Possible 2012 candidate Bobby Jindal in Cedar Rapids

Jindal praises faith-based help in Cedar Rapids

“The heroes in these storms are not the federal government, they're the people,” Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal told a Cedar Rapids crowd at a flood recovery event that looked a lot like a Republican Party breakfast.

The ballots aren't even counted yet, literally (Linn County is still working on a recount in the 14-vote Renee Schulte-Art Staed legislative race) but the opening shots of the 2012 Iowa caucuses are being fired. Mike Huckabee was here two days ago, now Jindal.

Ostensibly the speech was a non-partisan “Rapid Recovery” event, followed by a tour of areas damaged in the summer flood, but you wouldn't know it from the crowd. A partial list of GOP dignitaries in the crowd of 150: Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey, state party co-chair Leon Mosley, ex-congressional candidate Mariannette Miller-Meeks, ex-legislative candidate Emma Nemecek, Johnson County GOP chair Bill Keettel, new county supervisor Brent Oleson, state central committee member and blogger David Chung... the only way I knew this wasn't officially a Republican campaign event was the lack of patriotic ritual and rally music. The only Democrat I recognized was mayor Kay Halloran.

Congressional primary loser Peter Teahen spoke early; a civic thing or a political thing? He was on the ground doing Red Cross work at Katrina, so there's that connection. “There is a new age of leadership in Louisiana today.” Making recovery partisan? He wouldn't be the first to politicize the Katrina aftermath...heck, that's a big part of why Jindal even is governor. Of course, Bobby almost won in 2003. How would all this have been different if Katrina had been on Jindal's watch instead of Blanco's?

We'll keep an eye on Peter Teahen the next couple years; MMM is already looking like she's running again. “Faith based groups will attract donations that will not go to government agencies,” says Teahen, and he rolls with that a while.

No TV or national press present, just print (AP's Glover, Gazette's Lynch) and bloggers (EE/II's Waddington), plus a couple Louisiana press. Teahen pronounces “bureaucracy” as if he's saying “Barack-ra-see.” Maybe I'm just hearing that. Or maybe we just created a new GOP meme.

Jindal sat with Teahen and Northey (their official portfolios outranking the political titles for the day). The mayor was next table over.

Bob Vander Plaats, 2006 lieutenant governor candidate, got to intro Jindal; are we SURE this wasn't a campaign event? And is it Campaign 2012 or Campaign 2010? Both, I suspect; Vander Plaats has been high-profile since Nov. 4 with a “stick to your values, social conservatives” piece in the Register as the GOP regroups.

BVP talks at length about “character” in flood recovery. “We saw a whole different type of leadership (in Louisiana) because of character.” (Again, the implied Blanco dis).

After thanking Iowans for post-Katrina help Jindal compares notes: “People matter more than regulations and red tape.” (applause) “It's better to have to ask for forgiveness than permission, especially when you're dealing with the federal bureaucracy. You can always write an apology to the bureaucrats later.” He tells a story about bureaucrats looking for proof of insurance mid-hurricane. “You tell FEMA what you need, don't wait for the government to tell you what to do.”

Louisiana has had more colorful governors per capita than any state in the union. This man is filling the seat of the larger than life Longs, country singer Jimmie “You Are My Sunshine” Davis, and kleptocrat Edwin Edwards, after all. And Jindal, too, is a unique character: a young man in a hurry, governor at 37, and the nation's first Indian-American governor.

The story I remember is that Jindal, who was given a more traditional Indian name at birth, came home from kindergarten and told his parents that from now on his name was Bobby. He's a classic red white and blue first generation American. Jindal looks like he's the guy on the other end of the tech support line in Bangalore, but the voice is pure gumbo as “Saint Bernard Parish” and the occasional “y'all” drawls out of his mouth. “I was born and raised in my home state of Louisiana,” he says with pride.

“You need to see it through to the end, and the end is long after the national press had moved on,” Jindal says of disaster recovery.

“The faith community was critical to our recovery, we need to help them do their good work.” Lots of examples of private sector help at emergency time, bracketed by comments on how much more effective that was that government help. We heard “Lemme give ya three or four examples” a lot, and the talk was anecdote-heavy. Bobby is a storyteller, swift-paced and extemporaneous.

“I'm not here to beat up on the federal government,” Jindal disclaimed, yet that seems to be a theme. If this run does happen, look for a template something like this speech. “You've got to be ready to partner with the private sector and the faith based groups.”

