Ed Fallon turns 50 this Saturday, and his campaign has set an ambitious goal of collecting $50 from at least 1,000 donors to mark the occasion.

Everyone who gives $50 to the campaign will receive Fallon’s mother’s recipe for “killer apple pie.” You can contribute here:

http://www.actblue.com/page/50…

The campaign also has a number of public events scheduled for Saturday to mark Fallon’s birthday. I’m putting the details after the jump.  

I got an e-mail today from Democracy for America, confirming that they are backing Ed Fallon in the primary to represent Iowa’s third Congressional district. Excerpt:

Last Tuesday, our Primaries Matter campaign delivered results and helped lead Donna Edwards to a resounding 24-point victory over Bush-Democrat Al Wynn in MD-04.

Ed Fallon is the next DFA-List endorsement and he’s taking on Bush-Democrat, Rep. Leonard Boswell in IA-03.

Contribute $20.08 right now and support a Democrat with the backbone to stand up for progressive values.

http://www.actblue.com/page/su…

Ed Fallon is a true progressive and he has a record of beating out-of-touch Democrats in Iowa. In 1992, he beat 10-year incumbent Gary Sherzan with 63% of the vote and became a State Representative. When the conservative party establishment tried to primary Ed out of the state legislature, Ed won again with 68% of the vote.

Now, with your help, Ed will beat Bush-Democrat Leonard Boswell. Here’s a breakdown of some of the important differences between them.

The chart didn’t come through well when I copied and pasted. Here’s what it showed in Fallon’s column:

The War in Iraq: opposed Bush’s war from the start and believes we need a more diplomatic approach to foreign policy, not just in Iraq but throughout the Middle East

Campaign Funding: has never accepted money from lobbyists

Spying on Americans: opposes Bush’s warrantless wiretapping of innocent Americans

The Climate Crisis: supports a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants and has lead the fight against government handouts to big business in Iowa

No Child Left Behind: is against this unfunded, ineffective Bush-mandate, and will work to get it repealed

On those same issues, here’s what Democracy for America listed in the Boswell column:

-voted for the Iraq War and has continued to support additional funding with no timetable to bring the troops home

-accepts donations from lobbyists

-voted for increased warrantless surveillance on the American people

-voted to provide $14 billion in tax breaks and incentives for oil and gas companies and supports greater use of coal

-voted for [No Child Left Behind] and did not fund it or attempt to repeal it

I don’t know how many members Democracy for America has, but it will be interesting to see how much money this appeal raises for Fallon’s campaign. Donna Edwards’ convincing victory may make people more willing to invest in another primary challenger.

By the way, John Deeth has a piece up at Iowa Independent about the role Boswell and 20 other “Blue dog” Democrats played in yesterday’s House debate on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Deeth’s piece linked to a post by Matt Browner Hamlin, who confirmed that all 21 House Democrats who cooperated with the Republicans on FISA have received contributions from the telecom industry. Boswell has received $5,000 in campaign contributions from AT&T.

UPDATE: I checked the page at ActBlue that Democracy for America set up for donations to Fallon. As of 2:25 pm, this appeal has raised $10,417 for Fallon from 305 donors. That’s impressive. I’m sure the total will increase substantially this evening, which is when many people have their internet time.

SECOND UPDATE: As of 10:30 pm, this appeal has raised $20,024 for Fallon from 582 donors. That’s an average of just under $35 per donor. Looks like a lot of those people will be willing and able to donate again before this race is over.

Paging Ed Fallon: Leonard Boswell may be making a big mistake, according to mcjoan’s diary on the fight over the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. She says that “House Republicans will try to derail the effort to pass a 21 day extension of the existing surveillance law and force a vote on the Senate bill.”

She cites this piece in CQpolitics:

As the House turned to a 21-day extension of a temporary law governing electronic surveillance, Republicans prepared a motion to force a vote on the long-term version passed Tuesday by the Senate.

House Republicans engineered a series of procedural votes Wednesday in a bid to derail the Democrats’ proposed extension, which President Bush said he would veto. They argued that the House should simply take up and send to the White House a surveillance overhaul bill that the Senate passed by 68-29.

Because 21 conservative Blue Dog Democrats have endorsed the Senate-passed bill, Republicans might be able to win approval of the Senate bill through a motion to recommit the extension with instructions to amend it with the text of the Senate bill.

Yes, Boswell is in that group of 21 House Democrats. Not only that, the same 21 Democrats wrote a letter to Nancy Pelosi on January 28, supporting retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies and other measures in the FISA bill that cleared the Senate.

mcjoan asked Daily Kos readers to contact the 21 Democrats. Here is the information for Boswell:

Phone: (202) 225-3806, Fax: (202) 225-5608

If you contact Boswell’s office, tell him to vote with House Democrats in support of the House version of the FISA bill, which is called the RESTORE Act.

