Leonard Boswell

Leonard Boswell

Leonard L. Boswell (born January 10, 1934 in Harrison County , Missouri - † August 17, 2018 in Des Moines , Iowa ) was an American politician . From 1997 to 2013 he represented the state of Iowa in the US House of Representatives . In the 2012 election he was defeated by his Republican competitor Tom Latham .

Career

Leonard Boswell attended Lamoni High School in Iowa until 1952 . He then served in the US Army from 1956 to 1976 . He was also used in the Vietnam War. He was also temporarily stationed in Germany and Portugal . In the army he made it to the rank of lieutenant colonel. During his military service he studied at Graceland College until 1969 . After serving in the military, he ran the family farm in Davis City . Between 1979 and 1993 he served on the board of directors and for most of the time director of the Decatur County Farmers' Association .

Politically, Boswell joined the Democratic Party . He served in the Iowa Senate from 1984 to 1996 ; since 1992 he has been its president. In the 1996 congressional election, he was elected to the United States House of Representatives in Washington, DC in the third constituency of Iowa . There he took over from Republican Jim Ross Lightfoot on January 3, 1997 and was able to assert himself in the following congressional elections until he was defeated in 2012 by his Republican challenger Tom Latham. After the constituencies were redesigned, Lotham, who had previously represented a different constituency and is considered a moderate Republican and had often worked well with Boswell, challenged Boswell in his previous constituency; between the two of them there had been a particularly expensive and highly controversial electoral exchange. When Latham took office on January 3, 2013, Boswell resigned from Congress.

He was considered a moderate Democrat (“blue dog”) and often voted against his party with the Republicans - for example when it came to adopting the Patriot Act . Boswell was a member of the Agriculture Committee and the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, as well as several sub-committees. He was married to Dody Boswell and lived privately in Des Moines . Boswell only survived his wife by eight days; she died in Des Moines on the morning of August 25, 2018.

Web links

Commons : Leonard Boswell  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Dossier ( memento of June 30, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ) on Boswell at the Washington Post
• Leonard Boswell in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Maggie O'Brien: In Iowa's 3rd District, Latham retires Boswell. In: Omaha.com of November 7, 2012.
2. ^ Dody Boswell, wife of late Rep. Leonard Boswell, dies just days after husband