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Iowa residents have received automated phone calls and mailed flyers from Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign that make political hay of the disastrous floods faced by Eastern Iowa earlier this year.
Click here to listen to audio of the McCain/RNC call.
The campaign flyers and calls, both funded by the McCain campaign and the Republican National Committee, claim Democrats in Congress “went on vacation” rather than help Iowans. The flyer includes a photograph of a flooded building that may or may not be a property that was damaged in Iowa during the 2008 flood.
“I’m calling Iowans on behalf of John McCain, Sarah Palin and the RNC because congressional Democrats’ response to the June floods was not only embarrassing, it was negligent,” the male voice said on the recorded call. “While John McCain took time from campaigning to survey the damage caused, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid sent Congress home for summer vacation, leaving us stranded.”
Before Iowans saw the worst of the flood damage, both McCain and Sen. Barack Obama had planned to visit flooded areas. Iowa Gov. Chet Culver requested both campaigns avoid the areas so that local emergency workers and law enforcement could concentrate their efforts on the disaster in progress.
Obama canceled his appearance in Cedar Rapids on June 11, but activated his volunteer network on behalf of flood victims in Iowa. He later traveled to Illinois and filled sandbags in his home state. Obama came to Cedar Rapids on July 31 and hosted a town hall meeting on the economy and flooding.
On June 19 McCain ignored the state’s request and toured the small Louisa County town of Columbus Junction. Although President George W. Bush toured the flood-affected areas of Cedar Rapids and Iowa City on that same day, the two did not cross paths. McCain returned to Iowa last month with Gov. Sarah Palin and, after being taken to task by a Republican Iowa House member and the Cedar Rapids Chamber president for not planning to tour damaged areas, he and Palin rearranged their schedules to include a tour of one Cedar Rapids neighborhood.
“He’s in and out,” said David Roederer, chairman of McCain’s campaign in Iowa.
He said there had been “some discussion” about touring the flood-ravaged city, but scheduling pressures barely six weeks before the election prevailed.
Before leaving Washington, D.C., for summer recess, Congress passed an initial $2.65 billion appropriation for disaster assistance. Due to government red tape in connection with the agencies tasked with distribution of those funds, however, Iowans did not see their first influx of that money until September.
“While Congress acted quickly in June to get an infusion of $2.65 billion for Iowans and others hit by floods and weather, the Bush administration is still sitting on these funds,” Culver said in a Cedar Rapids meeting last month.
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