. “I have a 24 year old and a 27 year old and they’ve never had a land-line since they went to college,” she said. “So they don’t show up in polls. But they need to show up at the polls.”

Yet at each turn, Sebelius tried to return the dialogue to bread and butter issues, to the delight of Bob Elliott, a former member of Iowa City’s city council and a leading local supporter of Sen. Joe Biden during the Iowa caucuses.

“Lipstick can stay home! Talk about the issues!” he shouted, in apparent reference to another governor.

During a brief press availability, Sebelius said she didn’t know much about her Alaska colleague. “She’s one of our new governors, and I’ve met her at a couple of events that all the governors were at,” she said of GOP vice presidential candidate and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.  “But we’ve really had no personal interaction. The real issue is John McCain vs. Barack Obama, and their policies could not be more different.”

Sebelius responded to criticism from Kansas Republicans about her campaign visits, and implied that the campaigning went hand in hand with her job.

“I can do a much better job as governor of Kansas, and Chet Culver can do a much better job in Iowa, if we have a partner in the White House instead of an adversary.”

For coverage of Sebelius’s visit to Cedar Rapids, click here.

The American Future fund has been tied to the 1988 "Willie Horton" ad and the 2004 "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" ads. (Sources: AmericanFutureFund.com, Wikipedia, SwiftVets.com)

The American Future Fund (AFF), operating out of Des Moines, is sponsoring advocacy advertisements in closely contested congressional races from New York to Louisiana to Minnesota and Colorado. It is one of the most ambitious conservative independent expenditure groups to emerge in 2008. Most observers expect AFF to begin increasing its role in elections around the country, stoking speculation that it will spend heavily to prop up lightly funded Republican campaign committees.

Because of the way the group is organized under Internal Revenue Service guidelines for nonprofit organizations it does not have to disclose its donors and is not governed by the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

But an Iowa Independent investigation has found the group has deep roots in state Republican politics. And, unlike MoveOn.org, a similar group advocating liberal causes, it’s hard to determine who is actually behind the AFF. The key players include:

Nicole Schlinger, the group’s president, the former executive director of the Republican Party of Iowa.

Tim Albrecht, a former spokesman for Republicans in the Iowa House who worked for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign and spent a short time this year working for the Republican Party of Iowa, is the group’s communications director.

David Kochel, another former state GOP executive director and a senior adviser to the Romney campaign, who has served as spokesman for AFF, although Albrecht said he is no longer associated with the group.

The Washington Post reported in March — and Albrecht confirmed to Iowa Independent — that Ben Ginsberg, of the high-powered D.C. law firm Patton Boggs, is the group’s legal counsel. Ginsberg resigned as chief outside counsel to the Bush-Cheney campaign in August 2004 when it was revealed that he was also providing advice to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group that sponsored error-laden attacks on the military service record of 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry.

Larry McCarthy, president of D.C.-based media firm McCarthy Marcus Hennings, is AFF’s media strategist. In 1988, McCarthy produced the infamous, racially tinged Willie Horton television ad that helped then-Vice President George H.W. Bush bury Michael Dukakis under charges that he was soft on crime.

Public records show the AFF also has connections to Iowa businessman Bruce Rastetter, who is widely believed to be considering a run for governor in 2010. Rastetter is a regular donor to the Republican Party and founder of Hawkeye Renewables, the fourth largest ethanol producer in the nation. Eric Peterson, business manager at Summit Farms, another of Rastetter’s companies, is listed on documents filed with the Iowa Secretary of State’s office as president, secretary and director of Iowa Future Fund, a conservative nonprofit that essentially morphed into American Future Fund.

The address listed on an AFF ad buy in Minnesota is a post office box used by Nick Ryan, a Des Moines lobbyist who works primarily for Rastetter’s companies and who served as campaign manager for 2006 Republican gubernatorial candidate Jim Nussle. In February, Ryan was acting as spokesman for Hawkeye Renewables when 29,000 gallons of ethanol was accidentally spilled at the company’s Iowa Falls plant.

The many faces of AFF

The Iowa Future Fund, technically the first incarnation of AFF, gained public attention in March when it ran a series of television and radio ads accusing Gov. Chet Culver of increasing spending by 20 percent over the past two years and raising taxes and fees by $100 million.

“Culver raises taxes and spends more money and wants to use your tax dollars to benefit Microsoft,” the ad’s narrator said, referring to a tax package that Culver backed and that the legislature passed geared to lure companies like Microsoft Corp. and Google to the state.

The Iowa Democratic Party filed a complaint with the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board to determine whether the ads constituted political advertising, which would require disclosure of the group’s donors.

