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FBI Whistleblower Runs for Congress
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Race
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| Contributor | Eric |
| Last Edited | Eric Nov 13, 2005 01:33pm |
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| Category | News |
| Media | Newspaper - Washington Post |
| News Date | Sunday, November 13, 2005 07:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | MONTGOMERY, Minn. -- For better or worse, Coleen Rowley the candidate for Congress sounds a lot like Coleen Rowley the FBI whistleblower.
The former FBI agent who scathingly exposed the bureau's failure to uncover the Sept. 11 plot is running for a House seat in Minnesota in 2006 as a Democrat, and she is employing her fearlessly blunt style on the campaign trail.
"This was a lied-into war that is a quagmire now," the 50-year-old Rowley recently told a group of rural Democrats in a garage in this small town south of the Twin Cities. "It could be worse than Vietnam. The truth is we can't win, and there's still an ongoing deception."
Whether that kind of talk is smart politics is another matter.
The Democrats nationally are struggling with how to oppose the war without looking weak on national security, and some of them see Rowley's head-on attacks _ as well as her trip to Texas in August to lend support to Cindy Sheehan's anti-war protest at President Bush's ranch _ as especially risky in the Republican-leaning 2nd Congressional District.
"If you become known as a single-issue candidate against the war in a conservative district, I don't see how that gets you many votes," said Steven Schier, a political science professor at Northfield's Carleton College, in the 2nd District. "So far it seems like some of the moves she's made are counterproductive."
One Democratic state legislator in the district, Rep. Joe Atkins, said he gets calls every week urging him to run against Rowley for the party's nomination, but he said he has not given it serious thought.
"The key issues in our area are education, education and education," Atkins said. "I would hope and expect any congressional candidate would come to focus on those issues _ focus on the things your constituents are concerned about." |
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