Normally, I am not overly optimistic about calls to members of Congress making a difference, but Boswell is heading into a tough primary.

He can do the right thing for our civil liberties, which is also the smart move politically, or he can go with his fellow Blue Dogs giving cover to the Republican Party.

UPDATE: Paul Kiel has more on what happened in the House today. Boswell and the others don’t look like profiles in courage:

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpoi…

Governor Chet Culver has agreed to back Secretary of State Mike Mauro’s plan “to use state money to help counties switch to one uniform system with paper ballots,” the Des Moines Register reported on Saturday:

Culver said he has put together a “working group” that includes Mauro, lawmakers and Culver’s staff. They will try to figure out how to get counties equipped with optical scan machines that count paper ballots – as he has long advocated for, he said.

Good for him. As I’ve written before, spending money on equipment that would print receipts for touchscreen voting machines would just throw good money after bad. Better to ensure that every Iowan votes with a paper ballot, which can be recounted if necessary.

Also on Friday, Culver endorsed incumbent Leonard Boswell in the Democratic primary for Iowa’s third Congressional district:

He called Boswell a “dear friend” whose military background is valuable on national security issues, although he said he respects Fallon and supports the idea of competitive political races.

Meanwhile, the Register tries to make news by noting that Culver has refused to rule out running for president someday.

Come on, reporters. He’s barely a year into his first term, and with any luck we’re about to elect a Democrat who will serve as president until 2012 or 2016. Let Culver get a term or two under his belt before you start asking him whether he’ll run for president.

As we all knew would be the case, Leonard Boswell is going to have plenty of money for this campaign. According to Federal Election Commission records, Boswell has more than $730,000 in the bank:

he raised about $131,000 during the last quarter of 2007, with $101,000 coming from political action committees.

Through 2007, he has raised about $730,000, of which $540,000 came from PACs, or close to 74 percent of his contributions.

I’m surprised that such a large proportion of the money came from PACs. I’m sure there will be much more where that came from in Q1 and Q2 of this year.

The Fallon for Congress website is still under construction, but you can donate to his campaign through ActBlue if you are so inclined.

I read on the front page of Wednesday’s Des Moines Register that this week, Representative Leonard Boswell introduced legislation directing the U.S. Postal Service to create a unique zip code for my suburb of Windsor Heights.

As we’ve discussed here at Bleeding Heartland, a recent survey of Windsor Heights residents showed that 99 percent are satisfied with the quality of life in Windsor Heights, and 89 percent described the city services and quality of life as “above average.”

Apparently the most frequent complaint city officials hear from residents is the lack of a unique zip code. Windsor Heights has three different zip codes; two mostly cover neighborhoods in Des Moines, and one mostly covers parts of Urbandale.

According to the Register on Wednesday,

Confusion between the ZIP codes and city boundaries has caused mail to be undelivered or returned to senders, has caused difficulty in tracking sex offenders, and has created problems for businesses.

Despite pleas from Windsor Heights city officials, U.S. postal officials have remained adamant that the suburb will not get its own ZIP code. Postal officials say the town has too few residents and doesn’t have a stand-alone post office. The city receives its mail from three post offices in Des Moines and Urbandale.

The article goes on to note that more than 100 Iowa cities and towns with smaller populations than Windsor Heights have unique zip codes, but that’s not the point of this post.

I personally know Windsor Heights residents who asked Boswell’s office years ago to help us get a zip code.

He just introduced a bill on the subject this week.

It’s too early to know whether Boswell’s proposed legislation has any chance of passing, or even getting out of the House Government Oversight and Reform subcommittee.

“We hope it will go forward, and the congressman will work hard with his colleagues in the House to get it moving,” Boswell spokeswoman McAvoy said.

Looks to me like this is another reason to thank Ed Fallon for challenging Boswell in the primary to represent Iowa’s third Congressional district.  

Last weekend a friend and fellow Edwards precinct captain left a message for me saying he'd been polled on the Boswell-Fallon race. On Wednesday evening, as I was cooking dinner, I got the same call. About an hour after that, the Obama precinct captain in my neighborhood called to let me know that she wants to volunteer for Fallon. She had just gotten the same survey call, which jogged her memory that she'd been meaning to call me about volunteering.

It was a long survey. I took notes for about half the call, but I had to put down my pencil from time to time, because my kids were jumping and trying to climb all over me, and I was afraid one of them would grab the pencil and get hurt. After the call I jotted down notes on other questions I could remember. If you've gotten this call, please leave a comment with any questions I have forgotten.

I'm putting as much as I can remember about the poll after the jump. I figured that Boswell's campaign was paying for the survey, based on the type of questions asked, and the fact that there were more questions asked about Boswell than about Fallon.

Just to make sure, I called Ed Fallon, and he confirmed that his campaign did not commission this survey and does not have any poll in the field right now.