Charlie Smithson, executive director of the Iowa Ethics Campaign and Disclosure Board, said the complaint has not yet been fully settled.

“It is still under investigation,” he said. “The determination was made that it did not violate the state campaign laws because it did not ‘expressly advocate’ for or against Gov. Culver or a clearly identified candidate for office. The issue the Board is now looking at is whether any of the state lobbying laws were triggered.”

The next Ethics Board meeting is Aug. 28.

In April, Iowa Future Fund effectively split into two groups: AFF, which focuses on federal races around the country, and the Iowa Progress Project, which puts its resources toward state issues.

Albrecht said AFF and Iowa Future Fund “are completely unrelated.” But they share an organizational history. AFF and IFF were incorporated on the same day by the same Virginia law firm. David Kochel served for a time as spokesman for IFF and AFF before becoming president of Iowa Progress Project.

In March, an ad run by AFF in the race between Democrat Al Franken and Republican Sen. Norm Coleman for Minnesota’s U.S. Senate seat caused the state’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party to file a formal complaint with the FEC alleging that the group violated federal election law and that its ads constitute blatant electoral advocacy.

“The American Future Fund is a shadowy nonprofit organization,” the complaint said. “It purports to be exempt from tax under section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code. But its notion of ‘promoting the social welfare’ is to send valentines to electorally troubled Republican Senate candidates. The Commission should take immediate steps to enforce the law and expose this group’s secret financing to light of day.”

Under federal election law, the organization is prohibited from engaging solely in “express advocacy,” which would include asking voters to vote for or against a certain candidate. But so long as the ad hasn’t been coordinated with a campaign and doesn’t outright say “œvote for” or “vote against,” it is not considered express advocacy, according to Paul S. Ryan, FEC program director for the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington, D.C.-based organization.

“An organization that is careful about how it writes the script of its ad can fly under the radar or stay outside of the net of campaign finance activity,” he said.

The ad in question didn’t ask voters to vote for Coleman, but rather asked voters to “call Norm Coleman and thank him for his agenda for Minnesota.”

In 2004, several groups filed complaints against so-called independent expenditure committees saying they ignored campaign finance law. It took the FEC two years to rule on the complaints. In the end, the groups had to pay less than 2 percent of the fund they illegally raised and spent.

Brad Smith, a former chairman of the FEC and currently a professor of law at Capital University Law School in Columbus, Ohio, said that if a group’s “major purpose” is not trying to affect elections, “they are not regulated by the FEC.” But Smith added the definition of “major purpose” is not clear, which could open the door for some nonprofit groups to face a challenge on their tax status.

“I think there would be an opening for someone who wanted to prosecute a group who is spending millions of dollars on advertising,” said Smith, a Republican who has been a vocal critic of campaign finance reform.

Albrecht said there is no validity to claims that AFF is anything but an issues-focused organization.

“We are an issues organization,” he said. “That is evident by the things that are prominently displayed on our Web site and in our work.”

Ads without expenditures

Since running the Coleman ad in Minnesota, AFF has been busy.

In July, ran radio ads in Nevada, asking voters to “call [Democratic] Sen. Harry Reid and tell him to allow a vote” on expanded domestic oil drilling.

Also in July, it ran radio ads asking Colorado voters to call U.S. Rep. Mark Udall, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, and “tell him to stop delaying energy exploration.” Last week, AFF launched a television ad critical of Udall’s stance on domestic oil exploration.

The group also released a series of three Web ads, asking voters to call U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., and U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., to tell them they “shouldn’t get sweetheart deals,” referring to accusations that they profited from the mortgage crisis.

In May, AFF officially filed a statement of organization for its own political action committee, called American Future Fund Political Action. Ryan said this is a standard procedure for many nonprofits as it allows them to solicit donations for exclusively “express advocacy” work.

The AFF PAC has used YouTube to distribute a series of ads against Franken in Minnesota (in May), Senate Majority Leader Reid in Nevada (in June), U.S. Rep. William Jefferson and U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu in Louisiana (in May and July), and Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama (in May).

However, according to reports filed with the FEC on July 13, the group has raised no money and has had no expenditures, a fact that Ryan called “odd.”

Albrecht said AFF is simply a reaction to liberal groups like MoveOn.org who have dominated this realm of politics for years.

“For far too long the left has been on the field with no opposition,” he said. “American Future Fund has said it’s time to play ball. We’re not going to sit on the sidelines any longer. It’s important for free market, conservative principles to be highlighted in public, and that’s what we intend to do.”

