Out in Greene County, Iowa

Why is my candidate for governor wishy-washy? And why am I wishy-washy about dumping him?

By CHUCK OFFENBURGER
April 18, 2006
COOPER, IOWA

Does anybody besides me remember that we have a governor’s race going on here in Iowa?

Peverill Squire, the University of Iowa political science professor who does occasional commentary on government and politics on WOI-AM radio’s “Talk of Iowa,” noted on Monday’s show that recent big news events have knocked the governor’s race off the front pages of most Iowa newspapers. First it was the “TouchPlay” slottery machines controversy, then the “CIETC” jobs agency scandal and most recently the frightful tornadoes that tore apart Iowa City. And we had to stop everything for several days to get our universities’ basketball and wrestling coaches fired, retired, hired and un-retired.

But we’re all going to have to get back into gubernatorial politics, and soon. We Republicans have our district conventions this Saturday at five locations around the state, and you Democrats follow with your district conventions a week later. The primary election is seven weeks away.

I’ll be in Mason City at the fourth district GOP convention. When Carla and I moved from Storm Lake to Cooper in 2004, we moved across the congressional district line from the fifth district to the fourth. After what we lived through in the fifth district, I now enjoy telling people that I am Congressman Tom Latham’s happiest constituent.

But I’m going to the district convention still undecided about the governor’s race.

Of course, we are not having a primary election for governor in the Republican Party. Sioux City businessman Bob Vander Plaats decided early to fold his own campaign for governor and to join northeast Iowa’s Congressman Jim Nussle’s campaign. So it’s Nussle for governor, Vander Plaats for lieutenant governor and Offenburger still only giving them consideration.

Why?

Well, I just checked and I see that I’m still listed on the 253-member steering committee of Democratic candidate Mike Blouin’s campaign. It was last September when I came out publicly in favor of Blouin, the former director of Iowa’s Department of Economic Development, after he had declared that he’d be running as a pro-life Democrat.

He has other strong credentials, too. He’s a former teacher, state legislator, U.S. Congressman, Chamber of Commerce executive in both Cedar Rapids and Des Moines, and was very successful as IDED director for three years before he resigned to get into the campaign full-time.

But it was his pro-life position that really brought me Blouin’s way. Alas, it seems like he’s been running away from that position almost ever since.

In December, he told the Associated Press’ Mike Glover: “Regardless of the U.S. Supreme Court’s future actions regarding Roe v. Wade, I would not sign any legislation to further restrict or expand access to abortion in Iowa.” I called Blouin the morning that story came out, howling in protest, telling him that sure doesn’t sound like a pro-life position to me. David Yepsen, chief political columnist of the Des Moines Register, spotted it immediately and wrote that Blouin had become “wishy-washy” on the issue, a charge which has been haunting Blouin ever since.

Then in early March, he announced that Dr. Andrea McGuire, chief medical officer of American Republic Insurance in Des Moines, would join his ticket as the lieutenant governor candidate. She said she has long been pro-choice and remains so now.

A day or two later, Blouin and McGuire made a campaign stop in Carroll, which is a heavily Catholic and traditionally Democratic area of Iowa. Doug Burns of the Carroll Daily Times Herald reported that Blouin told a crowd of 25 people there that he was asking for “a truce” on the abortion issue.

He explained he would stick with his earlier statement, that if elected he will leave Iowa’s abortion law as it stands now, even if Roe v. Wade is overturned. Meanwhile, he said he would work hard for programs encouraging adoption as well as for better healthcare programs for women. Burns quoted Blouin saying such programs are one of two ways to reduce abortions in Iowa.

The other, he said, “is to tilt at windmills and in my opinion that’s what we’re doing because we’re not going to make much headway.” That was an apparent reference to those of us who seek to overturn Roe v. Wade.

“Tilt at windmills”?

I think many pro-life voters would be as insulted by that as I was, if it had been reported more widely.

Blouin acknowledged in his Carroll appearance that he has not handled the abortion issue well, and give him credit for admitting that.

“We have to come up with an answer that lays out what I’ve been clumsily trying to say since July,” the Daily Times Herald reported him saying. “Since the very first day I got into this, I said I do not want to polarize on this issue. I want to find a common ground that will make a difference.”

I find myself wondering whether we’re getting the real Blouin position on abortion in this primary campaign. I mean, the guy has a 25-year record of being anti-abortion, and he is an ordained deacon in the Catholic Church. And yet he is “clumsily” handling this issue that is core to so many Catholics?

And I’m curious about his running mate McGuire’s pro-choice credentials. I do not know her, but all I read makes her seem a good, involved citizen. She’s also the mother of seven children, six of whom are in Catholic schools. She’s been a leading fundraiser for Saint Augustin School and Dowling Catholic High School in the Des Moines area. And she was elected president last year of the National Alumni Board of Creighton University, a Catholic university in Omaha. She may well think pro-choice, she certainly talks pro-choice, but it would appear she lives pro-life.

If Blouin and McGuire can win the nomination in the June 6 primary election against the other clearly pro-choice Democratic candidates – most notably Secretary of State Chet Culver and State Representative Ed Fallon – would we then see Blouin take a stronger pro-life position for his run against Republican Nussle, an avowed pro-lifer?

That prospect could make politics in Iowa mighty interesting between now and the November general election.

Meanwhile, once I began having concerns about Blouin’s pro-life convictions, other matters began to bother me, too.

One is age. Blouin is 60, which by no means is old. But on the other hand, Nussle is 45. He will probably connect better with younger Iowans than Blouin can.

Another factor is that Blouin has been very much a part of the administration of Governor Tom Vilsack, who chose not to seek re-election to a third term and is now spending a whole lot of time taking the preliminary steps to run for president. But with all the controversy and scandal surrounding state government in recent weeks – most of it happening while the governor has been out of state – people naturally begin thinking a fresh start might be a good thing.

So that’s where I am right now in all this.

I’d like to be voting for a strongly pro-life Mike Blouin. And since we have no governor’s race in the Republican primary, I may indeed cross-over and vote for this wishy-washy Blouin in the Democratic primary, to see what happens if he would win the nomination.

But I can be happy voting for Jim Nussle, too.

I guess that makes me a little wishy-washy myself.


You can reach Chuck Offenburger by e-mail at chuck@Offenburger.com