We got more bad news in Iowa over the weekend. CQ Roll Call now rates our U.S. Senate race as "Safe Republican."
We got more bad news in Iowa over the weekend. CQ Roll Call now rates our U.S. Senate race as "Safe Republican."
Q-Roll Call’s John McArdle writes: “In a cycle where a dozen Democratic-held Senate seats are now in play the national party will be hard pressed to devote time and effort to longshots like Georgia and Iowa. What resources Democrats do have to go on the attack will likely be spent on four competitive GOP open seat contests in Kentucky, Missouri, New Hampshire and Ohio that represent their best chances of picking up seats this cycle — and possibly avoiding a Republican takeover of the Senate.”
Roxanne Conlin's poll numbers have been slipping since she won the Democratic primary in June. According to the published polls, she is down to Chuck Grassley between 20 and 26 points. In those polls, only 5% of Iowans were undecided, meaning there is not a lot of upside for Conlin.
Meanwhile, the Conlin campaign has been nearly invisible in parts of Iowa. On RAGBRI, the Des Moines Register's annual bicycle ride across Iowa, every other major candidate had signs along the route, but not Conlin. Plus, her press releases are now all but ignored by the Iowa press outlets. Conlin's hits on Grassley are anemic at best. It is hard to tell if it is because her staff are missing the mark with their attempted hits, or if it is because Iowans like Grassley enough to overlook his bad votes and stupid comments. Part of it may be that Conlin's own statements on the Gulf Oil Spill, among other issues, seem like "shoot from the lip" reactions. On a couple of occasions, the press has nailed her for taking a position on things like removing the cap on Social Security taxes and then immediately contradicting herself and reversing her position. Conlin's stump speech is still thin on policy and long on snark and sarcasm that falls flat in rural parts of Iowa. Conlin's judgment and credentials on rural issues are a source of frequent attacks by the Grassley staff. Apparently, their polling show that it is a weak point for Conlin and they continue to hammer her on her lack of knowledge and/or judgment.
So much for giving Grassley "the race of his life." The recent polling and the CQ Roll Call rating puts Conlin in the same category of Grassley's last opponent Art Small, who came out of retirement at the last minute. The only difference is Small spent $100,000.00 and Conlin has spent $1,500,000.00 to achieve the same status in the late summer polls.