Conlin approached about Senate race in January

By James Q. Lynch

The Gazette

Mystery solved. 

Ever since the Iowa Democratic Party chairman said a “first-round draft pick” would give Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley “the race of his life,” the identity of the so-called mystery candidate has been the subject of speculation.

Des Moines attorney Roxanne Conlin delivered a big clue to last week when she said last week she will likely be a candidate. Any remaining questions were cleared up Monday when former Iowa First Lady Christie Vilsack's announced she will not be a candidate.

“I'm pretty sure the mystery is solved about who I was talking about,” Kiernan said Monday.

He couldn't talk about it until now, but Kiernan first approached Conlin within two weeks of taking the reins of the party in January.

 “The field was clear and it was my job to find candidate that could take on Sen. Grassley and win,” he said about the 2010 race. “I believe she's the candidate.”

Since then, former state Sen. Tom Fiegen of Clarence, Bob Krause of Fairfield and Sal Mohamed of Sioux City announced their candidacies.

“I'm not going to say that after the first meeting she said ‘yes,'” Kiernan said. “I don't think she expected we were going to be talking about that. The first meeting was brief … but we continued to meet and she began to talk to me more about her intentions.”

Kiernan stresses that he and the party will remain neutral in the June 2010 primary. He believes that Conlin with her national stature in Democratic politics and as a trial attorney as well as her independent wealth make her a formidable candidate against Grassley.

“If she gets through the primary, that would be a race that Sen. Grassley has never experienced” since his 1980 victory over Sen. John Culver, father of Gov. Chet Culver, Kiernan said.

Conlin has made no formal announcement, but is putting together a campaign team, according to Democratic operative Mark Daley.

“She'll move very fast once she is 100 percent sold on it herself,” he said about a Conlin campaign. However, she's leaving little doubt she will seek the nomination.

Daley expects she will soon be on the campaign trail because “going after Sen. Grassley is a fight that will take a full year.”

In ending the speculation about her candidacy, Vilsack said she will continue her work with the Iowa Initiative to Prevent Unintended Pregnancy “and will be active in our party and across the state in issues that affect the quality of life for all Iowans.”

“While I will not be a candidate for office in 2010, never doubt I am committed to a life of service and to Iowa,” said Vilsack, who served as Iowa's first lady from 1999 to 2007. Her husband, Tom, served two terms as governor and currently is U.S. agriculture secretary in the Obama administration after attempting a failed 2008 presidential bid.

A U.S. Senate campaign would require “more than the confidence that I have the right experience, the necessary support and the resources to be successful,” Vilsack said. “It must come with an understanding that it is the best way for me serve our state and my fellow Iowans in the most effective way possible at this time.”

She added that she is “flattered and humbled” by the requests from Democrats, independents and even some Republicans to consider running. “My careful consideration of the opportunity to represent Iowa in the Senate was done with great respect for those who came to me and the office itself,” she said.