Dodd, Obama to make campaign stops
Kiley Miller, kmiller@thehawkeye.com
The Hawk Eye
Jun 27, 2007
Great River Bridge? Yes.
Bridge Over Troubled Water? No.
On Tuesday, Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd will be in Burlington stumping for the Democratic presidential nomination, but he won't have Rock & Roll Hall of Fame member Paul Simon with him.
The superstar musician behind such hits as "Graceland" and "Still Crazy After All These Years," as well as the aforementioned "Bridge Over Troubled Water," will try to boost Dodd out of a string of single-digit polling performances when he joins the senior senator from his adopted state for a campaign swing next week. Simon's appearances coincide with the release of a new compilation project, "The Essential Paul Simon."
But the Simon & Dodd tour -- with stops in Mason City, Sioux City, Fort Dodge, Carroll and Council Bluffs -- won't start until July 6, three days after Dodd touches down in Burlington.
The senator's second community gathering here in as many months is set for 10:30 a.m. Tuesday at VFW Post 10102, 215 Washington St.
Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, one of the leaders in the Democratic race, will also be in southeast Iowa that day, visiting Mount Pleasant, Keokuk and Fairfield. Start times and locations for those events have not been determined.
Dodd is chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee. He's also a former Peace Corps volunteer and Army Reservist, and one of Congress' leading experts on Latin America, but his resume has been met with the reverberating sound of silence in Iowa, where party caucuses in January start the presidential nomination process. A May 5 question-and-answer session drew a few dozen Burlington residents, far below the hundreds who have turned out locally for Obama and fellow Democratic front-runners Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards.
Republican candidate Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, also stirred up a bigger crowd earlier this month, despite Burlington's accepted status as a Democratic Party stronghold.
Dodd last week unveiled his "American Community Initiative," a pro-volunteerism proposal which would increase the AmeriCorps program from 70,000 to 1,000,000 volunteers, double the size of the Peace Corps and use tax credits to encourage companies to give workers time off for community service. The plan, which also creates a community service requirement for high school students and expands service opportunities for older Americans, has the endorsement of ServeNext, a grassroots organization of AmeriCorps volunteers and supporters of national service programs.
In addition to Burlington, Dodd will be in Davenport, Ottumwa and West Des Moines on Tuesday.