A politician once said the only way to run a campaign is unopposed or scared. Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley says now that he has an opponent, he’ll do the latter. Former state legislator Art Small, a Democrat from Iowa City, has announced plans to challenge Grassley, the Republican who was first elected to the U.S. Senate seat in 1980. Small has -no- money for a campaign compared to Grassley’s reported five-and-a-half MILLION dollars. Still, Grassley says he’ll take Small seriously. Grassley says “(Small) is going to be able to raise a lot of money. I expect that the Democrat base is going to help him. I expect that John Kerry, the Democratic candidate for president, obviously would be pushing for a Democrat from Iowa.” While Grassley says he’ll treat Small as a formidable opponent, he’s not sure even the Democrats are serious about Small being their candidate of choice. He says he has one quandary in things that he’s heard from the democrat leadership, since the party leaders haven’t been touting Small as their candidate, Grassley says he thinks the Democrats plan to anoint someone else at a later date — someone Grassley calls a “stealth” candidate. Grassley says he’s not “shaking in my boots” but he will take the Small campaign as legitimate, until something else happens.Grassley says Small may just be a “stalking horse” who will pull out at the last minute when Democrats nominate someone else at the convention. He says until he gets by the convention he’ll consider Small his opponent. Grassley says he’ll still consider a possible stealth candidate and will run scared. Though he says he won’t be shaking in his boots. Small and Grassley are both 70 years old, though Small is about a month younger. Small is an attorney, a former college professor and a Maine native who says his hobbies are golf and poetry. He served in the Iowa Legislature from 1970 to 1986. He calls himself the “underdog” in the contest with Grassley.
