I'm going to repost Elise's Diary from Monday because I truly believe we have a shot at these districts. $5 buys postage for 12 mailings. $10 will help put an ad in a local paper. Any amount will help send a Democrat to Washington. Latham is a closet winger who is relying on name recognition to get him re-elected. He doesn't even mention that he's a Republican anywhere on his website. Steve King tops the list of the most vile people in DC. His racism and xenophobia have earned him a forced retirement from Congress. Help us show him the door.
Iowa has five Congressional districts. Three of those districts are Democratic and at the moment, two of them are Republican. I would like all five of them to be Democratic - and I need your help to make that happen.
Here's who we have right now:
IA-01 - Bruce Braley (D)
IA-02 - Dave Loebsack (D) (who got my vote on Friday)
IA-03 - Leonard Boswell (D)
IA-04 - Tom Latham (R)
IA-05 - Steve King (R)
King has served three US House terms. Latham actually came in on the 1994 Republican wave of repulsion. He was redistricted in 2000 to IA-04. But today comes news of hope! Despite the fact that King won in 2006 with 57 percent of the vote, Democrats are closing in. Both of Iowa's Congressional Republicans have serious challengers this year and you can help both of those Democrats get much closer to a win in a few weeks. Help Becky Greenwald and Rob Hubler win these contests and turn Iowa's Congressional delegation 100% blue!
The voter profile of the district has become somewhat more Democratic since the last presidential election, although the GOP still dominates.
Since 2004, the numbers of Republicans and voters registered with neither party have declined, while Democrats' numbers have grown.
Even so, Republicans outnumber Democrats by more than 44,000 and represent almost 40 percent of the district's voters.
There's a challenge here, but Democrats in these districts are rising up to meet it (from the same article):
For example, registered Republicans outnumbered Democrats in Sioux County last month by more than 7-to-1. But Democratic registration there has grown 20 percent since 2004.
In case you haven't heard much about Latham and King, I'm here to give you some details on them both. These are two of the worst Republicans in Congress.
I'll start with Latham, who is quoted in today's Des Moines Register:
Elected officials must evaluate entitlement programs like Social Security or Medicaid in an effort to keep government spending in check, U.S. Rep. Tom Latham said today.
Latham said the United States doesn’t have money for new programs, calling so-called “entitlement programs” the “900-pound gorilla.” As baby boomers age, they will dip more deeply into the national budget, he said this afternoon in a meeting with Des Moines Register reporters and editors.
Latham is your typical 1994 waver - he is anti-tax and wants to eliminate or privatize any entitlement program. You know, Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid...the usual! According to Latham, the elderly and the low income can just suffer on their own. Just in case you're wondering how many millions of Americans would be affected by Latham's entitlement program cuts?
In 2007, Medicare provided health care coverage for 43 million Americans.
It is estimated that 42.9 million Americans will be enrolled in 2004 (19.7 million of them children) at a total cost of $295 billion. Medicaid payments assist nearly 60 percent of all nursing home residents and about 37 percent of all childbirths in the United States.
Social Security -- In 2004, $492 billion of benefits were paid to 47.5 million beneficiaries.
So, several million Americans - the elderly and the poor - will be left not only without healthcare, but also without any income at all - in other words, homeless. Latham thinks that this is necessary because we "can't afford" entitlement programs.
I'm thinking at this point that we can't afford Congressmen like Latham. Lucky for us we have Becky Greenwald running against him in IA-04. Unlike Latham, Greenwald actually wants to help provide health care for Iowans in the 4th district.
From her website:
Becky strongly believes that every American deserves access to quality, affordable healthcare. The costs of healthcare are rising at alarming rates. Becky supports a measure to ensure that no American is denied access to healthcare services.
She would support an expansion in the Children’s Health Insurance Program known as SCHIPs or HAWK-I in Iowa. She would work to close the Medicare donut hole and make prescription drugs more affordable, even if that means allowing for re-importation from Canada. Additionally, she would work to allow low-income seniors to negotiate for lower price prescription drugs with Medicare.
Need to know Becky Greenwald's position on other issues, check out her website. While you're there, please make a donation. Ask others to make a donation too! Greenwald has a chance to beat Latham here, but she can't do it without your help.
Now let me tell you a little bit about Steve King IA-05. I think one quote from his appearance on the Rachel Maddow show (transcript here) on 10/3/08 will pretty much be enough for you to get the idea:
KING: All right. The message is out across everywhere and people are talking about it in the streets. So, yes, I will stand on this vote. I'm one of those members, one of 11 that voted no on the Katrina funding, the $51.8 billion to Katrina. That was the best vote I put up in Congress in six years.
His "BEST" vote was to vote against Katrina funding. That was the best thing Steve King believes he's done since he became a Congressman. Here's the video, in case you don't believe he really said it.
Here's a Q&A with 5th Congressional District candidates from the Des Moines Register. Let me sum it up for you really quickly - Steve King is against pulling out of Iraq, supports illegal and unconstitutional domestic spying on citizens, believes people should be tossed out of their homes instead of helped by the government, supports a national sales tax (a regressive tax that will hurt the poor most), believes that half of the nation's SCHIP recipients should be removed from the program, would ban all abortion, leave Medicare as is (including the donut hole), opposes national health care, wants to build a wall between the United States and Mexico, opposes amnesty for immigrants, he WROTE the law that would make English the "official" language, and he supports NAFTA (according to the Economic Policy Institute NAFTA alone has cost Iowa some 23,000 jobs).
His opponent, Rob Hubler, has the opposite opinion on all those insane positions above. Hubler's positions on the issues will help Iowans - unlike King's policies. Hubler can do this with your help. Make a donation today. Write a letter to the editor. And then donate more!!
Steve King has one office in his district. Rob Hubler has six. Rob Hubler has given us hope:
Meanwhile, Hubler, a retired Presbyterian minister and longtime Democratic activist, has six campaign offices across the 32-county district. He hired national Democratic strategist Joe Trippi's consulting firm and has been pushing his party's campaign leadership in Washington, D.C., to loosen the purse strings for his race.
"The district looks at alternatives when there are alternatives presented. There hasn't been a Democratic candidate that really has put a campaign on the ground and raised some money," Hubler said. "This is a real campaign."
I'm guessing Obama's coattails will help quite a bit as well, of course. Those newly registered Democrats, many of them, likely came from team Obama's attempt to do massive voter registration in each state.
Speaking of Obama - if you didn't like Steve King already, check out his racist comments about Obama and Muslims:
Let's turn these districts blue! Help Rob Hubler and Becky Greenwald turn Iowa's Congressional districts 100% blue.