First off, in case you were hoping for an epic U.S. Senate battle between Prairie Populist Rep. Bruce Braley (D. IA-1) and Tea Party Congressman Steve King (R. IA-4), well I hate to rain on your parade but:
http://www.politico.com/...
Iowa Rep. Steve King said Friday night that he will not seek Tom Harkin’s Senate seat in 2014.
He tweeted:
“This week, I made a simple device to put toothpaste back in the tube But a device to put the Leftist genie back in the bottle is not so simple,” he said in a statement. - Politico, 5/3/13
King didn't have the balls to take on a great candidate like Braley so he's going to settle for his congressional seat. Too bad, would've loved to see Barley take this clown down. Whatever. But since King took so long to make up his mind, he scared away any strong challengers from running. But Iowa has a long electoral history of having a Democrat and a Republican as their Senators so the Iowa GOP might just want to use their resources to help King hold onto his seat and wait until 2016 when Senator Chuck Grassley (R. IA) would be old enough to retire and run someone like Congressman Tom Latham (R. IA-3). Ok, on to the real news:
http://wcfcourier.com/...
The United Steelworkers District 11 and the Planned Parenthood Action Fund have announced their separate endorsements of Bruce Braley for U.S. Senate.
USW District 11 covers Iowa and 10 other states in the Midwest, and represent over 6,000 workers in Iowa.
Randy Boulton, USW Sub-Director for District 11, said, “Bruce understands the value of hard work because he’s been working his whole life, working his way through high school, college, and law school. That’s why he works so hard for middle class families in Congress, and why he’ll be even more effective in the Senate.”
Of the Planed Parenthood Action Fund endorsement, Braley said, "For decades, the Planned Parenthood Action Fund has stood up for women’s health and reproductive rights. I’m committed to protecting women’s rights to privacy and ensuring that the federal government stays out of decisions that are best left to a woman and her doctor." - WCF Courier, 5/3/13
I recently read about why Braley is running for U.S. Senate he did in the Des Moines Register:
http://blogs.desmoinesregister.com/...
Deeth: With this our first open seat race in 40 years, and the whole post-Citizens United dynamic, how do you keep your message going in a race like this once the outsiders start to pile on?
Braley: Well, I have done this enough to understand that you have to give voters a reason to show up and vote FOR you. You can’t just depend on voter suppression to get them not to show up and vote for your opponent. And to me that means you’ve got to find a way to inspire voters into believing that you share their values, you understand the problems and concerns they deal with on a daily basis, you’re going to be an effective listener, and you’re going to take what you’ve learned and be a strong champion for the people of this state. That’s going to be my strategy as I travel around the state talking about what I’ve done as concrete examples of bringing people together to solve tough problems, even when I was serving in the minority in the last Congress.
Deeth: Here’s one I called wrong. I was expecting, especially after your role in the Energy and Commerce chair transition, that you were going to be sticking around the House for quite a while. Other than the obvious 1 out of 100 being more than 1 out of 435, what are you you hoping you can accomplish in the Senate that you weren’t able to in the House?
Braley: Let’s use the Energy and Commerce Committee as an example. In my opinion it’s the best committee in the House of Representatives because it’s all the policy issues that are so important to people. But it’s an exclusive committee, which means that right now I serve on only one committee in the House. One of the best things about serving in the Senate is I’ll be able to serve on as many as three or four, five committees and multiple subcommittees. And you also have the ability to have a much broader influence on foreign policy because the Senate has to ratify treaties. The average voter doesn’t appreciate the significance of federal judicial confirmations in their lives. The federal judges, the district court, the appellate level and the Supreme Court have an enormous impact on the lives of Americans and Iowans. All of those things are reasons why having a chance to serve in the senate and having a chance to represent this great state is so compelling.
Deeth: And the Senate control is so important to the President potentially getting another couple of Supreme Court appointments in the next term.
Braley: That’s right, because we’ve got this incredible backlog due to obstructionism by the Senate Republicans that’s keeping these nominees from getting an up or down vote. And so we have vacancies, and that denies people justice.
Deeth: Do you feel like the Senate is more or less dysfunctional than other parts of the system? What can you do for, say, filibuster reform?
Braley: I think the dysfunction is twofold. One is the interpersonal relations of the people serving in a body. The other is the parliamentary obstacles to getting things done. I’ve never served in the Senate but my sense is that people in the Senate may have closer relationships with their peers on the other side than people in the House do as a general rule. Now I pride myself on reaching out and developing strong relationships on both sides of the aisle in the House. But there’s a lot of personal dysfunction. The parliamentary challenges are the inability to get things done due to the current filibuster and how it’s being used-
Deeth: Like we saw on gun control.
Braley: That’s right, and abused. So I would be very excited about working with some of my younger colleagues in the Senate who’ve recently come over from the House and have experienced how these obstacles are preventing even the most basic work from getting done, and trying to address those problems and continue Senator Harkin’s work to try to make that happen. - Des Moines Register, 5/2/13
If you'd like to learn more about Braley and his campaign, you can go here:
http://www.brucebraley.com/...