The difference is that MoveOn.org, a decade-old liberal group, identifies its leadership on its Web site, boasts more than a million members and never shies away from the spotlight as a means for amplifying its message. AFF is decidedly lower-profile, disclosing nothing about its leaders, history or membership on its Web site, and it makes little or no effort on public appearances, press conferences and media bookings.

The potential impact that groups like AFF could have on this year’s elections will be difficult to gauge until the votes are in on Election Day. In 2006, independent expenditure committees for both parties spent about $430 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Despite objections to such groups from both major parties’ presumptive nominees for president, many experts expect that number to be higher this year.

To view selected ads from the American Future Fund, click here.

Republican officials are outwardly optimistic about their chances this November to deliver the state to GOP presidential candidate Sen. John McCain and pick up seats in the state Legislature. But they readily admit their party faces an uphill struggle due in part to a large deficit in paid staff on the ground around the state.According to reports filed the Federal Election Commission on June 20, the Republican Party of Iowa had only seven salaried employees on staff, compared to 28 for the state Democrats (however, many of those employees were reassigned to work strictly for the Obama campaign). Since those reports were filed, the GOP announced the hiring of Nathan Treloar to serve as the state party’s communications director.

State filings paint a more ominous picture. According to expenditure reports filed with the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board, as of May 20 the Republican Party of Iowa had no paid staff focusing exclusively on state races, while the Iowa Democratic Party had an additional 27 salaried employees.

Observers said a gap this big in the number of paid staff in central offices and across the state could have major implications for November’s elections, mostly for state legislative candidates.

“One dedicated person in a rural legislative district working 40 hours a week, week after week, makes a tremendous difference,” said Gordon Fischer, former chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party. “In Iowa that grass-roots effort has a big impact.”

The situation is not news to GOP officials.

“The fact is, [the Iowa Democrats] have outnumbered us with paid staff in every election cycle since 2002,” said Caleb Hunter, executive director of the Republican Party of Iowa.

Hunter said big Democratic donors, such as labor unions, make it impossible for the GOP to match fund raising with their rivals.

“We require a lot more volunteer effort to compete on the ground,” Hunter said. “We’ve built up quite a strong base of volunteers across the state, and as we approach November, we will be adding more paid staff as well.”

Former state GOP Chairman Steve Grubbs said winning in Iowa rarely comes down to paid staff.

“It is about message and organization,” said Grubbs, a party strategist from Davenport. “If the Republicans have a strong volunteer organization at the county level, that will matter more than the number of staff.”

He said in 1998 the state GOP was out staffed but was still able to make big gains in state legislative races.

“I think the Republican base is beginning to get motivated, and that is how the party will be successful,” he said. “A lot will depend on what happens between now and November.”

Hunter said the state party is also going to rely on the national party and McCain’s presidential campaign to bolster its numbers and assist in local get-out-the-vote efforts.

Crystal Benton, a spokeswoman for the McCain campaign, said winning Iowa is a priority for the campaign, which is evidenced by the fact that one of its 11 regional headquarters is located in Urbandale. The Iowa office will oversee the campaign’s operations in Iowa, Illinois and Missouri, she said.

“Iowa is very important to us,” Benton said. “We plan on a very aggressive campaign in the state.”

In addition to McCain staff, Benton said the national Republican Party has sent and will continue to send paid staff to the state as part of the Victory program, a joint fund-raising effort with the McCain campaign.

“They will do a lot of work for our campaign and down-ticket races,” Benton said. “We are going to work hard to get out the vote.”

Fischer said the staffing deficit indicates that the Iowa GOP is hurting. In January then Republican Party of Iowa Chairman Ray Hoffmann stepped down in the middle of his second term following criticism about the party’s management. Then in February new state GOP Chairman Stewart Iverson fired the party’s two top staff members.

Grubbs said that there is little doubt this will be a challenging year for the Republican Party, but he stressed that things can turn around quickly.

“Anyone who assumes this election is predetermined just doesn’t understand history,” he said. “There is a lot to be decided in the next five months. I think Barack Obama will do a lot to unify our party’s base and turn them out on Election Day.”

The results aren’t final on election night. That’s both a formality and a reality.The formality is the canvass of votes, usually about a week after the election. The auditor presents the numbers to the county Board of Supervisors, and after some cursory level of review the Board certifies the results. Any recount request would happen after the canvass, though candidates could certainly announce their intentions sooner. Indeed, Peter Teahen campaign manager Wes Enos said a recount request is “very likely” in the 2nd District, where Teahen trails Mariannette Miller-Meeks by 109 votes. The recount request deadline is 5:00 Friday, June 13.

