By researching the social media statistics of notable politicians either running or holding an office here in Iowa, the totals seem to paint a picture of how well they are engaging with voters right now. Also evaluating the significance of the social site’s viral reach we can gauge how well they leverage the internet for their office and or campaigns.

I graded each politician’s presence in social media with a gut level opinion of how well I felt they are using social media in comparison to their opponents. I also considered the size of office the candidates are seeking. In other words, I expect a larger following for a statewide office than I would a congressional seat.

This report card is not meant to hand out discouraging grades, but rather serve as a wakeup call to encourage republicans to upgrade their online strategy and to boost both campaign message appeal and effectiveness. 

The one thing all candidates have in common is that there is room for improvement in growing social networks.  Ultimately amassing votes are what campaigns want on election day, but to get to victory part of a well balanced breakfast game plan is engaging, informing and equipping prospective voters.

Make no mistake it does take time and tenacious work to build and maintain social sites.  Even with a few short cuts it must still be given attention regularly.   So enjoy these figures as they do tell an emerging story.  And FYI with full disclosure I do work on social media for Vander Plaats, but I believe the grade still fits the bill. 

First off, Grassley has the best Twitter follower count. Grassley also works YouTube better than any other politician in the state.

United States Senate

Senator Chuck Grassley
Grade: A+
Official Website: http://www.grassleyworks.com/
Twitter: 18,173 followers
Facebook: Friend Total Turned Off
YouTube: 42,938 views, 124 videos

Senator Tom Harkin
Grade: C
Official Website: http://www.tomharkin.com/
Twitter: 171 followers
Facebook: 909 fans (non official fan page 3,479 fans)
YouTube: 12,226 views, 47 videos

Roxanne Conlin
Grade: C-
Official Website: http://www.roxanneforiowa.com/
Twitter: 733 followers
Facebook: 2,294 fans
YouTube: 220 views, 2 videos

United States House of Representatives

Congressman Bruce Braley
Grade: C-
Official Website: http://www.brucebraley.com/
Twitter: 286 followers
Facebook: 1,120 fans
YouTube: 1,421 views, 43 videos

Congressman Tom Latham
Grade: B-
Official Website: http://www.tomlatham.house.gov/
Twitter: 2,679 followers
Facebook: 2,497 fans
YouTube: 2,107 views, 7 videos

Congressman Steve King
Grade: C
Official Website: http://www.kingforcongress.com/
Twitter: 1,695 followers
Facebook: 1,495 friends
YouTube: 14,405 views, 159 videos

Governor

Governor Chet Culver
Grade: B
Official Website: http://www.chetculver.com
Twitter: 1,321 followers http://twitter.com/GovChetCulver
Facebook: 2,562 fans
YouTube: 601 views, 1 video

Bob Vander Plaats
Grade: A
Official Website: http://www.BobVP.com
Twitter: 10,062 followers
Facebook: 2,155 fans
YouTube:19,823 views, 400+ videos
(Note: Video selection inventory is currently undergoing new construction)

Terry Branstad
Grade: B
Official Website:http://www.governorbranstad2010.com
Twitter: 657 followers
Facebook: 1,771 friends
YouTube: 1,672 views, 2 videos

Rod Roberts
Grade: C
Official Website – http://www.robertsforgov.com/
Twitter – 287 followers
Facebook – 394 fans / 546 friends
YouTube – 96 views, 3 videos

Third District

While Dave Funk needs to step it up with Twitter, his near 3,000 Facebook fan base catapults him to best grade in Iowa’s 3rd district race. He is also actively on Facebook engaging his base. My challenge to all these 3rd district candidates is to at least match Boswell’s social media web presence and do it in the near future. Zaun is off to a decent start and has the basics covered so far to get the ball rolling, but Gibbons, Rees and Bertroche need to be more active.

If you run for congress you should stand out enough to have more fans on Facebook than the followers total of an average housewife or small business owner. Gibbons has a decent friend total so far, but fans are always better on Facebook. Rees has the basics started, but his very low numbers are less than a shy teenager. Bertroche needs to switch to a fan page fan base on Facebook and start a YouTube channel. For social media in politics it’s a no-brainer to have a YouTube channel.

