CQ Politics Rates IA-03 'Safe Democrat'

Days Until Bush Leaves Office = 265

While the primary campaign between incumbent Congressman Leonard Boswell and challenger Ed Fallon goes on, Democrats in Iowa's Third Congressional District (IA-03, as they say in the trade) have something they can feel good about, regardless of which candidate they support: the IA-03's seat in Congress is most unlikely to fall into the Republican column come November.

This analysis comes from CQ Politics, the campaign-geek (as opposed to governing-geek) branch of the non-partisan Congressional Quarterly news organization. CQ points out that even though Congressman Boswell won his 2006 re-election bid against Republican State Senator Jeff Lamberti by a 5% margin, making his one of the slimmer victories in an election that saw not one defeat of an incumbent Democratic member of Congress, the district isn't being seriously targeted by the GOP this time around.

Along with Boswell's massive financial advantage - the Congressman ended March with a better than 41-to-1 cash-on-hand edge over Fallon - the district's non-competitive political environment versus the GOP gives the incumbent even less incentive to debate or otherwise directly engage his primary challenger in the run-up to the June 3 election.

I've got my own opinion on the Boswell-Fallon race, but that's the subject of another post (or twelve). In the meantime, though, barring some unforeseen political seismic event, the IA-03 looks to remain Blue into the next Congress.