Best line: “You really think people would volunteer to eat an MRE instead of the food we have in South Louisiana?” As chef Justin Wilson would say, I ga-ron-tee we'll see more of Jindal in Iowa.

Update: Douglas Burns at Iowa Political Alert caught the West Des Moines event.

Miller-Meeks in Squeaker over Teahen

Miller-Meeks in Squeaker over Teahen

In a race marked by open loathing of Peter Teahen by Iowa's conservative bloggers, Mariannette Miller-Meeks overcame a big Teahen margin in Linn County to claim a 109 vote win in the 2nd Congressional District. The Ottumwa doctor will now challenge first-term Democrat Dave Loebsack in the fall.

So did Miller-Meeks win, or did Peter Teahen lose? A little of each, perhaps.

Teahen started the race as a perceived front runner, but he didn't sit well with the conservative base. Opposition research is easy in the Internet era, and a little quick searching turned up a December 2007 party affiliation change from Democratic to Republican. Most damning were campaign contributions to Democrats Mike Blouin and 2002 congressional candidate Julie Thomas.

Teahen offered an unapologetic defense of the Thomas donation, saying the pediatrician had saved his daughter's life. But it left a bad taste with conservatives, who repeatedly emphasized the donation and party changes on their blogs. It didn't stop there. Shortly before the election, an email from a British disaster worker surfaced, charging that Teahen acted like a diva on a Darfur mission and calling his resume into question. The charge cut to the core of Teahen's biography as a Red Cross disaster expert.

Bloggers also attacked Teahen's family values, posting links to his divorce papers. Democrats joined the attack as well, filing complaints about ads for Teahen's funeral home that (they said) too closely resembled campaign ads.

Mariannette Miller-Meeks, meanwhile, made the most of a medical and military background. (How many M's can I cram in? Well, the campaign played on the name by handing out M&Ms as favors.) By the April congressional district convention, she seemed to have established a strong foothold among the party activists, which matters a lot in a low-turnout election.

Her GOP bona fides were also attacked by third candidate Lee Harder, whose underfunded campaign that emphasized the social issues never gained much traction. Harder's signs proclaimed "Vote Conservative," while Teahen and Miller-Meeks both left off the word "Republican." But that appeal fell flat, as the race was treated as a two and a half way contest with a focus on "who can beat Loebsack."

Teahen started the night in the lead, as returns from his base in Linn County rolled in early. He won a big margin -- 67 percent to 26 percent -- over Miller-Meeks in Linn, where turnout was high due to hot courthouse primaries. It was almost, but not quite, enough. Over half of Teahen's total vote came out of Linn, which is the 2nd District's largest county but doesn't dominate the way Polk County controls a majority of the 3rd District.

Teahen's base in Linn was considered a strength early in the campaign, as he argued that a candidate from the northern end of the district would run stronger in Linn and Johnson counties against the Mt. Vernon-based Loebsack. But Miller-Meeks turned the argument against Teahen, arguing that he was raising money exclusively from Linn County and not campaigning enough in the rest of the district.

As returns rolled in from the rest of the district, Miller-Meeks caught up and took a narrow lead. County by county, she picked up wins of several dozen or a couple hundred in low turnout, whittling away at Teahen's 2,500 vote Linn margin. A 742-vote win in her home of Wapello County was enough to seal the deal.

The race is not yet on the national radar. But, then, it wasn't on the national radar two years ago either.

The 2nd District, on paper, is the most Democratic in the state, and in retrospect it seems that the real fluke was not Loebsack's 2006 upset win, but rather Republican Jim Leach's ability to hold the district for 30 years. Leach was able to pull as much as a quarter of the Democratic vote, until that vote went flooding back to Loebsack in the national landslide of 2006. Miller-Meeks will need to win back some of those Democrats and independents to take this race off the "safe Democratic" list.

Teahen Says Charges Risk Safety

Anti-Teahen Charges Echo Across Blogs

An email from a one-time disaster relief colleague of 2nd Congressional District candidate Peter Teahen, charging the Cedar Rapids Republican with misconduct and dishonesty on a relief mission in Darfur, is false and dangerous to his family, the candidate told Iowa Independent. Teahen also alleged that the campaign of one of his rivals in Tuesday's primary is behind the distribution of the email from British disaster worker David Tredrea. A spokesman for Mariannette Miller-Meeks denies the charge.