Congressman Leonard Boswell
Grade: B-
Official Website: http://www.boswellforcongress.com/
Twitter: 1,348 followers
Facebook: 1,106 fans
YouTube: 1,915 views, 31 videos

Dave Funk
Grade: B
Official Website: http://www.funkforcongress.com/
Twitter: 22 followers
Facebook: 2,899 fans
YouTube: 778 views, 7 videos

Brad Zaun
Grade: B-
Official Website: http://www.bradzaun.com
Twitter: 143 followers
Facebook: 866 friends / 1359 fans – (Sorry to Zaun campaign for not locating fan page at first.)
YouTube: 1,124 views, 12 videos

Jim Gibbons
Grade: D+
Official Website: http://www.gibbonsforcongress.com
Twitter: 74 followers
Facebook: 431 fans/ 1,636 friends
YouTube: No Page Found

Mark Rees
Grade: D
Official Website: http://www.markrees4congress.com/
Twitter: 54 followers
Facebook: 161 fans
YouTube: 175 views, 6 videos

Pat Bertroche
Grade: F+
Official Website: http://www.bertroche4congress.com/
Twitter: 65 followers
Facebook: 350 fans

Second District

Is it grassroots leverage and spirit that allows Christopher Reed to best leverage social media in Iowa’s 2nd district so far? Despite being lowest on the totem pole for fundraising, Reed’s crew is working the internet. His staff and devoted followers are passionate when it comes to passing on news via Facebook wall posts.

By looking at the sheer numbers of Facebook friends it would seems Rathje has the impressive advantage and he does at first glance, but Rathje has friend followers and Reed has fan followers. What is the difference? Well for one, Rathje is now experiencing the no man’s land downside of a profile page. He has hit his 5,000 friend maximum. Unintentionally he has now alienated any new Facebook voter after number 5,000 and flipping his dynasty to all fans will be awkward at this point. It’s a good problem to have, but he will certainly have to retool his Facebook strategy now.

One advantage for politicians to have a Facebook fan page is you guessed it… No max follower count. There are more advantages, but that one will suffice for now. Reed needs to consider merging all his friends into his fan account until it get to far out of hand. We had to do this with Bob Vander Plaats. It wasn’t fun, but the streamline effectiveness is now all worth it.

Miller Meeks is off to a basic start, but she should want to devote time to building her social media sites. Newly announced Gettemy loses a letter grade automatically for having no YouTube and his social media numbers are not making a huge impact yet. Not that quality isn’t important, but this is a race for Congress. If you want to be like Latham and Grassley then take running social media seriously. Reach your base better than your opponent.

Congressman Dave Loebsack
Grade: C
Official Website: http://www.loebsackforcongress.org/
Twitter: 286 followers
Facebook: 1,347 fans
YouTube: 684 views, 8 videos

Christopher Reed
Grade: B
Official Website: http://www.reedforiowa.com/
Twitter: 683 followers
Facebook: 1,161 friends / 2,124 fans
Youtube: 828 views, 16 videos

Steve Rathje
Grade: B-
Official Website: http://www.steverathje.com/
Twitter: 421 followers
Facebook: 4,995 friends
Youtube: 879 views, 2 videos

Mariannette Miller-Meeks
Grade: C-
Official Website: http://millermeeks.com
Twitter: 391 followers
Facebook: 586 friends
Youtube: 2,413 views, 12 videos

Rob Gettemy
Grade: F+
Official Website: http://www.robgettemy.org
Twitter: 252 followers
Facebook: 287 friends
Youtube: No Channel Found

Written by Dave Davidson

Revised version

Thank you all very much. You know, it’s always hard to live up to an excellent introduction, and I think I’m going to be tested in that regard.

Boy, I just really like being here at CPAC and getting a chance to talk to all of you. I draw energy from all of you.

