King had 60 percent of the vote with 402 of 417 precincts reporting, a wide margin that will send him back to Washington for a fourth term and keep him very much politically alive for a potential run for governor in 2010.

King pulled in huge margins in reliably conserative counties in far northwest Iowa that buoyed him to the win over Democratic challenger Rob Hubler, a Navy veteran and retired Presbyterian minister from Council Bluffs.

While President-elect Barack Obama, a U.S. senator from Illinois, captured the Hawkeye State, his coattails stopped short of western Iowa. Republican presidential candidate. Obama, for example, won Carroll County, a bellwether in the middle of the distict, that went for King as well.

“We just didn’t have the right amount of money to get the name ID out there,” Hubler told Iowa Independet just after midnight.

Hubler said the sprawling rural district has no major media market, a factor he thinks kept national Democratic dollars out of the race.

“That just prejudices all the money against rural areas,” Hubler said.

Hubler said in an interview Saturday that he developed the strategy after reading an Iowa Independent analysis about the power of community newspapers in shaping public opinion in rural Iowa.

“It gets away from the 30-second soundbites,” Hubler said. “It was me that was in there.”

Hubler’s campaign said it spent $16,000 on the community newspaper insert — which went in papers ranging from The Sioux City Journal and Carroll Daily Times Herald to weeklies.

Hubler said that unlike television commercials — which he is running, too — the newspapers have more shelf life.

“This is something that lies on people’s tables,” Hubler said.

“John McCain, I won’t say he’s toast, but he’s rapidly approaching English muffin territory,” said U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, in remarks at the Moose Lodge in downtown Carroll before an audience of about 30 party activists.

That said, Harkin warned of a complacency that can come with overconfidence.

“I remember what happened to the last guy who put up a ‘mission accomplished’ sign before the mission was accomplished,” Harkin said, in reference to President George W. Bush’s infamous declaration of victory in Iraq in May of 2003 aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln.

With Obama on the cusp of being elected to the White House, Harkin, who has been in Congress since 1974, said he’s about to see history.

“I thought maybe I’d never live to see it in my lifetime,” Harkin said. “The people of America are now judging him (Obama) by the content of his character.”

Harkin noted that Obama’s first real introduction to Iowans on the ground came during the Iowa senator’s annual steak fry, not last year during the caucuses but in 2006 at the Warren County Fairgrounds in Indianola.

Gov. Chet Culver said Democrats having “everything going our way.”

With 240,000 votes already cast in early balloting, the Democrats have a major advantage, Culver said, noting that there are 100,000 more registered Democrats in Iowa.

“We have a big tent,” Culver said. “Our party is very inclusive.”

Harkin and Culver both made strong pitches for Democratic congressional candidate Rob Hubler, who also spoke in Carroll.

“A Democrat can win the district,” Harkin said. “I think this is the year to do it.”

For his part, Hubler pledged to focus heavily on renewable energy development — not peddle more oil as King has done. Hubler also said that he would be stylistically and substantively far different from King, who often peacocks with provocative statements.

“They (Iowa’s Fifth District) want a servant, not a King,” Hubler said.

“I think this is the type of year where that is possible,” Culver said in an interview at Obama’s Friday rally. “It could be like 1964. We (Democrats) literally had people on the ballot in 1964 who didn’t even know they were on the ballot.”

In Iowa’s Fifth District, Democrat Rob Hubler of Council Bluffs is challenging three-term U.S. Rep. Steve King,. R-Kiron.

“Perhaps the people of the Fifth District want a change,” said Culver, a Democrat.

While King is considered the decided favorite by all logical measures, Culver said Democratic momentum, turnout and early voting are off the charts — all factors that could sweep Hubler past a stunned King.

Obama’s visit to Des Moines in the final days of the campaign helps candidates up and down the ticket across the state, Culver said in an interview with Iowa Independent following Obama’s speech to an estimated crowd of 25,000 in downtown Des Moines.

“The fact that he’s here is really going to help us down the stretch as far as getting everyone to the polls,” Culver said.

But Kate Bosworth, for much of final part of the movie, waits in the calm spots of the Pacific Ocean, watching others pipe through walls of water off the Hawaiian coast.

She just can’t catch a wave.

And that may just be the epitaph on the tombstone of Iowa’s 5th District Democratic congressional challenger Rob Hubler’s 2008 campaign.

