Battle-tested Boswell faces toughest fight for re-election

Fourteen-year Iowa congressman Leonard Boswell confronts a confluence of factors this year that pose what observers say is his most difficult re-election test yet.

• The Democrat faces stronger anti-incumbent sentiment than in any other congressional district in the state, according to the February Iowa Poll.
• His party’s statewide candidates face their own challenges and might not have the pull that has helped lift Boswell in past tough re-election campaigns.
• Republicans, who have struggled at times to define him, can now point to votes on controversial issues they say align Boswell with far-left-leaning Democratic leadership in Congress. Those votes, including Boswell’s reaffirmed support for health care legislation, counter his moderate image in the politically diverse central Iowa district.

Iowa and national Democratic observers caution against counting out the battle-tested Boswell. While Boswell remains self-assured, he has spoken openly about his political mortality and aired a warning for Iowans considering canceling their contract with him this fall.

“We saw Mr. Smith leave at his peak,” Boswell said in a Des Moines Register interview, referring to Des Moines Democrat Neal Smith, a 36-year congressman defeated for re-election during the Republican wave of 1994. “It would be a mistake to do that again.”

Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District, which includes Polk County and 11 largely rural counties, has been a national Republican target in three of the four elections since Boswell moved to Des Moines in 2002. Redistricting after the 2000 census put his Decatur County farm in the Republican-heavy 5th District, prompting the three-term House member to move to Iowa’s largest metro area.

In 2002, 2004, and 2006, he beat back well-funded Republican challengers who benefited from fundraising from the Bush White House and the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Boswell’s narrowest margin was in 2006, when he defeated Republican state Sen. Jeff Lamberti of Ankeny by 6 percentage points after spending $2 million. But that year, Democrats in Iowa and nationally had the wind at their back. That was the same year that Dave Loebsack of the neighboring 2nd District ousted 30-year Republican Jim Leach as dissatisfaction grew with the Bush administration and GOP Congress.

Until this year, Boswell has not faced re-election in an environment as potentially hazardous to his party. Boswell’s district is the least friendly to federal officeholders, according to the February Iowa Poll.

Fifty-two percent of adults in the 3rd District said they were inclined to replace their federal representatives, the highest rate among Iowa’s five congressional districts. The rate jumped even higher among the district’s likely voters, to 58 percent.

Top-of-ticket help, dollars less certain

Boswell has benefited in the past from a well-funded combined state Democratic Party campaign.

In 2002, Sen. Tom Harkin and Gov. Tom Vilsack led the ticket in Iowa and contributed millions of dollars to the party’s voter-identification, direct-mail and get-out-the-vote programs.

In 2004, the Iowa Democratic Party got millions from the Democratic National Committee and presidential nominee John Kerry’s campaign, when Iowa was a top-tier White House battleground state.

In 2006, Chet Culver contributed heavily to the state party’s efforts on his way to a 10-point win in the governor’s race, which also helped Boswell.
This year, Culver is expected to contribute to a coordinated campaign, although it is unclear how much and who else will.

In this cycle, Culver is facing a difficult re-election campaign. And the U.S. Senate seat on the ballot in November is held by Republican Chuck Grassley, who had $5 million in the bank in January. His Democratic opponent would be expected to contribute some of what she or he raises to the statewide campaign, but would need plenty for the Senate race.

Another factor is that leaders of some key labor unions, typically reliable contributors to the party’s combined effort, have said they will not contribute this year, out of protest for the failure of Democrats to adopt key labor proposals.

Experts outside Iowa have been wrong before about Boswell’s vulnerability, but the perception remains.

Last month, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report rated the race as “leaning Democratic,” moving it from the “likely Democratic” column. Cook’s House race editor David Wasserman cited healthy fundraising by some of the seven Republicans lining up to challenge Boswell and questions that had circulated in Washington, D.C., about whether Boswell would seek re-election.

“Now that the national environment has turned against Democrats, this seat looks like the GOP’s best opportunity in Iowa,” Wasserman wrote. “If Boswell runs again, he is in serious trouble.”
Tom Henderson, Polk County Democratic chairman, said there is little Bos-well can do to overcome an overwhelmingly anti-incumbent environment. But he and other Democrat observers point to signs they say show Republicans nationally are not fully committed to waging all-out war on Boswell’s seat.

“The way I see things, if the wind is blowing in our face, we’re going to lose,” said Henderson, a Des Moines lawyer. “But there are a number of competitive races nationally, and I don’t think the Republicans are really focusing on this one as much as they are others.”

Another factor in Boswell’s favor, Henderson said: Seven Republicans are vying for the nomination. That will require candidates to spend their money leading up to the June 8 primary, instead of banking it for the fall battle.

Questions raised on his fit with district

Some Des Moines-area Democrats have complained since 2002 that Boswell’s rural background and advancing age are at odds with a district where Polk County makes up two-thirds of the voters. That was an argument former state Rep. Ed Fallon made in his unsuccessful 2008 primary challenge.
Boswell is 76. The 3rd District had a median age of 37.2 years as of 2007, trailing only the 2nd District, home to the University of Iowa, for the state’s most youthful.

But Boswell’s familiarity with voters in the district’s 11 counties outside Polk could be an advantage against a newcomer in the fall. None of the Republicans seeking the nomination is from outside Polk County.

Since his election to Congress in 1996, Boswell also has retained his campaign consulting team. They include David Dixon, a Washington, D.C., operative who learned hard lessons as the political director for the national Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee when Democrats lost the House majority in 1994.

Boswell’s team has succeeded in portraying him as a good fit for the complex district, said John Lapp, director of the DCCC during the 2006 election.
“He’s got a folksy way about him that’s proven effective for Iowa time and time again,” said Lapp, who also managed Vilsack’s 2002 campaign for governor. “Those who underestimate Leonard Boswell do so at their peril.”

Republicans say Boswell’s votes over roughly the past year have eroded his image as a moderate. Last year, he voted for the $787 billion economic stimulus, a controversial climate change bill and the House health care bill. He voted earlier this month for the Senate health care bill.

Boswell was freer to vote at times with Republicans when Democrats were in the minority before 2007, said Iowa Republican Party Chairman Matt Strawn. That tendency made it difficult to label him as in lockstep with the House’s Democratic leader, Nancy Pelosi of California.

“Now, there are some votes you can point to where you can say Leonard’s changed since he’s been in the majority,” said Strawn, a former congressional campaign adviser. “It’s an argument our nominee is going to have to make. I think that it at least gives those folks down there pause.”

Boswell makes clear he won’t go quietly, conjuring Smith’s 1994 defeat to a Des Moines Republican as a mistake to avoid repeating.

“I’m not suggesting I can do what he did, but he did a terrific job, and they let him go 16 years ago,” he said. “And I think I’m doing a reasonably good job. They may beat me someday, but it’s not because I’m going to hand it to them.”