As I come here and I listen to this introduction, I go back to that time, the test of the primary and general election to be elected to this wonderful honor and privilege of serving the American people in the United States Congress in a Constitutional manner. I looked at my Congressional district, which is roughly the western third of Iowa; it’s shaped kind of like a short toed boot, roughly rectangular, however. And my opponent said “well, we have the money, we have more political influence, we have more media, we can do all of these things.” And I took a look at the map and someone said, “Well, don’t you live pretty close to the center?” I took a nice straightedge on a scaled map and I drew an X on that like you would to find the center of a rectangle. And that X doesn’t come to Kiron, Iowa – which is my nearest incorporated community – it comes to southeast corner of Section 28, Wheeler Township, Sac County, and in fact I will tell you that X is dead center in the district right over my house. You could stretch a string line from corner to corner; you could drop a plum bob down my chimney. That’s providence. So I let them know, “Of all the money you have, you can’t buck providence.”

So now here we are today. This is going to be the theme I want to talk to you about: President Obama has lost his mojo. He came here as the President of the United States with all of this momentum that he created – and by the way the movement really started here in Iowa, more in eastern Iowa than my part of the state – and as he built that momentum across the country and he battled against Hillary Clinton – and Hillary Clinton knew more about health care then president Obama he did, so President Obama had to get his bonafides up for healthcare, and so that became a central issue in their primary campaign as they battled out in the caucuses and the primaries across the country. Obama won that, went on to be president. And he was elected and inaugurated with about as much political capital as any president in history – and I had a ringside seat to watch that happen. He had more mojo than any president I remember when he was inaugurated a year and a month ago.

But now, the Master Mesmerizer has lost his mojo. And if we stand our ground as constitutional conservatives, he’s not going to get it back.

Now here’s what happened. We’re a constitutional republic – not a democracy, as some would say, were a constitutional republic – and our Founding Fathers knew the difference. But we have faith – we’re supposed to have, at least – faith in our elected representatives, so when we elected a new Congress in 2008 to extend the majorities that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid had, and when President Obama was inaugurated on January 20th of 2009, I wrote before that election that if you elect President Obama, and Nancy Pelosi is Speaker and Harry Reid Majority Leader, you will have established a ruling troika in America. Those three people can go into a phone booth and do what they will to America and there is nothing we can do in the short term about it.

That’s what has happened. They are the ruling troika. You can call this ReidCare, you can call it PelosiCare, you can call it Obamacare, and I call it all those things but I also call it troika care. It’s the three-way ruling elite that’s now running this country. But we have – as American people – we have to entrust our faith in our elected representatives. And so, when we had the economic crisis that befell us, when Henry Paulson came to the Capitol on September 19, 2008, and he had his Chicken Little routine, and he said, “the sky is falling I need $700 billion right now to prop the sky up.” We said, “you’re in a different arena now.” But he made one run at it and we voted it down; he made another run at it and it passed, and Henry Paulson got his $700 billion in two different components, that’s when the American people started to get really nervous about what they saw happening in Washington, D.C. And then, along through that path of things that happened, we saw the nationalization of huge private sector entities, we saw the nationalization of Bear Sterns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG the insurance company, along came CITI Group nationalized, Bank of America, and now the American people are starting to think: what hath we wrought?

The people we put in charge are making decisions to punish the private sector and nationalize the growth engines that have been created by free market capitalism. But they trusted that their elected leaders knew more about Wall Street than they did. And now we find out that we know more about Wall Street than the people on Wall Street know about Wall Street. Unless it was their business model to game the taxpayers, in which case then I will give the nod to the Wall Street brokers.

We saw the nationalization of eight huge private sector entities, but I’ve only named six. Right after that came General Motors and Chrysler. Now, we may not know Wall Street, but Americans know cars. And we know that if you’re going to shut down 3,400 dealerships in America, and you’re going to ice out the secured bond holders that by legitimate right of law held that security for General Motors and Chrysler, and hand it over to the trade unions on the voice of the President of the United States, who fired the CEO of General Motors, and replaced and hired all but two board members of General Motors, and put in place a car czar that was 31 years old that had never made a car, had never sold a car, I haven’t seen evidence that he ever owned a car – but if I did, I’d ask him if it was an American-made car. And we lost faith in the White House. I wonder why. We knew more than they know. The car czar, 31 years old, that was kind of the end of the line for this leap of faith the American people endorsed the President and the majorities – the Pelosi and Reid majorities, the troika – with.

