Rowley working to hone her campaign style

11/01/2005

BY PATRICK CONDON
Associated Press

MONTGOMERY, Minn. — Coleen Rowley on the campaign trail sounds a lot like Coleen Rowley the FBI whistle-blower.

The former special agent who earned national renown in 2002 for scathing critiques of the bureau’s pre-9/11 intelligence failures has brought the same blunt, gritty style to her fledgling run for Congress. She’s trying to topple a Republican incumbent who, she argues, is too closely tied to President Bush, especially in his support for the Iraq war.

“This was a lied-into war that is a quagmire now,” Rowley recently told a group of Democrats gathered in a garage in this small town south of the Twin Cities. “It could be worse than Vietnam. The truth is we can’t win, and there’s still an ongoing deception.”

Rowley’s celebrity — she’s been on the cover of Time magazine twice, including as a Person of the Year in 2002, and is a frequent guest on cable talk shows — is the key factor in what’s expected to be national Democratic support for her effort to unseat Rep. John Kline, who’s not well-known outside the 2nd Congressional District.

But Rowley’s harsh rhetoric, lack of polish and independent streak have some observers worried about an important race in the Democratic effort to wrest control of Congress from Republicans.

“We’re still early here, but I think among Democrats it’s fair to say they’re disappointed that the campaign hasn’t created more momentum,” said Blois Olson, a Democratic consultant and co-publisher of the newsletter Politics in Minnesota. “I think there’s some naivete about the process.”

Rowley’s third-quarter fundraising, $80,000 to Kline’s $230,000, disappointed many Minnesota Democrats. There’s also concern about what some see as an obsession with national security issues in a district that leans Republican.

“She needs to develop some discipline in how she talks, and what she talks about,” Olson said.

Rowley supporters point out that the election is more than a year off.

“She’s just getting going,” said Jeanne Thomas, chairwoman of the Democratic Party in fast-growing Scott County, a major suburban base in the 2nd District. “It’s hard when you’re a first-time candidate.”

Rowley is well aware of the criticisms. She said she’s been told to cut her often rambling stump speeches, and to stick to two or three campaign themes.

“I, unfortunately, am probably constitutionally incapable of that,” said Rowley, 50. “And even if I could, I wouldn’t want it. It’s boring. I think most people don’t like that slick, polished politician. I’m not that way anyway, and why should I start now?”

It was a refusal to censor herself that brought Rowley into the spotlight. As the legal counsel in the Minneapolis FBI office in 2001, Rowley was part of efforts by agents there to investigate Zacarias Moussaoui, who was arrested in Minnesota prior to the Sept. 11 attacks after he raised suspicions at a local flight school.

Minneapolis agents felt that FBI bureaucrats in Washington impeded the investigation, prompting Rowley a few months after the attacks to write a blistering memo to FBI Director Robert Mueller that laid out the lapses in detail.

Soon Rowley was testifying before the U.S. Senate and winning acclaim for her refusal to toe the bureau’s party line.

Rowley wrote another memo to Mueller a few months later criticizing the intelligence cited by the Bush administration in its decision to invade Iraq. That memo wasn’t as well received by her fellow Minneapolis agents, and Rowley was forced to leave the position of legal counsel in her last few months with the FBI.

Democrats first approached Rowley about running against Kline in 2004, but she passed. She retired at the end of that year and spent time traveling the country to speak on ethical decision-making, one of her passions.

When Democrats approached her again this year, Rowley decided to go for it. While allowing that her newfound fame is what makes the run for Congress possible, Rowley said she’s not pursuing the seat to settle scores.

“I don’t see it as anything I did as much as the events themselves,” said Rowley, who says she voted for Bush in 2000 and supported Kline in the past. “I think what happened on 9/11 allowed the administration… to pursue policies of prisoner abuse, violation of civil liberties, the whole Iraq war — things I was concerned about for my whole career.”

While unmistakably intelligent and forceful in her views, Rowley sometimes loses audiences with winding speeches that can stray far off-topic. At a recent meeting of a senior citizens group in one Twin Cities suburb, a tangent on civil liberties slid into a lengthy discourse on the Church Committee, a ‘70s-era group convened to uncover U.S.-backed assassination plots against foreign leaders.

Rowley also has been criticized for not hiring experienced campaign staff, but she said in the next few months she’ll bring in a campaign manager with experience in running big-media campaigns. She said she intends to raise about $2 million for the race.

The 2nd District includes suburbs south and west of the Twin Cities and stretches south into several mostly rural counties. A goal for the Rowley campaign will be to reach out to moderate Republican women in the suburbs, by stressing Kline’s close allegiance to the administration and the scandal-plagued House Republican leadership.

“She’s so articulate,” said Marge Schammel, an Apple Valley retiree who attended a Rowley house party recently, even though she is a Republican.

Schammel supported Kline in the past but said she is undecided about her vote next year. “I’m going to be watching his record,” she said.

Kline has had little to say publicly about Rowley’s candidacy.

“We are not in campaign mode yet,” said Angelyn Shapiro, his spokeswoman.

Many of Rowley’s character traits aren’t negatives. A mother of four and recently a new grandmother, she’s down-to-earth, self-deprecating and a weekly churchgoer who still competes in — and often wins — triathlons. An Iowa native with ancestral roots in Minnesota’s 2nd District, Rowley still speaks with a pronounced Midwestern accent.

Discounting her outspoken opposition to the war and visceral dislike of the Bush administration, Rowley is a political moderate who describes herself as a deficit hawk and points to her FBI record to prove her mettle on law-and-order issues.

Rowley often jokes about the criticism she got for her somewhat disheveled appearance when she testified before the U.S. Senate. But she seems to have taken such remarks to heart as well — she’s since replaced her oversized eyeglasses with a smaller pair and has adopted a more stylish haircut.

“I think her authentic nature could be a positive,” said Olson, the Democratic strategist. “The challenge is communicating that to voters in an effective way.”

COLEEN ROWLEY

Age: 50
Residence: Apple Valley
Hometown: New Hampton, Iowa

Education: Bachelor’s degree in French from Wartburg College, Waverly, Iowa, 1977; law degree, University of Iowa, 1980

Career: Special agent, FBI, 1981-90; principal legal adviser (later named chief division counsel), FBI’s Minneapolis office, 1990-2003; special agent, Minneapolis office, 2003-04

Family: Husband, four children and one grandchild

Hobbies: Active triathlete

Campaign Web site: http://www.coleenrowley.org