In that campaign, which Reed lost by more than 20 percentage points, the Marion Republican claimed that Harkin’s support for same-sex marriage also meant he supports marriage between “any 2, 3 or multiple people of any and all sexes. Heck, as far as he is concerned, you could marry your horse if it makes you happy.”

During a debate later in the campaign, Reed said Harkin had “an eight-year history of becoming the Tokyo Rose of Al-Qaeda and Middle East terrorism.”

In an interview Thursday with conservative blogger Craig Robinson, Reed said he learned a lot from his 2008 defeat and promises a campaign that focuses less on personal attacks and more on the issues.

“Last time, I took the race personally. This time, it’s about the people. So the vitriol and the remarks are not going to be there this time because there is too much at stake. This campaign has to be about defeating Dave Loebsack and what he votes for in Washington.”

Reed is expected to square off in a primary with Mariannette Miller-Meeks, the party’s 2008 nominee in the 2nd district, and Steve Rathje, who Reed defeated in 2008 for the right to take on Harkin.

Christopher Reed, who narrowly won a three-way Republican primary to challenge U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin in 2008, will officially become a candidate for the U.S. House on Thursday, with a planned announcement in Ottumwa. Following the first stop, Reed also plans to visit the communities of Solon, his hometown, and Cedar Rapids, a part of the metropolitan area where he and his family currently live.

The tour, which the campaign has dubbed as “Defending our Children’s Future Tour,” will set the stage for a campaign that Reed said will focus on fiscal issues.

Christopher Reed was the only political candidate to take part in an anti-immigration rally in Postville following a massive 2008 immigration raid at a meatpacking plant. Reed, who was then a U.S. Senate candidate for Republicans, will announce his candidacy for U.S. House this week.

This appears to be a switch of tactics from his campaign against Harkin. During that race, Reed made national news for his personal attacks on Harkin, especially his proclamation that Harkin was the “Tokyo Rose of Al-Qaeda” during an October 2008 debate.

Reed, however, is not the only individual who has been mentioned as a Republican candidate for Iowa’s 2nd district.

Steve Rathje, a Cedar Rapids businessman who faced Reed for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate, has also been making statements on social networking sites that seem to indicate an interest in a congressional run. Although the titles of the pages on Rathje’s website continues to reference his past U.S. Senate aspirations, the overall theme of the site now simply references Congress, leaving open which chamber he is considering.

Ottumwa ophthalmologist Mariannette Miller-Meeks, who served as the 2008 Republican nominee for the 2nd district race, has also remained active — especially in the area of health care reform. While the domain associated with her former campaign site remains active, it automatically redirects to her personal blog, Doctor’s Notes, where she writes on numerous topics that are consistent with someone who is considering a second run.  Further, it is widely anticipated that she will be making her own announcement in relation to the 2nd district in the near future, and the fact that Reed has chosen her community of Ottumwa to spark his own campaign launch does little to tamper such speculation.

Since there doesn’t appear to be any Democrats positioning themselves for a primary run against incumbent U.S. Rep. Dave Loebsack, it is nearly certain that the Republican chosen during the primary process will challenge the Democratic incumbent. The 2008 election ended with Loebsack claiming 57 percent of the vote and, according to the Cook Political Report, Iowa’s 2nd district is considered the state’s most solid Democratic voting block with a partisan voting index of  D+7.

Yet despite the low-to-invisible profile of Harkin’s Republican opponent, Christopher “Who?” Reed, Wednesday’s KCCI poll showed the businessman and first-time candidate with 39 percent of the vote. That might not sound like much, but with near-universal name ID, John McCain got the same 39 percent in that same poll.

A Research 2000 poll shows Reed at 40 percent, and the Des Moines Register poll had him at 34 percent two weeks ago, with Harkin in the low 50s in each.

So how the heck does Reed, who’s raised almost no money, has a campaign website that looks like a homemade nightmare straight out of 1996, and has Republicans openly talking about writing in one of the primary losers, even get to the mid-30s to low 40s in a poll? Who IS this guy?

Simple. He’s not Tom Harkin.

