Out in Greene County, Iowa

Former Governor Terry Branstad to run again? We love the guy but this is a terrible idea

By CHUCK OFFENBURGER
August 3, 2009
COOPER, IOWA

“Branstad says he’s weighing run for governor,” the headline in the Des Moines Sunday Register told us.

I want to weigh in on that myself.

As a great admirer and friend of former Iowa Governor Terry Branstad, and as a fellow Republican, here’s my advice: Terry, just say no.

Actually, I have a real bias toward Branstad, who served four terms and 16 years as governor from 1983-1999. We’re the same age, at 62. I happened to cover his first run for public office, a race he won for the Iowa House of Representatives, back in 1972. I wrote dozens of columns about him through his gubernatorial years, and subsequently when he’s served as president of Des Moines University. We worked together in 1999 on the presidential campaign in Iowa of our mutual friend Lamar Alexander, from Tennessee, now a U.S. senator. We’ve ridden bicycles together, made appearances together for Iowa from San Diego to Washington, D.C., and have had a whole lot of fun.

At the end of his years as governor, I pointed out that Branstad was at that point “the most successful politician in Iowa history,” since he’d never lost an election at any level. And I argued in a column that he will go down as one of our greatest governors, most notably for having steered Iowa through the darkest economic time in 50 years, the Farm Crisis of the mid 1980s. Then he provided outstanding leadership as Iowa quickly rebounded from what at the time was the greatest natural disaster in state history, the floods of 1993.

On top of all that, I’ve always just liked the guy.

That’s why I feel I must say something now.

Apparently Branstad is getting all kinds of encouragement from Republican financial heavyweights like retired insurance magnate Gary Kirke, of West Des Moines, and ethanol company executive Bruce Rastetter, of Alden in north central Iowa, to jump in the 2010 race for governor. That’s despite five GOP candidates already having started their campaigns for governor, and three or four others reportedly still considering.

“I’m not ruling it out, beause I care deeply about the state,” Branstad told The Register’s Thomas Beaumont in an interview for a copyrighted story in the Sunday newspaper. “And I have real concerns about the direction things are going.”

I have a real concern about the direction he’s going, too.

First, I don’t mind former governors continuing to be active in politics, or even running for higher offices. But on the other hand, in the cases of legendary former governors like Branstad and his predecessor Bob Ray, my expectation is that on state government matters, they should serve more as senior advisors, ambassadors and encouragers – rather than as opponents out to undermine their successors.

Second, I can’t believe Branstad’s wife Chris is in favor of this flirtation with running for office again. Truth is, she pretty much hated politics, from what I know. Why he’d want to expose himself and her to a whole new round of intrusive probes into every aspect of their lives, is beyond me.

Third, Branstad was a perfect match for Iowa at the time he was building his political and governmental career. He was the right person at the right time for Iowa, someone who had wide support across the state and could lead on major initiatives, some of them very controversial – like legalizing gambling and completely overhauling the structure of state government. I’m reasonably confident he is not the right person now. If elected, he’d be dealing with new generations of legislators, state employees and opinion leaders. And you know what? Not all of those people are going to be charmed by the idea of an old political hero trying to re-start his government career. Many will see him as an impediment to their own futures.

I agree with that last thought, by the way. Just the fact that he now says he is considering running for governor is very damaging to our Republican Party. It just stifles the ambitions of a lot of the young up & comers we need so badly in the GOP.

The Register reported Sunday that Branstad has been speaking regularly with the outstanding new state chairman of the Repbulican Party, Matt Strawn. The 35-year-old Strawn is doing a great job of traveling all over the state, encouraging Republicans at the grass roots level, getting new and younger people involved, starting to rebuild a lot of GOP bridges that had been burned by several years poor leadership in the state party.

This Branstad campaign idea may actually be the first serious test of Strawn’s leadership.

How would you like to be in the young guy’s shoes, if he decides to suck it up, call the legendary Branstad and say, “Governor, this is something you need to reconsider. It may well not be good for you, and it probably is going to hurt the party long-range.”

That’s what Strawn needs to do, right now, if Branstad persists.

What Branstad should actually do is take the money he would spend if he got into the governor’s race, and instead endow a new treatment program at that nice medical university he heads – “Counseling for Baby Boomers Having Trouble Leaving the Stage.”

I hope he comes to his senses. It’d be hard to join some opponent’s campaign, working against an old friend I admire so much, but I would.


You can write the columnist at chuck@Offenburger.com.