And now we’re bludgeoned and beaten by that, and we’ve watched, according to the Wall Street Journal, one-third of the private sector profits nationalized, within this last year and a half or so. And right behind that came $787 billion, an economic stimulus plan that was another blank check for the President of the United States to pay off his political benefactors. And here we sit today with an economy that’s spiraled downwards.

The President of the United States has concluded this – and he said this a year ago before a conference meeting with Republican Members of Congress –he said that the New Deal, under FDR, back in the Great Depression, actually did work, but it would have worked better if FDR hadn’t lost his nerve. But FDR lost his nerve and was afraid he was spending too much money and he pulled back. And when he pulled back in the second half of the thirties, then that’s when you saw unemployment go up and you had a recession within a Depression – according to the Keynesian-economist-on-steroids named Barack Obama. Well, I’m not a Keynesian economist on steroids. I’m a free marketeer. I have read every word of The Wealth of Nations, and I believe it! And they’re celebrating the anniversary of the signature on the economic stimulus plan, “Stim One”, and now they got “Son of Stim”, or “Stim Two”, they’re trying to bring past us again for roughly $100 billion. Are Americans nervous about all of this? Absolutely we are.

And I tell you this story because that is how we got here. We got here with this whole string of TARP, the nationalization of eight huge entities, an economic stimulus plan, and then on top of that we went right into – what was last summer, in July? Cap and Trade, “Cap and Tax” that you know. Now, sometimes leadership will give advice that will be, “Don’t argue the science, you’ve already lost that argument, just argue the economics of Cap and Tax.” Well I’ll tell you, if there is ever a premise that you disagree with: never concede a premise. Never, never concede a premise!

The liberals – the environmentalists, the extremists, the Al Gores of the world – were wrong on the science, and today we know it. And I have an Al Gore shower at my place and I took my drill bit out with an eighth-inch bit in it, and I drilled all the holes out so now I can take a shower in three minutes instead of twelve. Sorry Al. But I got a scoop shovel for you if you want to come to any of the fifty states in America. For the first time in the history of keeping records, there is snowfall on the ground in all fifty states. It is tough to make an argument when the evidence is all around us, the snowy white wonder in a crystal cathedral.

And so we went though all of these ramifications, and we came out the other side with this: the American people lost their faith in the government. They believed that they lost their handle on government, and they rose up. We had Tea Party Patriots that rose up across this country, the 9/12 group that met here last year. Go! Many other days. April 15th was another day. I was in South Carolina that day. I will never forget that – the opportunity to be there and be part of that – Constitutional conservatives stepping up to take America back.

But one thing that Sun Tsu wrote about was “nosce hostem,” know thine enemy. Now who are we up against? I want to define that enemy. They are: liberals, they are progressives, they are Che Guevarians, they are Castroites, they are socialists, more enemies on this list, Gramsciites, ring anybody’s bell? Trotskyites, Maoists, Stalinists, Leninists, Marxists. They are all our enemies. Who’d I leave out? I think I heard that. How about I go to: democratic socialists? And I’m going to ask you to go to the dsausa.org website and take a look and see what you find there. The Democratic Socialists of America. They are the socialists. There is a game plan on there. That game plan looks suspiciously like President Obama’s game plan. It says on there that they want to nationalize the major corporations and take them over. And they want to manage those for the benefit of “the people affected by them.” And that would be for “the trade unions” and perhaps “the customers.” And so when I asked Timothy Geithner in writing – it was part of a hearing we had, so he’s essentially under oath – present for me his exit strategy to denationalize these eight huge entities. Two months later this seven-page letter came back and after my lawyers analyzed it all, it came down to this: “Well, I will do that if the time is right, and I’m the only one who will know.”

