Harkin Steak Fry: Congressional Delegation

I am blogging from the Harkin Steak Fry. The Iowa Congressional Delegation just finished up speaking. I missed Selden Spencer and Leonard Boswell's speeches, but heard Rep. Loebsack and Rep. Braley speak.

Rep. Loebsack spoke about labor and education issues and discussed a bill the President signed into low to lower the cost of college. Loebsack also stressed the importance of grassroots organizing and thanked everyone for the help getting him elected last year.

Rep. Braley got the crowd going with a great speech. He said in 2006 we cleaned out the US House and in 2008 we need to clean out the White House. He stressed how important it is to reelect Sen. Harkin. If we get the race locked up early then it will only help Democrats in Iowa. Braley talked a lot about Iraq and Bush's broken promises. He mentioned Rep. Boswell's Suicide Prevention Bill to prevent suicide in the military that passed in the House, but is on hold in the Senate because Senator Coburn (R-Oklahoma) must think preventing suicide is bad thing.

I am hearing there are over 12,000 people here. Hillary has the most signs out, but I think Obama seems to have the most supporters because they were passing out a ton of t-shits. Edwards and Biden also seem to have sizable group of supporters. One interesting note is Biden has about 20 volunteers down in front of the stage, while Clinton has just as many paid staffers down there.

The presidential candidates just have been introduced, as well as Sen. Harkin. I will be back in a bit with more info.

**Update**
I asked some people about Selden Spencer's speech and people said he did well, but it wasn't quite last year's speech. Spencer's best line was about people that come up to him and say...

So Dr. Spencer, you are a Neruologist, what's really wrong with George W. Bush.