With a whirlwind two-day tour covering 900 miles and nine Iowa cities, University of Iowa professor and former Iowa House member David Osterberg announced his candidacy last week for the U.S. Senate.

Osterberg is running for the seat currently held by three-term Republican Charles Grassley.

Also in the race is another Democrat, former U.S. Representative Dave Nagle, and also Libertarian Donald Hennig, though Nagle has not declared his intentions formally.

Osterberg, a former Democratic state representative from Mount Vernon, said he will make the environment a priority if he is elected.

“The environment gets better when the United States does what it does best — invest in new technology,” he said.

He said “endocrine-disrupting chemicals” such as chlorine and chlorine dioxide need to be removed from industrial production processes, because they harm wildlife when they flow into the water supply.

Osterberg, who was chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Environmental Protection during his time in the legislature, cited the ineffectiveness of the Clean Water Act, which has been on the books since 1972.

He said the measure was designed to make all waterways “swimmable and fishable by 1985,” but, 13 years later, 40 percent of U.S. rivers, lakes and streams are still not clean enough.

Frequently, Osterberg said, environmental problems are caused by new technology such as experimental pesticides, which are often used before their full effects are known.

But cutting-edge research can provide solutions as well, he said.

“The answer is also in new technology,” he said. “And those methods often create new kinds of jobs.”

Osterberg also emphasized changes in campaign finance regulations, and he criticized Grassley for voting “no” on a motion which would have allowed debate on the McCain-Feingold proposal.

That legislation would have set up new restraints on soft money, special interest influence and Senate election spending.

“Money is the name of the game, and you have big corporations and rich folks determining who our elected officials are going to be and what the policies are, and that’s not democratic,” Osterberg said.

He suggested a tax check-off as one method of “getting money out of campaigns,” and he said his eventual goal is to “get all the big money out of the system.”

At the same time, Osterberg said, he doesn’t fully support the McCain-Feingold bill.

“I don’t think it goes very far. I think we need to go much further,” he said. “I think the system really needs to be reformed, and I would vote that way.”

A recent press release from Iowa Republican Party Chairman Steve Grubbs described Osterberg as a “leftist college professor,” but Osterberg said the hint that he would not be an effective senator was untrue.

“I made laws for 12 years in Iowa,” he said pointedly. “I made interesting laws which became national models because of their innovativeness.”

He accused Grubbs of trying to “malign a person’s character” rather than discuss the issues, and he mentioned several laws, including the 1987 Groundwater Protection Act, to refute Grubbs’ statements.

“The charge that I’m too theoretical is belied by the fact that I’ve made legislation — landmark legislation,” he said.