To Iowa Republicans, “Tommy the Commie” is the Democrat they love to hate, just as lefties bristle at the mention of Steve King’s name. There’s enough of a Harkin-hater base that he’s never broken 60 percent, let alone seen the 70 to 30 margins Republican Chuck Grassley gets every six years.

Despite his work on the farm bill as chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, Harkin was denied the Farm Bureau “Friend of Agriculture” endorsement, which went to all five Iowa incumbent House members. Farm Bureau endorsements are determined by votes of each county Farm Bureau, and many western Iowa counties will simply never back Harkin.

Iowa saw revolving door Senate seats through the 1970s. With four defeats (Miller, Clark, Culver, Jepsen) and two retirements (Hickenlooper, Hughes), no Iowa senator was re-elected from 1966 to 1986. In contrast, we now have two high-seniority Senate leaders, one in each party.

Running against Grassley has been the loyal duty of a series of eastern Iowa liberals — Jean Lloyd-Jones, David Osterberg and most recently Art Small in 2004, who would have been a really good challenger in 1986 when he ran for lieutenant governor instead. They all struggled to break 30 percent. Grassley gets all the Republican vote, virtually all of the independent vote, and even picks up votes from Democrats who like his aw-shucks persona.

In contrast, Harkin has had top-tier battles until now. The senator likes to brag that he’s defeated more Republican congressional incumbents than anyone in history — Bill Scherle in 1974 for his first House win, Roger Jepsen in 1984 to take the Senate seat, and Tom Tauke, Jim Ross Lightfoot and Greg Ganske since.

It’s safe to say Republican leaders were hoping for a similar profile in 2008. But House members Tom Latham and Steve King saw what looked like a good Democratic year and figured their reelection chances were better. (However, Latham has a real race against Becky Greenwald on his hands, and King has an unflappable opponent in Rob Hubler.) Democrats are likely to pick up five and perhaps as many as 10 Senate seats, and only one Democratic incumbent, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, is even remotely in trouble.

So Iowa Republicans saw a three-way, flip-a-coin primary between unknowns, and the coin almost landed on its edge. Former legislator George Eichhorn, a late recruit to the race, nearly demanded a recount, but that fell victim to the flood. In retrospect, losing reelection to the state legislature may not have been the strongest launching pad for a U.S. Senate race.

Reed has raised almost no money and didn’t even formally organize a campaign committee till after he (barely) won the primary. He got negative attention for spending some of what little he has raised on clothing and haircuts.

Some Republicans are concerned enough, and hopeless enough, that there have been reports of a write-in effort on behalf of Steve Rathje, who spent two years running for the seat only to come in third in the primary. “We need a U.S. Senator who has the ability to think outside the box and respond with real answers based on new ideas, instead of the opinions he happens to hear on WHO, Hannity and Colmes, Rush Limbaugh or Bill O’Rielly,” wrote Clayton County Republican chair Gwen Eilers in a mass e-mail.

So, what’s a Harkin hater to do — vote for the little-known Linn County businessman who’s on the ballot, or write in the other little-known Linn County businessman who lost the primary? “As a Republican leader, Eilers should support our candidate, Christopher Reed — or step down,” writes state central committee member David Chung on his Hawkeye GOP blog, adding, “Nothing personal, but why Rathje? Wasn’t Eichhorn second?”

One of the first things candidates are taught is: if someone else can do something for you, let them. A candidate should spend all her or his time doing stuff only the candidate can do — meeting voters, the bulk of the fundraising and the human being jobs of parent and/or partner. Yet Reed, on his Web site, bragged about saving campaign cash by driving to Kansas City to pick up the yard signs. Himself.

That also drew criticism from Eilers, who said Reed should have spent the money with an Iowa vendor. “He cannot and will not win.  That is the truth,” writes Eilers, who hopes that Rathje’s write-in total will top Reed’s votes and send a message.

Chuck Grassley’s races have given political sabermetricians useful statistics on straight-ticket Democratic voting levels. He regularly rolls up 99-county wins, and even precincts that go for Grassley opponents are few and far between.

For the first time, Tom Harkin has a race like that. The end result of this race will be a set of statistics, a precinct-by-precinct measure of the base Republican vote, which is probably about 10 points higher in Iowa than the yellow dog Democratic vote. But Reed will likely carry several counties in the northwest, just by being on the ballot as Not Tom Harkin.