If you don't care to read the whole extended entry, here's the summary. The poll asks a lot of questions about how Boswell is doing and what the respondent thinks about Boswell on various issues. All of the votes Fallon has criticized are mentioned in the survey, and respondents are asked whether they agree with Boswell's or Fallon's position. At various points during the survey, respondents are asked if they would vote for Fallon or Boswell if the primary election were held today.

The poll tests both positive and negative messages about Boswell, asking if the respondent agrees or if the statement would affect their likelihood of voting for Boswell. Interestingly, the survey did not test negative messages about Fallon. I kept waiting for questions about whether it bothered me that Fallon supported Nader in 2000, or was too liberal to win a general election, or whatever, but they were not in this survey. This was not a persuasion call against Fallon.

As far as I can tell, the Boswell campaign is trying to figure out which of Fallon's criticisms have the potential to hurt the incumbent, and which can be safely ignored.  

Follow me after the jump for more details.

In case you don’t normally read the Des Moines Register, Marc Hansen’s column on Ed Fallon in Tuesday’s edition was pretty good.

My only gripe relates to this passage:

Fallon hasn’t had many so-called “real jobs.” Like optometrist or truck driver, as opposed to “field canvasser” or “inner-city community organizer.”

I like Hansen, but this is a cheap shot. Why is engaging the public on political issues any less of a “real job” than driving a truck?

I’m sick of journalists denigrating political work and citizen empowerment.

As Chase Martyn reported for Iowa Independent, Ed Fallon officially announced on Wednesday that he will challenge Leonard Boswell for the Democratic nomination in Iowa’s third Congressional district.

Populista put up a diary here urging people to vote for Ed as Democracy for America’s “All-Star” candidate. I have already done so, and I hope you will too.

I’ll be writing more about this race in the coming months. For now, I want to briefly lay out the case for supporting Fallon’s challenge.

Leonard Boswell is a good person. I have voted for him every time and have contributed to his Congressional campaigns. However, he has been too willing to go along with the Bush administration on too many issues. He has voted to repeal the estate tax based on specious arguments from the Grover Norquist crowd. He voted for Bush’s horrible energy bill. He has voted to enable the Bush administration’s policies on Iraq and torture.

We have a chance to get a rock-solid progressive in this seat, and we should take it. While in the legislature, Ed Fallon had a 100 percent voting record on choice and labor issues, and was very strong on the environment and many other areas of importance.

Boswell sits on the Transportation Committee and has done nothing to help bring our national transportation policy back into balance. Fallon is talking about the need to get a handle on urban sprawl and invest in alternative forms of transportation as well as new road construction.

We are going to hear a lot from the Democratic Party establishment about Fallon supposedly being unelectable. I want those people to explain to me why Boswell’s winning margin in 2006 was so much less than Chet Culver’s winning margin in the counties that make up the third district.

Many Democrats, particularly progressives, simply do not feel that Boswell is representing our interests well enough.

Fallon has the potential to draw cross-over votes from independents and Republicans. He did it in the 2006 gubernatorial primary, and he can do it again. But just as important, he is a candidate Democrats can enthusiastically vote for.

Those who say that we can’t take a risk on replacing Boswell also need to explain their game plan for holding on to Iowa’s third district after the 2010 census. Iowa is going to lose a Congressional seat when the districts are redrawn. The most likely scenario I can see is that Boswell would retire in 2012, leaving us with no incumbent to run against Tom Latham or Steve King in the newly-drawn third district.

We are better off getting a new incumbent in place before that happens.

Finally, I believe that Fallon’s challenge will benefit Democrats even if he does not win the primary. As Chris Bowers reported last month at Open Left, Boswell voted against an Iraq funding bill for the first time ever after rumors about Fallon’s challenge started circulating.

I have also heard that Boswell recently signed onto a global-warming pledge that he refused to sign months earlier, when Congressmen Bruce Braley and Dave Loebsack backed it.

We’ve seen the voting records of other Democratic incumbents improve after progressives challenged them in primaries. Jane Harman and Ellen Tauscher of California come to mind. If Boswell does win the primary, I expect that his Congressional votes will better represent the will of his constituents.

If Fallon wins the primary, we will be favored to elect a strong progressive to this seat, given his base in Polk County and the expected high turnout for Democrats in a presidential election year.

I respect the views of Bleeding Heartland readers who are sticking with Boswell, but I urge you to consider the case for Fallon. If you already support Fallon, please consider donating to or volunteering for his campaign. They will need all hands on deck, since the party establishment will line up behind Boswell.

Today, the Hotline blog ponders rematches for House races in 2008, particularly GOP incumbents who got the boot that want to get back in.

It’s probably an appropriate time to start ponder 2008 House races in Iowa.  Since IA-01 and IA-02 are pretty solid, I’ll put my “races to watch” on IA-03 and IA-04.