Hubler is without question the underdog in his bid to unseat Republican U.S. Rep. Steve King.

Rob Hubler

First, there are the numbers.

There are 143,802 registered Republicans in the district, compared with 99,641 Democrats and 126,145 people registered with no party.

King, the incumbent, enjoys cult-hero status with the formidable Christian right in western Iowa. (Conservative provocateur Ann Coulter even calls King “one of her favorites.”)

And, perhaps most important, there is the money.

King has built a war chest, while Hubler has collected what amounts to a financial slingshot. Open Secrets.org reports that King has raised nearly $900,000 while Hubler has pulled in about $220,000. Late last week, Hubler told me he had about $40,000 in cash on hand to spend in these remaining days.

Months ago, there seemed to be more potential for Hubler to raise money over the Internet, using King’s famously controversial remarks to stoke up dollars from the many people King has offended in his three terms in Congress.

Hubler had dozens of outrageous comments from King to leverage for dough.

So why hasn’t Hubler been able to do with King’s slew of remarks what Democrats in Minnesota have done with one comment from Republican U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, who told Chris Matthews on MSNBC that the media should investigate “the views of the people in Congress [to] find out: Are they pro-America or anti-America?”

That McCarthyeseque language ignited a flood of contributions from across the nation: more than $1 million in just days for her lesser-known opponent, Democrat Elwyn Tinklenberg.

King himself called Sen. Joseph McCarthy a “hero for America” only a few years ago.

“We have not capitalized on that,” Hubler said. “But I’ve never been on MSNBC.”

Hubler understands what getting King’s comments into the fund-raising mix could have done for the western Iowa race. “We have worked everything we can think of to conceivably do that,” he said.

Hubler — who is insistent that he will still win in a stunning surprise — said some of the failure (so far) to capitalize on King’s stream of provocations is his own fault for failing to find an effective Internet strategy, even with the one of the pioneers of Web politics, Joe Trippi, on board with his campaign as a consultant.

“Obviously we’ve got to take some of the blame for that,” Hubler said.

But much his troubles lie beyond his control, as the sprawling rural 32-county 5th District has no dominant, district-wide television.  And even in the Internet age, TV is still the mother’s milk of politics — as evidenced by the Bachmann-MSNBC episode.

“That’s exactly right,” Hubler said. “I 100 percent agree.”

Less than a week from Election Day, Hubler’s chances for an October surprise like the one that hit Bachmann have dwindled.

The last remaining question is, with time running out, can he make like Kate Bosworth and catch one of the waves that appear to be hurtling with fury toward once-tranquil Republican shores?

Rob Hubler

If you don’t like what you see with your mutual funds or retirement investment portfolio these days, take out your anger on the Republicans — and specifically Congressman Steve King — says his challenger Rob Hubler.

“Where we find ourselves in the market is directly accredited to Steve King’s philosophy,” Hubler said Friday in Carroll.

“People are no longer confused. They are just angry as heck,” he added.

Hubler held a mock debate at the Carroll Depot in which a child’s Burger King crown and an empty chair — complete with a bottle of water — were used to represent the absence of King, R-Kiron, who has refused to debate Hubler, citing both media bias and what King says is Hubler’s penchant for personal attacks.

King spoke elsewhere in Carroll Friday.

For his part, Hubler hit on an array of topics but focused most of his time on the economy. The Council Bluffs Democrat says the “total free market” and “deregulation” approach to governing from the Republicans has resulted in the current financial crisis.

“Hopefully it won’t be worse than the Depression,” he said.

Hubler thinks western Iowans should be particularly troubled by comments from Republican presidential candidate John McCain, who said in the first general election debate that he would cut ethanol subsidies.

“That would be an utter, total disaster for the Fifth District and Iowa,” he said.

Hubler contended that McCain is also hostile to wind power – a charge also leveled against McCain by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

Iowans should factor this heavily into their voting, Hubler said.  “We truly have a way to rebuild rural America through renewables.”

He said he agrees with more oil drilling but wants the focus of the national energy strategy to be on sources in Iowa. “The answer is not drill, baby, drill, it’s grow, baby, grow.”

The Hubler campaign has been using props at campaign events to mock Congressman Steve King for not debating.

With a troubled stock market fueling anxious times, Hubler said, senior voters can be thankful that Democratic members of Congress killed a plan to privatize Social Security so that money is not now in the stock market – diving with other investments.

