News Blog

I.C. ‘underdog’ Small runs for Senate

By Rod Boshart
The Gazette

DES MOINES — Iowa City Democrat Arthur Small on Friday began what promises to be an unconventional and long-shot bid to unseat one of the most powerful Republican members of the U.S. Senate.

Small, 70, a lawyer and former college English literature professor who spent 16 years in the Iowa Legislature, filed nominating papers to challenge four-term U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, in the November election.

“I expected and hoped that some other better known and better funded candidate would have stepped forward,” Small said at a Statehouse news conference. “Nobody did, so I did.”

Small said he could not stand to see Grassley, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, go unchallenged in his re-election bid, so he decided to wage a David vs. Goliath battle to focus public attention on the shortcomings of the GOP control of Washington.

“It’s obviously going to be incredibly difficult. If you want to look at an underdog, here is an underdog,” said Small, whose announcement was peppered with self-effacing humor.

“It will be in the hands of the gods,” he said. “George Bush says quite convincingly that God told him to run. I have to tell you honestly God has not addressed me on this issue at all.”

Small, a native of Maine, said Grassley likely will amass a campaign war chest of up to $10 million, while he starts at zero and plans not to accept contributions from political action committees or special interests.

“Two people sent me checks for $50 and a woman from Davenport gave me $3, so I’m ready to roll,” he said. Later, he confided that he spent $100 of those contributions for his hotel stay in Des Moines, which virtually emptied the till.

Small said he entered the race because he was discouraged with the direction of the Bush administration, its “monstrous” deficit, and the fact that Grassley votes with the president “99 percent of the time.”

Small, who served eight years each in the House and Senate and then lobbied the Legislature on behalf of judges, health professionals and other associations for 14 years, said Grassley has become a career politician having served in state and national offices for 46 years.

“Charles Grassley and I differ significantly,” said Small. “He’s a reasonable and amiable person. I don’t plan to make him out to be a scoundrel, and I don’t expect him to do that to me, either.”

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