New poll buoys hopes for Republican pickup in Iowa 1st District

HIAWATHA - With polls showing the race for an open seat in Iowa's 1st Congressional District within the margin of error, U.S. House Speaker John Boehner called on volunteers push hard for the next seven days.

'We can win this race,” Boehner told about 70 people at the Linn County Republican campaign office in Hiawatha on Monday a few hours after the release of a new Loras College Poll showed Republican Rod Blum leading Democrat Pat Murphy 43.6 percent to 42.1 percent, with 12 percent undecided.

But elections 'aren't won or lost on what the polls say, but on who shows up to vote,” Boehner said.

Still, Loras associate professor of politics Christopher Budzisz, who directs the Loras College Poll, called the results noteworthy, in part, because Democrats have a voter registration advantage in the northeast Iowa District that includes Cedar Rapids, Dubuque, Cedar Falls-Waterloo and Marshalltown. According to the Iowa Secretary of State Office, the active voter registration split is 33 percent Democrat, 28 percent Republican and 39 percent no party.

'It's crunch time,” Budzisz said, 'and I imagine these latest poll results will only add to the intensity of the efforts of the campaigns, especially given the substantial number of undecided remaining.”

Boehner predicted it won't be the intensity of the television commercials for and against Blum that will determine the outcome 'because most people don't believe them.”

'But they believe 95 percent of what they hear from their friends and their neighbors,” Boehner said. 'That's why it's important to talks to friends, talk to your neighbors, talk to your kids and grandkids about showing up and voting.”

Blum, who said he's been campaigning for 580 days, predicted the election will come down to turnout.

'You have to love the grind” of campaigning, he said, and the grind appears to be paying off. Thirteen weeks ago, he trailed Murphy by 11 percentage points. For the fourth straight week, he said, the lead has flipped in his favor.

Boehner made clear he wants Blum to join him in the House GOP majority.

'He's somebody that I need in Washington to help us battle the people on the other side,” the speaker said.

President Barack Obama's policies have failed, Boehner continued. They are 'killing the job market, killing the opportunity to get a higher wage. Whether it's Obamacare, the Dodd-Frank financial rules, whether it's the EPA that's out of control that wants to regulate every pothole in every farm field in American, his policies are not working.”

What it comes down to, Boehner said, is if you want higher taxes and bigger government, vote for Democrats.

'If you want smaller, less costly and more accountable government, vote for Joni Ernst and vote for Rod Blum,” Boehner said.

However, Murphy had another take.

'Boehner wants Rod Blum in Congress to raise the retirement age, risk Social Security on Wall Street, turn Medicare into an unstable voucher system and strip seniors of their earned benefits by decreasing the cost of living increases to Social Security,” Murphy said.

He predicted Blum would be 'a rubber stamp for Boehner's ‘do-nothing' Congress' that has recklessly pushed to raise Medicare costs on Iowans in order to cut taxes for the ultrawealthy.”

The speaker took no questions from Blum supporters or the media. After speaking for about nine minutes he left with a lights-and-siren police escort, or his next event in the Quad Cities.