Roxanne Conlin is Running for Iowans

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“Roxanne Conlin has staked her success on a personal story of growing up in an
Iowa family
where the lack of health care resulted in a partial hearing loss and
gave her
the 'backbone' to stand up for everyday Iowans against powerful forces
and
special interests.”

Roxanne Conlin’s campaign manager, Mark Daley, summed up the
candidate’s prospects to defeat the senior senator from Iowa in November as
follows, “A frustrated electorate, pervasive anti-incumbency sentiment, a
Democratic registration edge and strong opponent add up to one thing: Roxanne
Conlin is a viable and serious challenger to Senator Grassley this November.”

There is no denying that Conlin is adept at campaigning. At
an appearance in Johnson County she indicated that she had raised $660,000 during
the first seven weeks of her campaign. While writing this post, I watched the
campaign web site thermometer change from a $25,000 to a $30,000 goal for the
last day of the campaign finance reporting period. This is reminiscent of the now
famous “bat” used by Howard Dean in his presidential campaign. In fact, the fund-raising
influence of original Deaniacs Joe Trippi, Japhet Els and others is evident
throughout the Conlin fund-raising effort which seems to be state of the art. If
their fund-raising effort held back recent Grassley challengers, it seems
unlikely that it will hold back Conlin.

If fund-raising is a successful aspect of Roxanne Conlin’s
campaign, the other is her name recognition. Long visible on the Iowa political
scene, Conlin served as Iowa’s assistant attorney general, head of the Civil
Rights section of the Iowa Department of Justice and was appointed United
States Attorney for the Southern District of Iowa in 1977, becoming one of the
first women ever appointed as a U.S. Attorney General. She gained prominence as
the first female president of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America and
founded and was first chair of the Iowa Women’s Political Caucus. She served as
president of the National Organization for Women’s Legal Defense and Education
Fund and as Conlin describes it, she was “runner-up” in a 1982 bid to become
Iowa’s first female governor.

More recently, Conlin may be best known as co-lead
counsel for the plaintiffs in the Iowa class-action antitrust case against
Microsoft Corporation. This seven year lawsuit ended in 2007 with a settlement between
the parties and established a legal precedent
enabling consumers to sue, something Iowans were not permitted to do prior
to the case. The settlement in Comes vs. Microsoft affected Iowans across the
state, whether they used a computer or not.

In the spring of 2007, Roxanne Conlin was
awarded the Iowa Democratic Party’s Hall of Fame Outstanding Supporter Award for
her “organizational efforts,
financial support, volunteer work and dedication” to the Iowa Democratic Party.
Later that year, Conlin became Iowa State Co-Chair for long time associate and
fellow trial attorney John Edwards in his second bid for the presidency,
enabling Edwards to place second behind Barack Obama in a large field of
candidates in the 2008 Iowa caucuses. Her work on the Edwards campaign seems to
benefit her efforts to win the Democratic primary and challenge Senator
Grassley in the fall.

The author has heard Conlin speak on half a dozen occasions
since she announced her candidacy and when he asked the campaign how to stay in
touch was referred to their web site.
While preparing for this post, it became clear that Conlin has not defined
policy in many important areas, most notably national security, foreign
affairs, agriculture, immigration reform and financial reform. Instead, Roxanne
Conlin has staked her success on a personal story of growing up in an Iowa family
where the lack of health care resulted in a partial hearing loss and gave her
the “backbone” to stand up for everyday Iowans against powerful forces and
special interests. These populist themes are reminiscent of the Edwards
campaign she helped lead and combined with her 99 county “Fight to Fix It” tour
have taken the race to Senator Grassley’s strongest constituency in rural Iowa.

By defining the Democratic primary race as against Senator
Grassley, rather than opponents Bob Krause and Tom Fiegen, Conlin is setting
the stage for a determined bid to unseat the five term incumbent and become Iowa’s
first female senator.

~Roxanne Conlin lives in Des Moines, Iowa and is a
nationally known trial attorney. She is a Democratic candidate
to be
the junior United States Senator from Iowa. She faces Tom Fiegen and Bob Krause in the Democratic primary on June 8.  To learn more about Roxanne Conlin, read the Blog for Iowa interview or check out her web site.

To Contribute to the Roxanne Conlin for U.S. Senate Campaign, click here.