Congressman Dave Loebsak. (file photo)

As Iowa Congressman Dave Loebsack prepares for the beginning of the next congress, Loebsack is already thinking about the next election. Loebsack, a Democrat from Iowa City, was just reelected to a seventh term in the U.S. House.

“I’ve had a lot of concerns over the years with my own party as far as — at times — the inability, I think, to fullly understand districts like mine and others in the Midwest,” Loebsack says, “especially those districts that Donald Trump won the last time.”

Loebsack says that’s why he supported Illinois Congressman Cheri Bustos as chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for 2020. Bustos represents a district that includes the Illinois side of the Quad Cities.

“I’m very happy about that,” Loebsack says. “She understand s districts like mine and the two that are now going to be occupied by Democrats.”

Those would be Iowa’s first congressional district, to be represented by Dubuque Democrat Abby Finkenauer, and the third district in Iowa, to be representative by Cindy Axne, a Democrat from West Des Moines.