Conlin going after independent voters

IOWA CITY – Roxanne Conlin is pretty sure she's got the Democratic vote locked up in her race the retire Sen. Chuck Grassley.

Now she's going after the independent voters – who outnumber both Democrats and Republicans in Iowa.

In Iowa City Friday night (July 30), the Des Moines Democrat said she thinks it possible to win over some Tea Party members because the issues she's talking about affect them, too.

One of them, she said, is the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, which Grassley supported.

“Iowans have a really well-developed sense of right and wrong and fair and unfair,” Conlin said, “so the whole idea that Wall Street bankers would take our money to pay themselves obscene bonuses just drives people crazy on a basic, basic level.”

There are a whole series of issues – cutting the defense budget, letting tax breaks for the wealthy expire, and finding jobs for everyone that wants one, the lack of a national energy policy – that cut across party labels, Conlin said.

She thinks the independents and Tea Party members agree with her that the war in Afghanistan is not making the nation safer and has been a waste of treasurer and lives.

“We don't belong in Afghanistan, with guns. We're not solving anything, we're creating problems,” she said.

Conlin reminded those in the audience, both those her age as well as those much younger, that this isn't the first war she opposed.

“I opposed the Vietnam War. I marched for peace right on this street,” she said from the Prairie Lights Café which looks out on Dubuque Street,

Iowa Democratic Party Chairwoman Sue Dvorsky agrees with Conlin that despite what the polls said in June, they will move in Conlin's favor when independent voters get engaged in the election in October.

Grassley has spent nearly five decades crafting a brand as an independent thinker, said Dvorsky, a Coralville teacher who took over the party's top post in June. However his recent votes against Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, against financial reform and against extending unemployment benefits “belie that persona,” Dvorsky said.

Dvorsky also believes that Conlin brings strengths to the race that will resonate with voters.

“Roxanne is the sort of person who steps into the fight and takes on the big players on behalf of regular people,” she said. “That's not the chapter (Grassley) is in any more.”

And for those who believe the current polls that show Grassley with a double-digit lead, Dvorsky has two words” “Dave Loebsack.”

“Come on, we know that in Iowa you believe the conventional political wisdom at your own peril,” said.

Loebsack, a Cornell College professor, was a longshot challenger in 2006 who scored an upset victory over 15-term Republican Rep. Jim Leach in Iowa's 2

^nd

District.