This is the President’s plan. Don’t believe he ever shed a tear over nationalizing any of those companies. It is in his playbook. The Democratic Socialists of America is the playbook that I have seen unfold. I ask you to go to the website and address that. And I could read you some things off of that, but the big pieces of the Obama agenda have been: cap and tax, socialized medicine, comprehensive amnesty. I believe that any combination of those are transformative to America and debilitating to our liberty and our freedom. I want them all dead. I want to kill all those bills.

And by the way, I don’t want to meet with the President of the United States to see what other kinds of toxic stew he is going to serve up to us. And it is a toxic stew. They started out and they were going to cook up this health care for America, and so what do they do? They get a big pot out and they decide, “How do you start, with cooking up this stew,” so they reached into that fifteen-year old shelf and they pulled HillaryCare off of it – that big old tainted soup bone – they dropped it down in that pot and started to cook up this single payer, socialized medicine. Then they found out that the flavor was tainted so they threw a few more things in thinking they could convince us we ought to eat that.

And after all of these months of debate and negotiations, it comes down to this: if you start out with that tainted stew, there is no part of it that Americans want. We don’t want a pot full, we don’t want a bowl full, we don’t want a spoon full, a cup full, or any kind measure of toxic stew called socialized medicine. We want it dead. Throw it out and start over. And if the President of the United States wants to negotiate with the leaders of the Republicans – or if he wants to negotiate with the people who are leading philosophically among Republicans, or conservatives, or constitutional conservatives – here are the conditions, Mr. President: First, concede that that toxic stew has to be thrown out. That’s one. Second one is: this reconciliation package – the idea of running two bills through, pass the Senate bill in the House, and then the negotiated piece that is going on right now, in secret, bringing that through the Senate under reconciliation, which the Democrats called the “nuclear option” – now the wording is changed, “reconciliation” that sounds real nice and gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling, it’s the nuclear option, when they named it before. Passing that bill though and jamming this on the American people directly against your will, that’s what they want to do. That is what they are talking about doing. The President has got to say the whole package of Troikacare is off the list, and the nuclear option – the reconciliation – is also off the table.

And now Republicans need to make a concession. We need to say: our complete, holistic approach to this is a pretty big, complicated piece of legislation, however good the components are. Let’s also take that off the table, because we know what happens: if you have two ideas out there – and you got to put them together in order to get the votes to get them to pass – it probably says that those ideas are not good enough to stand on their own. I want stand-alone legislation. And I want stand-alone legislation that the American people can see clearly is negotiated in the transparency of the light of day.

And I want to start with this: lawsuit abuse reform. The trial lawyers in this country – some call them ambulance chasers, I call them trial lawyers – are tapping into the health care costs in America to the tune of 8.5%, that’s $203 billion a year, $2 trilling over the course of a bill, and the troika will not take one dime out of the pockets of the trial lawyers. Let’s start with that. Mr. President, if you’re serious about negotiating, then let’s do all of the things I’ve said. Take all of those things off the table, let’s set lawsuit abuse reform up as a stand-alone, let’s pass that, put it on President Obama’s desk as a measure of his sincerity in wanting to have bipartisan negotiations. And if he will not do that, I guarantee you we will get a lot, lot better deal after November, after the election.

Thanks very much, God bless you.

Following the news of the dead raccoon, PETA attacked the congressman. Here are the accounts of all the events.

Note to all raccoons out there: Don’t try to crawl your way into Rep. Steve King’s house. He’ll mess you up.

The Iowa Republican set the Twittersphere all aflutter last week after he posted this message: “Mid day, mid blizzard, 15 degrees, Crazy Raccoon chewing and clawing his way into my house. Desert Eagle 1, Crazy Raccoon zero.”

And because a story that involves a potentially crazed critter, a Congressman and a high-powered semiautomatic pistol can’t quite be summed up in 140 characters, HOH chatted with King on Friday to get the full story behind the now-infamous shooting.

King told HOH that the saga began when his wife, Marilyn, first saw the raccoon — which King described as younger and midsized — trying to crawl its way into the couple’s Iowa home. King was concerned the animal might be rabid, he said, because he had never seen a raccoon so close to the house in the winter.

But the raccoon disappeared until Feb. 9, when King, sitting in his family room on a conference call, spotted it again trying to weasel its way into the house. And he immediately sprung into action.

