The congressman from the 4th District is Tom Latham, a Republican first elected in 1994. Latham grew up on a farm in Franklin County, near Alexander (pop. 162), where his family has owned a seed company since 1947. For years, Latham was active in Republican politics, attending the national convention and serving as a farm adviser to Rep. Fred Grandy. In 1994 Grandy unsuccessfully challenged Gov. Terry Branstad in the primary, and Latham ran for the House. In the general election, he beat a Democrat who had served on an advisory panel for Hillary Clinton’s health care proposals, 61%-39%. Read More

The congressman from the 4th District is Tom Latham, a Republican first elected in 1994. Latham grew up on a farm in Franklin County, near Alexander (pop. 162), where his family has owned a seed company since 1947. For years, Latham was active in Republican politics, attending the national convention and serving as a farm adviser to Rep. Fred Grandy. In 1994 Grandy unsuccessfully challenged Gov. Terry Branstad in the primary, and Latham ran for the House. In the general election, he beat a Democrat who had served on an advisory panel for Hillary Clinton’s health care proposals, 61%-39%.

In the House, Latham has a moderately conservative record. He is a close confidant of Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, and worked to help elect him to the party leadership, despite their differences on some issues. (Boehner does not seek earmarks for his district or state while Latham is an energetic earmarker.) In recent years, perhaps because of his alliance with Boehner, Latham has been more outspoken on national issues. He fiercely opposed the $787 billion economic stimulus bill in 2009, which he called “out-of-control spending.” And he criticized Democratic leaders for failing to include previously agreed-to changes in Medicare reimbursement rates in their 2009 health care legislation.

With a seat on the Appropriations Committee, Latham long has been a defender of earmarks, working to fund local programs from disaster relief to farm research, including the National Animal Disease Center in Ames. He criticized Iowa’s Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin for not persuading his Appropriations colleagues to complete the center, which he described as essential to “agro-terrorism” prevention. In 2007, after a local Navy officer died in Iraq, Latham pushed to passage a law to permit grandparents and other family members to get the military death benefit if they assume custody of a dead soldier’s children. Earlier, he worked with Senate Republicans to give Reserve and National Guard soldiers the same health benefits as regular military personnel.

As the ranking Republican on the Transportation and Housing Appropriations Subcommittee, Latham offered an amendment in 2009 to reduce the amount of money a borrower can take out of their home under the federal reverse mortgage program. The committee adopted the amendment, but Democrats altered it to ensure that any money saved would go toward the Housing and Urban Development Department’s Section 8 low-income housing program. Another amendment he offered to transfer $3 billion from high-speed rail to the highway trust fund was defeated. In 2009, he tried unsuccessfully to get a ban on Environmental Protection Agency rulemaking on manure into an appropriations bill.

The congressional districts adopted after the 2000 census in Iowa made Latham’s district more competitive, and he had serious opposition in 2002 from John Norris, former chief of staff to Democratic Gov. Tom Vilsack. Norris attacked Latham for supporting Republican positions on taxes and health care and raised more than $1 million. But Latham won by a relatively comfortable 55%-43% vote, carrying all 28 counties.

Latham won by increasing margins in the Democratic years of 2006 and 2008 and by more than 2-1 in 2010. In the 2010 election season, he raised over $1 million but spent only $326,000. That gives him a reserve if he faces an unfavorable redistricting plan in 2011 and 2012. Iowa lost a House seat in the reapportionment following the 2010 census, which means that if all five incumbents run, at least two will be thrown into the same district. The Republican state House will presumably reject any plan that places the two Republicans together— Latham and Steve King, from adjacent districts. But Latham could face a contest against Democratic incumbent Leonard Boswell if a new district is centered on Des Moines. Ironically, both originally come from small rural counties rather than from metro Des Moines. Congressional redistricting in Iowa is done by a nonpartisan commission, whose plans may be rejected by the legislature and governor.