"I consider him a threat to my life and to the safety of my family," Teahen said of David Tredrea, who worked with Teahen last year in Darfur. "It is irresponsible of the Miller-Meeks campaign to be distributing this information." Teahen said Tredrea had called the third candidate in the race, but "Lee Harder knew better than to touch it."

"For Mr. Teahen to attempt to claim that our campaign is directing this individual's actions is completely false," said Miller-Meeks campaign manager Todd Versteegh, who said Tredrea himself distributed the charges. "But, as we've seen so clearly in this campaign, Mr. Teahen is quite capable of promoting his own falsehoods, so this comes as no surprise."

Democrats have joined the fray, too, charging Teahen with résumé padding and improper commercials.

Teahen said that he is working with the FBI and Great Britain's Scotland Yard in dealing with Tredrea and that he has no-contact orders against Tredrea. "It's lies," Teahen said. "If you read it, it doesn't make a lot of sense. It's the comments and words of someone that's not being rational."

The charges cut to the core of Teahen's biography as a Red Cross disaster relief spokesman. "Some of your recent claims about Darfur are complete fantasy -- like looking into machine guns and being physically close to the Janjaweed bandits," Tredrea writes, citing an Iowa Independent article. Tredrea also charges that Teahen has padded his résumé and credentials in several places. "He wants us to see him as an Indiana Jones replacement, swashbuckler, universal hero and amazing international humanitarian," writes Tredrea. "His claims and ambitions are very enticing and impressive -- but what if his true reality is more like that of a Walter Mitty character?"

A Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) email sent Thursday afternoon repreated the résumé-padding charges, and cited Tredrea. Democrats have also filed a Federal Election Commission complaint against Teahen, charging that ads for his funeral home were misleading and that they appeared to be campaign commercials. Democratic interest in Teahen is noteworthy, since he's not yet, and may not be, Loebsack's fall opponent.

Teahen says he's run similar ads, with the tagline "I'm Peter Teahen, and I'm proud to be an American," since 9/11. "The media company, the TV station and the radio station all signed affidavits saying we did not violate the law," said Teahen. "We were off the air 47 days before the primary." Federal law requires such ads to vanish from the airwaves 45 days before an election. Two years ago, 1st Congressional District candidate Mike Whalen faced a similar complaint from a primary rival. Consulting firm Victory Enterprises, headed by former Iowa Republican chair Steve Grubbs, worked for both Whalen and Teahen.

One of Tredrea's more colorful charges is that Teahen demanded a high-class hotel and, very specifically, ice cold Diet Pepsi, in Darfur. Teahen says he was placed in a secure place to protect him from Tredrea. "He was more dangerous than the rebels," he said.

"Why would a guy from Great Britain want to be to be involved in this kind of thing?" Teahen said of Tredrea's interest in the Iowa congressional race. When asked if Tredrea had some sort of mental health issue, Teahen did not directly answer but repeated that he was working with the FBI and Scotland Yard on the matter. He also said he was concerned that further publicizing Tredrea's allegations would increase the risk to himself and his family.

The charges are being widely distributed across Iowa's conservative blogosphere, where Teahen has attracted significant vitriol in both posts and comments. In addition to Tredrea's charges, which Teahen firmly denies, there are other points of contention that Teahen freely acknowledges: his past party affiliation as a Democrat and donations to Democratic candidates. Battleground Iowa published Tredrea's charges in full and called Teahen "a disaster waiting to happen." A recently revived Krusty Konservative, the state's top "konservative" blog until going on hiatus a year ago, has published three anti-Teahen posts in the past week.

Teahen noted that the posts and comments appear similar. "The information that comes out appears to be supported by one of the campaigns," he said. "People from her campaign are calling up radio shows," he said of Miller-Meeks supporters.

Versteegh said the Miller-Meeks campaign first learned of the charges when Tredrea blind-copied the email to the campaign's webmaster.

Teahen says his message is still getting through despite the distractions. "Our poll numbers show us strong, and every indication is that the word is getting out," he said. "People are rejecting negative campaigning."

The Miller-Meeks campaign is also confident. Versteegh cited recent endorsements from the Iowa City Press-Citizen, the Ottumwa Courier and the Coralville Courier blog.