King grabbed the Desert Eagle — “It’s the one I had handy,” he told HOH — and went after the raccoon, which fled. But King caught up, fired and killed the creature.

“We can’t have an animal that might be sick, might be rabid, out there,” King said, adding that his granddaughters often play in the area where he spotted the raccoon. “That’s just what has to happen when you live out here in the country.”

But King insists he isn’t an animal hater, pointing out that his family often spots animals such as deer, squirrels and rabbits frolicking on their property. “We appreciate the wildlife,” King said.

But “I can’t have a crazy ’coon,” he added.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has weighed in on Rep. Steve King (R) killing a raccoon that tried to crawl its way into his Iowa home — and not surprisingly, the animal welfare group isn’t too pleased.

PETA spokesman Jaime Zalac tells HOH that King should pick on someone his own size, “not a small animal seeking warmth in a blizzard.”

“It doesn’t give you comfort in your representatives when a member of Congress finds it amusing to boast of shooting a desperately cold animal who is 100 times smaller than he is and whose only misstep was trying to get into a large, warm house,” Zalac said in a written statement. “I hope he’s not on any committees that make decisions regarding cruel and unusual punishment. Decent people would call animal control for help, not get on Twitter to boast about having a really, really big gun.”

King tweeted on Feb. 9 that he killed the raccoon with a Desert Eagle pistol when he spotted it crawling into his house. In an interview last week, King told HOH that he felt he needed to kill the critter because he believed it was rabid and could potentially hurt his family.

And King insisted he appreciates wildlife, noting he often sees deer, rabbits, squirrels and other animals on his property.

I have introduced legislation that the President should be “happy to consider,” right down to and including the bill’s title – New IDEA. On September 16, 2009, I introduced H.R. 3580, the Illegal Deduction Elimination Act (New IDEA), which will immediately reduce America’s unemployment and result in the hiring of millions of unemployed Americans. New IDEA will crack down on employers and illegal workers and level the playing field for law-abiding American employers and employees.

According to the Department of Labor, the December 2009 national unemployment rate in the United States was 10.0% and Iowa’s unemployment rate was 6.6%. There are 15.3 million unemployed American citizens while the Pew Hispanic Center reports that eight million illegal aliens hold American jobs. In Iowa alone, there are 112,700 unemployed workers while 35,000 illegal aliens hold jobs.

It is inexcusable for American citizens and law abiding immigrants to be jobless while law-breaking illegal aliens hold American jobs. New IDEA clarifies that wages and benefits paid to illegal aliens are not deductible for federal income tax purposes. So if employers hire illegal workers, the wages and benefits paid to illegal workers will be denied as a business expense, resulting in taxable income for employers.

E-Verify is an online government system that enables employers to determine whether an employee is eligible to work in the U.S. E-Verify is currently a voluntary program that by law can only be used on new hires. New IDEA will make E-Verify permanent and authorize its use on all current and prospective employees.

Under New IDEA, employers that use E-Verify will have “safe harbor.” By using E-Verify to check the legal status of new hires, employers will not be punished if they mistakenly hire an illegal alien. Employers who fail to check their employees via E-Verify or ignore proof of an employee’s illegal status will be subject to wage and benefit taxation, including interest and penalty on past taxes.

This system will level the playing field for employers that hire only legal workers, who are typically paid more than illegal workers. Under New IDEA, if employers are paying illegal workers $10 per hour and an IRS audit uncovers the violations, the tax liability plus interest and penalty may then cost employers $16 per hour. Removing the cost motivation associated with hiring illegal workers will result in millions of unemployed Americans going to work at newly vacated $10 per hour jobs for pay in the $12-$14 per hour range, or more.

New IDEA requires the Internal Revenue Service to notify the Social Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security of identity theft and immigration law violations. It also requires government agencies to work in cooperation with each other to enforce immigration laws.

New IDEA will also be a revenue raiser for the IRS. The bill will result in the IRS collecting interest, penalties and taxes, and newly hired legal workers will pay taxes, unlike the illegal workers they replace.

