The Chris Moeller Archives

Please vote for Ed Fallon

If you live in Iowa's Third Congressional District, I'd like to encourage you to go to the polls on Tuesday to support Ed Fallon in the Democratic primary. If you're like me and not registered as a Democrat, you can change your party affiliation at your polling place. (You can always change it back.)

Iowa's Third District covers south-central Iowa, stretches across the Des Moines metro area, snaking north and east to cover even my home county of Benton, which is in the eastern part of the state. (Thank you, Tom DeLay.) Having lived my entire life, save for my college years, within the current borders of this district, I can vouch for Ed's personal humility and integrity, and for his commitment to the issues that greatly effect our district-- from cleaning up corporate-owned Washington to sensible urban and rural economic development to a sustainable agriculture and support for family farms.

Contrary to what the Des Moines Register claims, Fallon and his well-financed incumbent opponent, Leonard Boswell, could not be further apart on the biggest issues facing our country and the district. Boswell voted to authorize the war on Iraq (which Fallon has opposed since its inception), continuing to back its funding straight through the most recent legislative session.

Boswell voted for the PATRIOT act that allowed warrantless domestic spying and wiretapping on Americans, voting to even reauthorize it in 2005, and supporting Bush's immunity plan for the telecom companies that participated and that pour money into Washington. The incumbent supports NAFTA, fast-track trade authority for the president, and tax breaks for big oil. He accepts soft-money and has been extravagantly financed by PACs and lobbyists this election cycle and during each of the previous. Fallon has stood up repeatedly and consistently against all of the above.

If you live in the district, you've likely run into Fallon at a town hall meeting or a local farmers' market in recent weeks, but you haven't received mailings because Ed doesn't accept PAC or lobbyist donations. It's strictly a grass-roots effort. You've no doubt, though, been bombarded with almost-daily mailings from Boswell soft-pedaling his own shadowy record in Congress and accusing Fallon of helping to get George Bush elected in 2000 (by backing Ralph Nader), and then sinking so low as to accuse Fallon of setting sex offenders loose on children because Fallon had the courage to oppose the knee-jerk, preposterous "neighborhood" bills in Iowa that have created rural communities made up almost entirely of released sex offenders.

Boswell made himself a virtual laughingstock during this primary race, even among disinterested Republicans and Independents, by claiming that he was too busy to debate Fallon in any location or under any format. Boswell's agenda while in Washington has been almost as murky. During his tenure, he has introduced no important legislation whatsoever (I defy anyone to produce it), and he disappeared for almost an entire year recently with some mysterious, covered-up health ailment.

Before he was one of the well-established Bush Democrats in Congress, Boswell was a sellout in the Iowa Legislature where Ed Fallon alternately made his political mark as an incorruptible progressive respected on both sides of the aisle. In 1995, as head of the Senate, Boswell pushed through passage of the so-called "Decoster Bill," nicknamed for one of Iowa's most notorious corporate ag producers, that caused a drastic shift in Iowa law to support out-of-state corporate ag giants against fourth and fifth generation Iowa family farmers and families. The results have been devastating, as anyone acquainted with rural Iowa can now attest. As a member of the House Ag Committee at that same time, Fallon was one of, if not the Decoster Bill's most dedicated opponents.

I've met and visited with Ed many times, as many of his neighbors have over the years in the district he represented in the state legislative. (He lives in Sherman Hill two blocks away.) I haven't always agreed with him. I was disappointed when he told reporters earlier in the campaign that his biggest regret was having supported Nader in 2000. I emailed him expressing my disappointment in what I interpreted to be a regret in his own past idealism and political courage. I received a personal email the very same hour I sent it (paraphrasing back my own comments) explaining his belief that he felt the Nader endorsement caused a rift in the progressive movement. While temporarily fostering dreams of transforming myself into Ed's personal Jeremiah Wright, I came to my senses and determined that honest people can have honest disagreements when the cause is shared. The candidate has to be strong enough in his or her principles though to stand up to the polluted environment that is Washington and Ed Fallon is that candidate.

Iowa's Secretary of State may smell malfeasance in why a man would change his voter registration three times during the same two months (from Democrat to Green-- as I've done; to Democrat to Green again-- as I still plan to do), but Ed Fallon deserves my vote. I believe he deserves yours too. If all of their candidates had the integrity, substance, and track record that Ed has, we would all proudly call ourselves Democrats.

posted by CM @ 8:21 PM