.floatimg-left-hort { float:left; } .floatimg-left-caption-hort { float:left; margin-bottom:10px; width:300px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} .floatimg-left-vert { float:left; margin-top:10px; margin-right:15px; width:200px;} .floatimg-left-caption-vert { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; font-size: 12px; width:200px;} .floatimg-right-hort { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 300px;} .floatimg-right-caption-hort { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 300px; font-size: 12px; } .floatimg-right-vert { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px;} .floatimg-right-caption-vert { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px; font-size: 12px; } .floatimgright-sidebar { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px; border-top-style: double; border-top-color: black; border-bottom-style: double; border-bottom-color: black;} .floatimgright-sidebar p { line-height: 115%; text-indent: 10px; } .floatimgright-sidebar h4 { font-variant:small-caps; } .pullquote { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 150px; background: url(http://www.dmbusinessdaily.com/DAILY/editorial/extras/closequote.gif) no-repeat bottom right !important ; line-height: 150%; font-size: 125%; border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;} .floatvidleft { float:left; margin-bottom:10px; width:325px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} .floatvidright { float:right; margin-bottom:10px; width:325px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;}
I’m prejudiced. Rep. Tom Latham could invent an engine that runs on used McDonald’s cups, establish democracy in the Middle East and paint our machine shed, and I still would favor his opponent in the November elections.

His upstart rival in the 4th Congressional District has a fine background in agriculture and business. Also, she has the chance to make history by becoming the first woman elected to represent Iowa in Congress; the ladies probably should get a turn every 160 years or so.

Oh, and one more thing: Becky Greenwald was my high school classmate, and I think it would be cool to have a history-making big shot fly in from Washington, D.C.,

for our next reunion.

Shallow, you say? I prefer to think of it as politics in its purest form. Finally I know a national candidate spin-free and long-term.

When she was a State Center girl known as Becky Davis, we spent hours in the same classrooms. Then we graduated from high school, and for years I rarely saw her at all.

So it’s as if one day she’s playing six-on-six basketball and reigning as the West Marshall High School homecoming queen, and the next thing I know she’s telling me about being introduced at a gathering in Washington, D.C., by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

I’m not the only one from her past who likes the storyline.

One of her former neighbors in State Center put in two days in front of the grocery store and collected 140 names on Greenwald’s candidacy petition. Not a bad effort for a lady in her 90s.

Then there’s our classmate who’s heavily into United Auto Workers issues, a guy whom I never would have expected to become so serious about … well, anything. He took her case to the workers at every one of the shifts at Lennox International Inc. in Marshalltown.

Another classmate – a respected, sensible farmer who probably hasn’t cut down a stop sign with a chain saw for several decades – urged her supporters to vote in the primary.

And a Marshall County Democratic leader told Greenwald she had heard that in State Center, “old Republican farmers were coming in to change their registration to Democratic” so they could vote for her.

Although by “old,” she might have meant farmers of the same vintage as Becky and me.

That’s Iowa politics, where everything is personal, and everybody is connected somehow to everybody else.

The first time it dawned on me that the Davis family had some interest in politics was when Jimmy Carter stayed at their house during his up-from-nowhere presidential campaign.

But Greenwald had heard years of dinner-table talk about politics by then. Instead of sending off for a movie star photo, she requested one of President John F. Kennedy, got it and still has it. She treasures the memory of the time Gov. Harold Hughes came to her church and attended a gathering afterward.

At Iowa State University, in the era when Steve Zumbach, Don Nickerson and Terry Rich were key figures in student government, Greenwald got involved with politics herself in the form of a Tom Harkin campaign.

Fair-minded person that she is, she participated in protests against the Vietnam War, then joined the American Red Cross and worked at a Texas military hospital “because I didn’t like the way soldiers were being treated when they came home,” she said.

“I realized I wanted to make a difference,” she said. “I remember telling myself, ‘I’m not going to be a cynical old person.'”

So far, so good. An awful lot of people our age are talking wistfully about retirement. This one is happily campaigning every day of the week and says she has “not a single regret” about leaving a good job to take a shot at something bigger.

Yeah, I’m for her.