President Obama and liberals in Congress continue to promote amnesty while overlooking the impact that illegal workers have on American unemployment. Immigration laws protect American citizens, including legal immigrants, from losing jobs to those who have entered our country illegally. We must enforce our immigration laws and allow a sustainable number of legal immigrants into the country each year.

Our immigration policy must protect the interests of Americans citizens and those who played by the rules to legally enter the United States. Immigration law needs to be designed to enhance the economic, social and cultural well being of the Unites States.

If President Obama is sincere about finding new and effective economic plans, he should immediately endorse New IDEA. Enforcing and strengthening our current immigration laws, through programs such as New IDEA, will put many unemployed citizens back to work and protect American workers.

Written by Congressman Steve King

In the last quarter of 2009, Jim Gibbons out-raised Congressman Boswell and every one of his Republican primary opponents by a significant amount. Gibbons raised a stunning $207,310.00, which included $17,250.00 from political action committees such as the Iowa based American Future Fund, the PAC of Congressman Jim Jordan from Ohio, and former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert’s Keep Our Mission PAC.

Congressman Boswell raised $169,377.64 in the fourth quarter, but $133,400.00 came from political action committees. In fact, of the $582,210.78 that Boswell has raised in 2009, $461,350.00, or 79% of all the money he has raised has come from PACs. In the 2008 cycle, Boswell took over $1 million in contributions from PACs.

It is impressive when any challenger out-raises an incumbent congressman in a fundraising quarter, but for Gibbons to do it in his first quarter as a candidate and to do it in only six week’s time is incredible, especially considering that he did it in a crowed primary field. While Gibbons was able to out-raise Boswell, his primary opponents didn’t come anywhere close to the numbers that Boswell and Gibbons posted.

State Senator Brad Zaun raised $30,600.00, and Dave Funk raised $22,685.00 in the last quarter of 2009. Zaun’s campaign now must raise a substantial amount of money in the first quarter of 2010 in order to compete with Gibbons. While Gibbons has raised the most money, Zaun has been the candidate who seems to be spending the most money early on. Zaun’s campaign has done a round of robo calls, printed placards, produced and aired a TV ad, and TheIowaRepublican.com has been told that he has a poll in the field.

Retired airline pilot Dave Funk, the candidate who has been in the race the longest, has found it difficult to raise funds for his campaign. Since launching his campaign in August, Funk has raised just $46,312.00. In comparison to Zaun and Gibbons, Funk is not well known and has failed to capitalize on the time in which he was the only candidate in the race.

Gibbons initial fundraising push now puts him in a great position over Zaun and Funk with just over four months until the primary. Since joining the race in mid-November, Gibbons and Zaun have been in a contest to establish their respective campaigns as the best positioned to take on Leonard Boswell in the fall. Thus far, Gibbons has the advantage.

Gibbons announced his campaign on November 19th. On the same day, State Senator Brad Zaun told Congressional Quarterly, “My intentions are to run against Leonard Boswell.” Zaun made it official just 15 days later when he announced his campaign from his mom’s hardware store on the south side of Des Moines. Just a few days after Gibbons and Zaun entered the race, national prognosticators quickly changed the rating of the race in Iowa’s 3rd district from “safe democratic” to the more competitive classification of “democrat favored.”

While Gibbons has a almost a seven to one money advantage over his closest competitor, Zaun does boast a 20 year record of community service which started as a member of the city council in Urbandale and continues today in the Iowa State Senate. Zaun brings a clear advantage to his congressional campaign; he is the most known and politically connected candidate in the race. Zaun also already represents a solid Republican district in Polk County, giving him a strong base of support as he builds his campaign.

Gibbons’ primary opponents now must find a way to raise the necessary funds to be competitive with him. While Gibbons isn’t necessarily well known across the district, he already has the necessary funds to run a competitive campaign, and his opponents don’t. Even if Funk or Zaun raised $1000 everyday between now and the primary, they still wouldn’t match what Gibbons currently has in his campaign account.

Running for Congress is a lot different than running for the state legislature or another local office. Congressional campaigns need enough financial resources to run protracted TV and radio advertising campaigns and direct mail. Only one Republican candidate can currently run that type of campaign – Jim Gibbons.