The Associated Press is reporting that with all but one of the state’s precincts in, Christopher Reed, a 36-year-old businessman from Marion, had about 35.29 percent of the vote last night. Former Iowa legislator George Eichhorn had about 34.71 percent. Cedar Rapids businessman Steve Rathje had about 30 percent.Because of the close race, there could be a recount.

Should Reed remain on top, he would face a daunting task as the newcomer. With no fund-raising filing, he would be reaching to knock off Democrat Harkin who has a nearly $4 million war chest and a recently minted farm bill on his resume as chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee.

Reed has accused Harkin of “fumbling” on the farm bill — which even conservative U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, ended up supporting.

“Washington is broken and we cannot fix it by sending the same people back,” Reed told Iowa Independent.

All three of the Republican candidates were largely unknown, making it fair to wonder if some of Reed’s success Tuesday stemmed from the simple fact that his name is the least ethnic and clumsy of the three.

But as a Navy veteran with strong views on abortion and immigration, Reed had the credentials for a GOP primary.

He told Iowa Independent that he is an “opponent” of Planned Parenthood.

And Reed had strong words for illegal immigrants.

“Coming into our country illegally is breaking the law,” Reed said. “We need to send them back where they came from and they need to get in line.”

Without an experienced opponent with name recognition, Harkin, seeking his fifth term, will be free to assist other campaigns and perhaps dedicate more of his time and resources to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama here in Iowa — as well as working for other candidates down-ticket.

Nearly complete returns show Christopher Reed with 35.3 percent, in a result that’s eerily similar to the 2002 GOP Governor’s race.The three candidates seeking the right to oppose Tom Harkin swapped leads through the night, and at one point were all bunched between 30 and 35 percent. In the end, Steve Rathje was at 29.9 percent, while former legislator George Eichhorn, a late recruit to the race, was second at 34.7 percent.

In 2002, all three Republican candidates for governor finished in the 30 percent range, and nominee Doug Gross topped the field with only 35.6 percent. That may have reflected divisions in the party, but last night’s result is more likely the product of low information about the three little-known contenders.

Reed enters the general election as a prohibitive underdog against Tom Harkin. That’s unusual for Harkin, whose four previous Senate races have all been hard-fought.

The last statewide convention after an inconclusive primary was in 1960, when Republicans nominated Jack Miller for U.S. Senate. In 2002, Steve King emerged as the front runner in a four-way congressional primary, but only had 31 percent; a district convention gave him the nomination.

“You’re just not getting the fair shake you deserve,” Rathje said.

When asked by Iowa Independent to get specific about western Iowa being something of a red-headed stepchild, Rathje said U.S. Highway 30 should be four-laned “all the way to the river,” referring to the the Missouri River.

“We at this side of the state have fallen short for a long time,” Rathje said.

Why has western Iowa been neglected?

“I can’t answer that,” Rathje said.

Doesn’t Congressman King rightly shoulder some of the responsibility for his constituents not getting the fair shake, as Rathje alleges?

“Congressman King has been a great asset to this side of the state,” Rathje said.

But according to a leading watchdog organization, King this year has been the runaway least effective member of Iowa’s federal delegation in bringing money home.

Rathje, an eastern Iowa businessman, faces Christopher Reed, another businessman from Cedar Rapids, and George Eichhorn, an attorney and former Iowa legislator who lives in Hamilton County, in the primary Tuesday.

There was considerably more action in filing for state legislative seats. (Below the fold)The race is shaping up in open Senate District 48, where Republican Jeff Angelo is retiring.  Republican Kim Reynolds of Osceola has filed, while Ruth Smith of Lamoni hopes to take the seat for the Democrats.

In other open seats, Republican Jarret Heil has filed for the open District 22 seat of Larry McKibben, R-Marshalltown.  Tim Kapucian, R-Keystone, is running for the open District 20 seat held by retiring Republican John Putney.

Democratic challenger Sharon Savage is taking on GOP incumbent Jim Hahn in the Muscatine-based Senate District 40.

Incumbent Senators Filing, Feb. 26-29 (2D, 0R)