Murphy making another run in Iowa’s 1st District

CEDAR RAPIDS - Former Iowa House Speaker Pat Murphy ended the speculation this morning with an announcement that he will seek the Democratic nomination in Iowa's U.S. House 1st District and a rematch with first-term GOP Rep. Rod Blum.

The race - as it was in 2014 when he topped a five-way primary, but lost a close election to Blum - will be about who best can represent the middle class, Murphy said.

'I really do believe I'm a middle class person,” Murphy said, 'and the bottom line is that middle class Iowans deserve to have a voice in Congress, somebody who knows the struggles they face, and will fight for them.”

He believes his progressive values - a record to back it up - will convince Democrats in the 20-county district that includes Cedar Rapids, Cedar Falls-Waterloo, Marshalltown and Dubuque to give him a chance to defeat Blum.

'From raising the minimum wage and teacher pay, passing equal pay for women, to protecting women's health care and all Iowan's civil rights, that's my record,” Murphy said in his announcement. 'Fighting for progressive Iowa values is in my blood.”

Murphy is starting about six months after Cedar Rapids City Councilwoman Monica Vernon opened her campaign, but a recent poll showed he has a 9-point lead over her.

Murphy outpolled Vernon, 43 percent to 34 percent, in a Myers Research survey of 350 likely Democratic primary voters conducted earlier this month. Gary Kroeger of Cedar Falls was chosen by 12 percent of respondents.

The poll was conducted by Myers Research, a Washington, D.C.-based polling firm that Murphy also solicited during his 2014 campaign. Myers has conducted polls for dozens of congressional and presidential Democratic campaigns, according to its website.

Murphy expects the primary race to be about the same issues as in 2014.

'Quite frankly,” he said, 'I think it will be about the things I talked about in the primary last year - raising the minimum wage, universal preschool, working to expand health care, protecting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. When I say that, I mean we have to expand it as well.”

He believes he's the best-suited Democratic to take that fight to Blum.

'There's no other candidate running - from either party - who has been on the right side of these fights from day one,” he said. 'I feel I can go out there and talk to people about those issues from the perspective that I'm affected like the average person.”

Neither the Kroeger nor Vernon campaign immediately responded to requests for comment. However, the Republican Party of Iowa was quick to say Murphy 'is clearly still ‘angry.'” That's a reference to a video clip the GOP used in ads that showed Murphy shouting during a speech in the Iowa House floor.

Spokesman Charlie Szold called Murphy 'the quintessential big-spending Democrat, who would increase our $18 trillion debt, enable Nancy Pelosi's radical agenda, and bring a certain, ahem, lack of civility to the House.”