I suspected that Republican Congressman Tom Latham's internal polling must be showing a close race when he put up a negative tv ad on the bailout. Now the first public poll of Iowa's fourth district is out. Research 2000 for Daily Kos found this:

Tom Latham 47
Becky Greenwald 42
undecided 11

Click the link for the internals.

Interestingly, the same poll found John McCain leading Barack Obama in the fourth district by 46 to 42 percent. Given the many polls showing Obama above the 50 percent mark in Iowa, I would have thought Obama would be leading McCain in this D+0 district.

If Greenwald is doing as well in IA-04 as Obama, then I feel really good about our chances for an upset in this district. Obama's superior ground game could easily be worth several percentage points on election day.

Paging EMILY's list and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee: please start spending some money on tv ads in this district! Greenwald has launched a good web ad recently, but she hasn't been on tv for the past ten days or so.

EMILY's List endorsed Greenwald last month, and the DCCC added her to Red to Blue in early October, but I am not aware of any independent expenditures on her behalf yet.   (UPDATE: Supposedly the United Auto Workers just went up on the air with an anti-Latham radio ad, but I haven't heard it and don't have a transcript.)

Please donate to Greenwald if you can.