And the nominees are…

With a Democrat in the White House (Barack Obama), Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) gets to "suggest" nominees for the two U.S. Attorney slots in Iowa.  Harkin has submitted two names.  Nick Klinefeldt of West Des Moines is Harkin's nominee to be U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Iowa and Stephanie Rose of Center Point is Harkin's nominee to be U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Iowa.

Klinefeldt has Harkin ties.  He was a field organizer for Harkin's 1996 re-election campaign, then went on to work on Harkin's senate staff for a year before entering law school.

Klinefeldt, a 2000 graduate of the University of Iowa College of Law, clerked for a U.S. District Court Judge in Des Moines, then Klinefeldt moved to Boston where he clerked for a judge there, then he worked for three years in a "boutique firm" in Boston, specializing in federal criminal law. Klinefeldt returned to Iowa in 2006 and joined the Ahlers & Cooney firm in Des Moines. 

Klinefeldt has been the Iowa Democratic Party's general counsel since 2006 and he was state counsel for the Obama campaign in 2008.

Rose, who graduated from the University of Iowa College of Law in 1996, has been working as a federal prosecutor in the office she will now lead since 1997.  She was named an Assistant U.S. Attorney in 1999 and in 2008 she was promoted to Deputy Criminal Chief in the U.S. Attorney's Office based in Cedar Rapids.  

According to Harkin's staff, Rose "has served as lead counsel in more than 260 criminal felony cases and as associate counsel on over 50 federal cases.  She also has argued before the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals 34 times. During her tenure as a federal prosecutor she has earned a national reputation within the Department of Justice as one of the nation’s leading prosecutors of illegal Internet pharmacy cases."