That deadline is important in the senate race, where both the close margin and the percentage are at issue. George Eichhorn doesn’t have to surpass Christopher Reed. He only needs Reed to drop below 35 percent. That would make the nomination inconclusive and force the nomination to a statewide convention — and the state Republican convention just happens to be Saturday, June 14. That turnaround is so fast that the GOP would probably need to reconvene another convention, as a recount could not be completed literally overnight.

As of this writing, Reed has 35.29 percent of the vote and a 413 vote lead over Eichhorn. In the 2nd Congressional District, where 35 percent is not an issue, Mariannette Miller-Meeks is up 109 over Peter Teahen.

As of this writing?

The reality is that all the votes aren’t counted yet. The numbers from polling places rarely change after election day. It’s absentees and provisionals that move.

Provisional ballots give a voter who isn’t on the rolls for one reason or another a chance to cast a ballot and have their problem researched. Provisional ballot boards meet today to determine whether those should be counted.  With election day voter registration now in effect, there are likely to be fewer provisionals than in past years. A typical case would be someone who requested an absentee ballot, but went to the polls instead, and didn’t have the unvoted absentee to turn in. They would cast a provisional, and the day after the election the auditor’s office would double check to make sure the absentee hadn’t been sent in.

Absentee ballots don’t have to be to your auditor’s office when the polls close. They have to be postmarked by the day before the election, but can still be counted if they arrive in the mail later. For this election, the deadline is noon Monday, June 9.

Most of the ballots that haven’t come back yet are from overseas. There have been more of those ballots in recent years thanks to the 2002 “Help” America Vote Act (HAVA), the “fix everything that went wrong in Florida” law.

Prior to 2002, overseas and military voters had to file a new request for ballots each calendar year. (Regular voters need to request absentees separately for each election.) But under HAVA and the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA), requests from the troops and expatriates are good through the next two general elections.

This means people who sign up intending to vote for president will, one day in April or early May, get an unexpected surprise in their mailbox — a ballot full of little known U.S. Senate challengers. And a lot of those ballots, on which George Eichhorn and Peter Teahen are placing their hopes, are in trash cans overseas.

If things do get to a recount, the chances of reversal are slim. Just under 17,000 votes were cast in the 2nd Congressional District Race. In a 2002 state senate recount that had just over 17,000 votes cast, the final margin shifted by only three votes from the canvass.

“I consider him a threat to my life and to the safety of my family,” Teahen said of Tredrea, who worked with Teahen last year in Darfur. “It is irresponsible of the Miller-Meeks campaign to be distributing this information.” Teahen said that Tredrea had called the third candidate in the race but that “Lee Harder knew better than to touch it.”

“For Mr. Teahen to attempt to claim that our campaign is directing this individual’s actions is completely false,” said Miller-Meeks campaign manager Todd Versteegh, who said Tredrea himself distributed the charges. “But, as we’ve seen so clearly in this campaign, Mr. Teahen is quite capable of promoting his own falsehoods, so this comes as no surprise.”

Democrats have joined the fray, too, charging Teahen with r

Teahen faces Ottumwa physician Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Hillsboro minister Lee Harder on June 3.“I have literally seen the country at its worst and I’ve seen at its best,” Teahen says of his disaster work at sites like Ground Zero and Hurricane Katrina, and those experiences combined with his small business career color an economic world view based on self-reliance. “I know what it takes to improve on a crisis and make problems better. It’s not doing things for people. Most of us want to make the decisions on what’s happening to ourselves, our children, our families. What I do in disaster work and what I want to do in this crisis we’re in right now in this government is really help people help themselves. We don’t need another mother figure represented by the government making those decisions.”

“As a small business owner I bring a practical approach of looking at budgets, working with staff, making a healthy staff environment, working with benefits, that type of thing. So I know from a practical day-to-day life what it’s like to run a business,” Teahen told Iowa Independent. “What goes into writing your name on the front of the check is a lot of risk, a lot of decision making, a lot of fiscal responsibility.”

“One of the things I’ve discovered doing crisis work is that the most basic human need is the need to feel safe,” Teahen said. “And that’s what I’m finding out right now. People don’t feel safe about the economy, about jobs, about health care.  They’re scared about what the future is going to be for the country with terrorists. They’re afraid the government’s going to come in and tell them more and more what to do, and tax them to death to pay for all these `wonderful’ programs that they can’t afford to do.”

