Many Iowa voters in eastern and central Iowa received a recorded telephone message in the past 48 hours that attacks House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Pelosi will appear in Des Moines today at a private event to raise money for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
The automated telephone calls from the National Republican Congressional Committee label Pelosi a "liberal" who will impose a "national energy tax."
Last summer, Pelosi spoke to the Iowans who attended the Democratic National Convention in Denver, telling the group Democrats were prepared to "take the country in a new direction" on energy policy.
"A strong, strong commitment to making us energy independent, where America’s farmers will fuel America’s energy independence," Pelosi said, "where we’ll send our energy dollars to the Midwest and not to the Middle East."
In addition to action on energy policy, Pelosi promised health care reform.
"These are not hard things," Pelosi said in Denver. "They’re complex. You have to deal with them, but they’re only a decision that the president and the congress has to make to make the change."
Congressman Bruce Braley, a Democrat from Waterloo, is one of the co-hosts of this morning’s event with Pelosi, which is a fundraiser for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
"The money that we raise at events like this, which the speaker participates in all over the country, are designed to help our candidates who are running for election in 2010," Braley says. Braley, who is in his second term in the U.S. House, is a vice chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Braley along Dave Loebsack and Leonard Boswell — the other Democrats in Iowa’s congressional delegation — will attend the midday event, which is being held at the home of Roxanne Conlin, a Des Moines lawyer who was the Democratic Party’s nominee for governor in 1980.
Pelosi visited Iowa last September to talk about flood recovery and in November of 2007 she was the emcee for the Iowa Democratic Party’s Jefferson-Jackson Day Banquet which featured the party’s presidential candidates.
The photo above features Pelosi speaking to Iowa Democrats in Denver. Braley, Loebsack and Boswell, in the back, are in the picture, too, sitting at the table to Pelosi’s right.