Iowa Congressional Fundraising Totals

1. Jim Gibbons: $207,310.00
2. Bruce Braley: $ 172,670.11
3. Leonard Boswell: $ 169,377.64
4. Steve King: $ 133,291.00
5. Tom Latham: $ 97,625.00
6. Dave Loebsack: $94,479.27
7. Steve Rathje: $ 59,130.00
8. Brad Zaun: $30,600.00
9. Dave Funk: $22,685.00
10. Miller-Meeks: $20,660.15
11. Chrisopher Reed: $2,833.75

Everything seems to be in place except for one glaring omission: who will battle incumbent Attorney General Tom Miller?

Enter Brenna Findley. Findley has opened an exploratory campaign for a run to be Iowa’s Attorney General.

Born, raised, and home schooled in Dallas County, Findley graduated from the University of Chicago Law School. Findley worked her way through the Iowa Statehouse and spent the last seven years as Congressman Steve King’s point person in the House Judiciary Committee.

Findley’s candidacy is intriguing on many levels. While all of the other top-of-the-ticket races listed above have captured our interest from time to time, the Attorney General spot has been overlooked. The position is certainly key, however. Iowa’s incumbent Attorney General has given Vilsack and Culver all the cover they needed whenever they tried to stretch Iowa’s constitutional bounds. Especially in the aftermath of last year’s marriage debacle, you would think that conservatives would target the position.

Also involved in this race is a generational dynamic. Brenna Findley is not just the young go-getter up against an incumbent past retirement age. Findley is the rare combination of youth and accomplishment. Findley has spent time in Iowa’s campaign trenches and worked throughout the GOP’s caucus-to-convention process. But, most importantly, Findley has battled the constitution’s demolition crew in the Judiciary Committee in the United States Congress.

For those who are unaware, the Judiciary Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives is the front line in America’s culture war. Conservatives debate with the loony left like John Conyers, Jerry Nadler, Maxine Waters, and Sheila Jackson Lee each and every day on each and every issue. In this venue, Findley has seen and heard every liberal argument for dismantling the rule of law. Findley has proven she can handle the legal distortions from the best the intellectually challenged Left has to offer.

And then there’s the gender factor. We conservatives could care less whether our Attorney General is male or female, just as long as the Constitution is upheld. But, you know the Des Moines Register sure wants female voices in elected office. And you know it is so much fun to watch the hypocritical liberals tic, twinge, and sputter when they are confronted with a bright, articulate, and conservative female like Brenna Findley.

Findley is the first person in her family to go to college, and went to law school to stand up for the law and Constitution. As King’s Chief of Staff, Findley oversaw King’s six offices, staff, and budget for the 32 county Fifth Congressional District. Congressman King is the only non-lawyer to serve on the Judiciary Committee.

Nomination papers are due in to the Secretary of State on or before March 19th. Findley will need to collect 1,000 signatures, including 50 from at least 10 different counties. Findley circulated petitions at Saturday’s precinct caucuses.

While the political divide that exists between Republicans and Democrats is wide, the political community in Iowa is still rather small. When the Iowa Democratic Party announced that Vice President Joe Biden would be headlining their annual Jefferson Jackson Dinner, I sent Norm Sterzenbach, the Executive Director of IDP, an email letting him know that I would like to cover the event.

Norm is a good guy. In 2007, we both served as Political Directors of our respective political party organizations. For the 2008 presidential caucuses, the Republican Party of Iowa and the Iowa Democratic Party worked together on our caucus night media center. While Republicans and Democrats might not agree on much policy, it was great to work side by side with them during the caucuses. I’m looking forward to covering the event. I’ve only attended a handful of Democratic political events in my life, the first being Hillary Clinton’s 2008 caucus victory in Nevada (long story). Hopefully, this will be an improvement.

Anyway tune-in tomorrow night for live coverage from the Iowa Democratic Party’s Jefferson Jackson Dinner.

Other Events I’ve been at recently that deserve some attention.

Tea Party Convention