Teahen’s disaster work also influences his views on the Iraq War. “Last year in Darfur, I was 25 feet away from a truckload of Janjaweed rebels. That’s the group responsible for murdering 200,000 to 400,000 men women and children. And you look into the eyes of those terrorists, and you look into the eyes of the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka, you know that their only goal in life is to destroy everything the United States stands for,” he said.  If we pull out of Iraq, where the war is really going on right now against terrorists, we’re going to lose the much broader war. This is a war of survival.”

Teahen’s business recently won an award for working with military families, and he said the experience has given him the opportunity to speak with many of the troops. “The majority of the soldiers say we’re making progress over there. We’re bringing peace and democracy to that country. We can’t walk away from this war. This is a war on terrorism,” he said.  “When we look back at the history books, at the birth of this country, it wasn’t pretty. All the way up to the Civil War, we were still fighting about what was right. It took us a long time to make us into the country we have now. Why do we expect a country, which has been under a brutal regime, and think that within a few years they can pick themselves up and be a successful country? I think we need to stay the course.”

“We have to do whatever we can to protect the civil liberties of American citizens,” Teahen said of concerns about domestic surveillance.” I don’t believe we have to go out of our way to protect the civil liberties of those who are trying to kill us. If we’re looking at tracing phone calls from some one from the Middle East, to a terrorist group in the united states, I’ll be the first one to say follow that phone call. But if they’re tapping your phone call, no. The American public has to draw a line and I think can legitimately draw a line.” Teahen said officials who abuse surveillance laws should be held accountable.

Teahen supported Mike Huckabee in the Iowa caucuses, and his campaign manager, Wes Enos, headed the Huckabee campaign to its Iowa win. But Teahen now says he’s fine with John McCain at the top of the ticket.

“You’ve got a gentleman that has high integrity,” he said of McCain. “We don’t ask elected officials to be quiet and not thoughtful. We’re asking them to be statesmen and look at the bigger picture, to come up with the best plan available.”

“The last thing I want is a leader who works off the opinion polls.  I’d rather have a leader who gets up there and falls flat on his face and then has the integrity and the courage to say ‘I really screwed up on that one, but let’s move forward,’” Teahen said, citing McCain’s failed efforts at passing an immigration reform bill in 2007. “That person who falls in the dirt and gets up will eventually succeed.”

“First thing we need to do is build the fence and build it quickly,” Teahen said of immigration reform, adding that those efforts should include increased border patrol efforts. “There’s a lot of energy being focused right now on blaming the Hispanics for flooding the southern border. But they’re coming in from many ways, and we need to look at the whole immigration system.  Our immigration system is overwhelmed.”

Teahen says he opposes amnesty but that it would be impossible to send every undocumented alien back. “We have to take responsibility for not doing anything about it after 1986,” when Ronald Reagan signed the last major immigration bill. “Then we have to set up a plan to say ‘OK, you’re here, we have to address that. You’re not getting a free ride. You have to pay a price.’” Teahen said such a price could include going back, or a long admission process. “Whatever the response is, it has to be a humanitarian response.”

“I think language plays a role in anything,” he added. “If you want to be prosperous, I think you need to learn the primary language.”

Miller-Meeks and Harder have both attacked Teahen’s Republican Party loyalty. They cite a 2002 campaign contribution to Democratic congressional candidate Julie Thomas, and note that Teahen was a registered Democrat until December 2007. Teahen stands his ground, saying he registered as a Democrat to support “pro-life, pro-business” candidate Mike Blouin in the 2006 gubernatorial primary. He says the Thomas contribution was made out of personal gratitude to the Cedar Rapids pediatrician, rather than political agreement. “Dr. Julie Thomas saved my daughter’s life,” he said.

Teahen goes into the June primary with a geographic advantage. Linn County, his home base, is the largest county in the district, and Republican turnout in Linn County is expected to be high in June because of hotly contested local races. “The Republican Party believes that to take this seat back they need somebody that can carry Linn and Johnson counties, and it’s probably more likely that a candidate from Linn County could have more influence in Linn and Johnson than others could,” he said.

“I think 2006 was not necessarily a vote against Jim Leach,” Teahen said of the 30-year incumbent who lost to Loebsack in one of 2006’s biggest upsets. “I think there were several factors in play. First of all, I’ve had conservative groups say they tried to take Jim’s numbers down because he had gotten too liberal for them, but didn’t realize how far they’d come down,” he said. “They never meant him to lose. I’ve had other people say that they were upset because he evidently made a comment on radio one time that he would not vote for funding of the troops. And I think it was the whole atmosphere, we saw Republicans losing seats all over the country.  It was more of a statement of what was taking place at that time throughout the country, rather than embracing Mr. Loebsack for what he was campaigning on.”