Conlin: U.S. Senate campaign 'surprising even ourselves'

By James Q. Lynch

IOWA CITY – Polls show her trailing by 13 percentage points, but Roxanne Conlin said she couldn't be happier with where her campaign for U.S. Senate is at.

Four weeks before the June 8 primary to decide whether Conlin or one of her opponents – “You don't need to know their names,” she joked with University of Iowa students May 4 – will face Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, Conlin says her campaign is “doing very well.”

“We're surprising even ourselves,” Conlin told about 25 UI students during a stop on campus to promote early primary election voting.

A new Rasmussen Reports shows her trailing Grassley by 13 points, but Conlin prefers to look at the 15 points she's gained on Grassley since entering the race.

The poll “gives us a great boost and, clearly, closing that kind of a gap without spending a dime, we feel very good about our campaign on the ground, about the movement that we have started,” she said..

At this point, the poll is “a big boost emotionally, but pretty meaningless in terms of the general election,” she said.

Before the general, there is a primary election race with Bob Krause of Fairfield and Tom Fiegen of Clarence. Conlin is seen as the favorite in the race based on fundraising and polling that shows her faring better against Grassley than either of the others.

Conlin's fundraising numbers and progress in the polls has started to attract attention.

“Is it possible that one of the most invulnerable senators in recent American history is really within striking range?” Steve Singiser said in a post at the DailyKos.com. “Looking at the Rasmussen poll in Iowa, it appears so.”

“We can win,” Conlin told UI students. “He's never had a viable candidate in 30 years … a candidate with name identification and the ability to raise money.”

The Conlin campaign outraised Grassley in the first quarter of the year, collecting $663,335, according to her report. That included $30,919 of her money. Grassley raised $613,627 for the quarter, according to a summary of his report.

 “I can't imagine how he felt about that,” she said.

Grassley has about $5.4 million cash on hand to Conlin's $1 million.

“We won't be able to match him dollar for dollar,” she said. “But we can counteract Grassley's money with people power.”

Despite Conlin's rosy outlook, Grassley's campaign manager Bob Renaud doesn't think 2010 will be a Democratic year in Iowa.

“Maybe the worst news for Roxanne Conlin is that she is running on a platform of higher taxes in a state where the voters believe overwhelmingly that they are already taxed too much,” Renaud said. “On top of that, the environment is turning very harsh towards Democrats in Iowa with Gov. (Chet) Culver's ratings continuing to be upside-down, and we now see that more Iowans disapprove of the job President Obama is doing.

“Not a good year to be a Democratic candidate,” he said.