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Senate underdog Fiegen touts populism
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Race
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| Contributor | Craverguy |
| Last Edited | Craverguy Mar 08, 2010 08:04pm |
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| Category | Profile |
| Author | Bret Hayworth |
| Media | Newspaper - Sioux City Journal |
| News Date | Wednesday, February 17, 2010 06:25:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | By day, Tom Fiegen of Clarence, Iowa, works as a bankruptcy attorney. He’s also one of four Democratic candidates running for the U.S. Senate seat held by Republican Charles Grassley. The other Dems are Sal Mohamed, a Sioux Cityan who is running a nearly invisible campaign, former state legislator Bob Krause and Roxanne Conlin, a former gubernatorial candidate who filled the bill when Iowa Democratic Party Chairman Michael Kiernan promised a “mystery candidate” with heft.
In a Rasmussen Report poll in late January, Grassley dominated all the Democratic challengers — 59 to 31 percent over Conlin, 59-31 over Krause and 61-25 over Fiegen (they didn’t poll for Mohamed). A former state senator, Fiegen also isn’t raking in campaign contributions like Conlin and Grassley, who has $4.4 million cash on hand. Fiegen’s cash on hand is a few thousand dollars, but he’s working the county party circuits and in a few weeks hopes to journey here to Woodbury County. He was raised up north just west of the South Dakota, Iowa and Minnesota border, graduating from Dell Rapids St. Mary’s Catholic school.
“I’m a political mutt. I view myself as a Prairie Progressive, a Populist. Hubert Humphrey (1968 presidential candidate) was one of my heroes growing up,” Fiegen said. “I view myself in that mold, that I am a Populist on economic issues, and the things that are most important to me are economic issues.”
He talked about his farming father getting a final letter from the bank during the 1980s Farm Crisis to pay up loans or move out. Fiegen was at the University of Iowa Law School, and after finishing finals, he drove up and down Interstate 29 to find an attorney to intercede.
“It really soured me on banks,” Fiegen said. “( I got) the mindset that people needed to be treated better than money.” Since that time, he’s represented common people in legal fights with banks, he said. |
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