Former “Saturday Night Live” actor Gary Kroeger (D) will seek the Democratic nod to challenge freshman Rep. Rod Blum (R) for Iowa’s 1st District House seat.
“I am not a political insider with a message for the people,” Kroeger told supporters at the Oster Regent Theatre in Cedar Falls, according to the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier. “I am from the people with a message for the insiders.”
{mosads}Kroeger is a Cedar Falls native and currently works as an advertising executive. He was on “SNL” in the early 1980s and later did voice work on the TV version of “Dilbert.”
He will first have to overcome two Democratic challengers in the primary. Monica Vernon, a Cedar Rapids city councilwoman, and Ravia Patel, a businessman from the same town, have also declared their candidacies. Vernon has the backing of EMILY’s List.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has targeted Blum as one of 15 House Republicans it believes are ripe for defeat in 2016.
In 2014, Blum won a surprise victory in a Democratic-leaning district with a lot of help from House Republican leadership.
Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) stumped for Blum in the closing days of the campaign, and the American Action Network, a major center-right outside group with ties to leadership, spent heavily on him to win.
But in Blum’s first vote in Congress, he bucked Boehner and party leadership by voting for Rep. Daniel Webster (R-Fla.) for Speaker.