After a summer full of the usual movie sequels, Grinnell students will return to campus next fall just in time for another familiar rerun: Danny Carroll versus Eric Palmer in Grinnell's House District 75.

The third act's twist to keep things interesting? This time, Carroll, a Republican who filled the seat for twelve years, will be the challenger and not the incumbent.

After narrowly fending off Palmer (D-Oskaloosa) in 2004, Carroll was unseated in 2006 in an election featuring, among other things, very high turnout by Grinnell College students, who largely supported Palmer.

Now Carroll--who split his two years out of office between his family pumpkin farm, Iowa Telecom and co-chairing the Iowa presidential campaign of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee--wants his old seat back.

In an interview, Carroll talked enthusiastically about his background and his proposals for pro-business, anti-tax and pro-education policies. He was much more cautious, however, when asked about the social issues that he has raised in the past two elections--and helped to turn off many socially liberal Grinnell college students. Carroll said that he would emphasize the economy, education and health care over social issues--at least for a college audience.

"There are always social issues that are involved in campaigns," Carroll said. "I'm sure they'll be involved in the minds of voters." Carroll said that he was "not really sure yet what's going to be emphasized," but said that he was "going to be primarily concerned with Iowa's business environment and taxation and health care and education issues important to the family."

If Carroll's emphasis on economic issues actually reflects how his campaign will shape out, this will be a welcome development for Palmer, who talks about his preference for talking about "what people wanted to get done" over what he called "divisive social issues."

"I was hoping to get away from those kind of things and work on things like improving education," said Palmer. "One of the things we promised [in 2006] was to raise teacher pay, and we did."

Education improvement is also a goal of Carroll's as part of his broader focus on the economy. "If we create an environment that's attractive to business investment, we have to supply workers who are well-educated and ready to go to work," said Carroll, who emphasized his support of Iowa's community college and workforce training system.

A more contentious subject might be government spending. Palmer talks up his support for new spending initiatives, including expanded preschool, higher teacher pay and expansion of the state health care system.

"Yes ... raising teacher pay, it did cost some money," Palmer said. "We could have said, 'No thank you,' but our teachers were 42nd or 43rd in the nation in teacher pay." He said that the new spending programs reflected important needs and were paid for by increased revenue due to Iowa's strong economy.

Carroll, in contrast, is running on a position of low taxes and low spending. He said that the recent legislature has approved close to one billion dollars in new spending since 2007. "That kind of increase in government spending is going to drive up the tax burden, not just on individuals but on business as well."

On health care, both support reform but disagree on who should run Iowa's health care system. Palmer said that he was proud of the legislature's bills expanding Iowa's state-run health care to cover all Iowan children by 2011.

Carroll also spoke about reforming Iowa's health care system--including making it "portable" so that workers can take their health care from job to job and across state lines--but said that he only supports "market-based solutions," not government-provided health care. "I worry that if we get caught up in health insurance solutions that are somehow government-funded, we will end up rationing health care," he said.

Grinnell students--and the rest of District 75--will have plenty of time to decide whether they prefer the new incumbent or the old before the November election. It seems probable that Palmer and Carroll will have at least one debate on campus in the fall, allowing students to see the pair in person before making up their minds.