Moving to other issues, Hubler said he supports a partitioning plan in Iraq advanced by Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. That plan would divide factions into autonomous regions, held together by something of a confederation.

On immigration, Hubler said the United States should strengthen the borders. He also supports a path to citizenship for those illegal immigrants who are gainfully employment, learning English and staying out of trouble with the law.

He added that internal polling for his campaign indicates that western Iowans support such a plan for the immigrants in their communities.

“Our meat industry depends upon immigrant labor,” Hubler said.

Saying his life is “tied together” by service, Hubler recounted his past in the military, working for former U.S. Sen. Dick Clark and doing political fundraising, and then becoming a minister.

Asking for the opportunity “to serve my country once again” by winning a seat in congress, Hubler said, “people are absolutely angry at what is going on in our country today.”

Blaming the current economic crisis on Republican policies, Hubler said, “We are going to change the direction of this nation by changing congress.”

When King loses, Hubler said, “Everyone in the fifth district will indeed be dancing in the streets.”

“The fifth district wants a servant, not a king,” Hubler said, making a reference to his opponent’s last name.

Rob Hubler

COON RAPIDS — Serving aboard a nuclear submarine in the 1960s, Rob Hubler and his fellow crew members received word that war with the Soviet Union had started, that their arsenal was to be released on the enemy.

After following through the missile launch, the crew of the submarine pondered what they had done — not knowing that it was only a drill, that no nuclear warheads were in the sky ready to rain death, destruction and Armageddon. In the middle of the ocean, with the true nature of their assignment kept under wraps so top brass could obtain realistic results, Hubler and his submariner buddies thought a nuclear war was happening above.

“We sat there for 45 minutes knowing everyone we knew was dead,” said Hubler, 65, a Council Bluffs Democrat who is running for Iowa’s Fifth Congressional District against U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa.

Soon, the crew learned it was just a drill, and that they would again see many friends and family. it is an experience that still gives Hubler pause.

A 1961 graduate of Abraham Lincoln High School in Council Bluffs who later went to college and served as a Presbyterian minister, Hubler volunteered for the Navy in 1962 and stayed until his honorable discharge in 1969. He served a total of 6 years and 9 months, with 3 years and 9 months of sea or foreign service duty, according to his official military records.

“I really wanted to serve my country,” Hubler said in a recent interview over coffee at the Coon Rapids bowling alley. He has six uncles who also served in the military.

He went through basic training in San Diego and chose the submarine service because, he said, “It seemed like the place I fit best.” His first assignment was aboard the USS Sea Devil — “which my mother always thought was very appropriate,” he joked.

The first few days at sea weren’t easy for Hubler, who said he suffered from motion sickness every half hour.

“My first day they gave me a coffee can that had a belt loop on it,” he recalled.

Among other assignments, Hubler also served aboard the USS Sculpin and USS Daniel Boone. He was a nuclear power plant operator and a nuclear propulsion room supervisor.

One memorable mission involved silently slipping into a Soviet port in a sub and taking surveillance films while underneath a Russian ship. Hubler received hazardous duty and combat pay for much of his service in the Navy because of risky endeavors such as this one.

“Submarines, particularly nuclear boats, are the most sophisticated weapon of mass destruction there is,” he said.

On the campaign trail, Hubler, an opponent of U.S. policy in Iraq, often wears a “Silent Service” cap from his days in the Navy. At some stops, veterans will approach him, shake his hand and spend time talking about shared experiences before moving on to issues. Hubler said he prefers to talk about his service in the context of working on veterans’ benefits and improved treatment of men and women in uniform, not by telling so-called war stories.

He’s been outraged during the campaign when King, who was at Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville, Mo., with a high draft lottery number during Vietnam, seems to challenge the patriotism of those who served. Hubler earned the Vietnam Service Medal.

While he is a strong supporter of home-grown Iowa energy, and not the unabashed proponent of nuclear power that King is, Hubler knows who he’d want running anything nuclear in the United States.

“If we had a great nuclear power program in the United States, it ought to be controlled by the U.S. Navy,” Hubler said.

Included on the list are Josh Zeitz, running against Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), and Rob Hubler, running against Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa). Zeitz, who had $125,000 in the bank on June 30, is challenging a Republican Congressman who is both incredibly popular and holds a commanding lead in the race. Hubler, who had only $27,000 in the bank on June 30, is running in by far the most Republican district in Iowa, where McCain will run up a huge margin.