The Senate Race

I wonder if Steve Rathje is starting to regret not participating in the IPTV GOP Senate Candidate debate tomorrow evening?

Rathje has been put thru the proverbial ringer (and rightfully so, IMHO) by several Iowa GOP bloggers, including Krusty, Battleground Iowa and Questions, Comments and Insults. The fact that he has been a candidate for the last 3 years (though very few knew about it until about the last 12 months), and has brought in so little money in that amount of time tells me that Iowa Republicans are not behind him. For crying out loud, he ran unopposed until the last couple of months!

The latest financial report filed at the end of March shows that Rathje reports having $7,732 cash on hand for his campaign. He has brought in a total of $105,036 during the duration of the campaign. Of that amount, $1,500 was from PACs, $1,438 was from other sources and $30,975 was out of his own pocket. For you non-math majors out there, that means that over the last 2 1/2 - 3 years, Rathje's campaign has pulled in $71,123 in individual contributions. Not too bad - if you are running in a State House or Senate Race. For a U.S. Senate race though, that is pretty bare bones.

By comparison, Sen. Harkin has raised $7,682,769 with $3,784,207 cash on hand. Of that money, zero of it is from his own pocket. Granted, he is a four-term incumbent and has become somewhat of an icon within the Democrat party ranks. Eichhorn hasn't exactly proven himself to be a fundraising juggernaut himself yet (Reed has not yet filed a report). After campaigning for a few months, Mr Eichhorn had $4,120 cash on hand as of his report filed on May 14th. To make a long story short, Rathje's 2+ year head start in campaigning at this point has earned him about $3,500 more in cash on hand than a guy that has officially been a candidate for about 2-3 months. That wouldn't be such a big deal if Rathje had built a sizable lead over his fellow competitors - which he hasn't.

I've seen Steve speak several times over the last 12-18 months, and he can deliver a pretty good speech. His speeches don't generally vary a whole lot from event to event, but they haven't been too bad overall. Being able to give a speech that can rally a crowd is an important part of running for office, especially in a U.S. Senate race. However, a candidate should also not be afraid to go into the lion's den, and confront his opposition. Since Reed and Eichhorn have entered the race, I have not seen Rathje confront either of them publicly. If he won't confront these "Johnny-come-latelys", how can we expect him to take on an entrenched incumbent with a jacked-up war chest behind him?

If you would have asked me 6 months ago who I was going to vote for in the Senate Race, it would have been Rathje by default. Three months ago I would have still said I supported Steve, although I had heard very little from Reed and Eichhorn at that point. Having now heard from all three candidates, I just don't see myself being able to cast a vote for Rathje on Tuesday. Normally I don't ride a candidate too hard for bowing out of an appearance for whatever reason. In the case of the IPTV debate though, it just seems insane to me that Rathje would not participate and pass up free air-time and a chance to make an 11th-hour pitch to Iowa voters. By not participating, Rathje is cheating Iowa GOP voters of the opportunity to see how all of our candidates stack up against each other.