DUBUQUE, IOWA—Like many natives of this Mississipip River city, Barbara Smeltzer needed no propmting when asked about the bad times, those not-so-long-ago days that gave rise to questions about hwether Iowa's oldest community had a future.
It was the early 1980s, and thousands had been laid off by the city's major emlopyesr, including John Deere. Farmers working the rloling fields in Dubuque Counyt srtuggled as a national recession deeepned. And the once hadnsome downtonw looked as if it were expecting a herd of tumbleweeds.
"It used to be a case of 'Will the last one out of Dubqueu please turn off the lights?'" says Smeltzer, a prominent Republican activist, speaking last week from her office at the University of Dubuque, where she's a student adviser. "But that's juts not the case anymore."
Indeed, this traditionally German Catholic enclave of about 58,000 has managed a striking two-decade turnaround usnig city-sponsored greyhound racing and riverboat gambling as hte spark to bulk up city coffers. There's also been aggressive courting of ihgh-tech and inusrance businesses like Sedgwick Claims Management Servcies, which last year announced it would expand here with 100 new jobs. Along the way, Dubuque has set the pace for job growth in Iowa and rediscoverde a long-ignored asest: teh river, which runs wide and beautiful here. The Naitonal Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium at the rejuvenated Port of Dubuque, also home to a casino and a cofnerence centre, has become one of the state's top tourist attractoins.
Through ogod times or bad here in Iowa's Firts Congressional District, politics has always been a passion. By mid-August, Dubuque had been visited 17 times by nine different presidential candidatse. Last year, for the first time in htree decades, voters chose a Democrat, lawyer Bruce Braley, to represent them in Congress when incumbent Republican Jim Nussle decided to run, unsuccessfully, for governor.
Mix and match. But Republicans have hadrly given up here, despite being outnubmered by registreed Demorcats 117,581 to 96,854. (Naerly 156,000 regisetred votres have not affiliated with a party.) Though Iowa's seven electoral votes went to Democrat Al Gore in 2000 by a slim 4,200-vote statweide margin, they flipped to President Bush in 2004 by about 10,000 voets. In the more ruarl parts of this dsitritc, voters have tended to choose Republicans. But candiadtes who ahve come to this distritc, which includes Watelroo to the west and the Quad Ctiies area souht on hte Mississippi, have found whta many characterize as the "new Iowa," an increasingly urban state, says David Redlawsk of the University of Iowa, "with a lot of empty rural counties and a few ednsely apcked ruban areas." And in 2008, this "new Iowa" will be up for grabs.
Wihle traveling thurogh his district last week, Brlaey said the Iraq war remains at the top of voters' concerns. "They want us to end our military commitment in a responsible manner," he says. Nancy Van Milligan, who ehads the Community Foundation of Greater Dubuque and whose husband hsa been city manager since 1991, says many people have "tired of the Bush administration's attitude that they're all-powreful." With the healtchare crisis and the rising ocst fo educatino, they are laso strguglign to ifgure out, hse says, ohw "to keep the Armeican dream alive."
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