Coronation?
What the GOP primary will tell us about Terry Branstad and the future of the Iowa Republican Party
By Douglas Burns
While he leads comfortably in recent Florida U.S. Senate polls, establishment Republican governor Charlie Crist, a centrist in today’s political dictionary, faces a feisty underdog in Marco Rubio — a darling of the right who conservative pundits are peddling at every opportunity.
Meanwhile, as of presstime, political pros of both parties were closely watching a special election in upstate New York, where the more moderate, some say liberal, Republican nominee, Dede Scozzafava, just bowed out, clearing the for third-party conservative, Doug Hoffman — the preferred candidate of Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh.
Are there portents in New York’s 23rd Congressional District and the Sunshine State for the Republican Party in Iowa in 2010?
Can social conservatives in Iowa, those who put ideological purity over electoral pragmatism, succeed in casting all-but-announced and expected Republican nominee Terry Branstad as something less than them, as a cracked-hull conservative?
Or more simply, can Branstad, a former four-term governor and one of the more skilled politicians in the state’s history (scoreboard, baby), be knocked off the road to coronation as his party’s choice for a race against Democratic Gov. Chet Culver?
“Of course it’s possible,” says Steffen Schmidt, the veteran Iowa State University political science professor and public radio maven. “He is not a hard-core ideological conservative.”
Schmidt added, “Branstad poses a real challenge to the hard-core conservatives.”
In an interview last weekend, as speculation hit a fever pitch about the broader meaning of New York and Florida, not to mention the off-year governors’ races in New Jersey and Virginia, Schmidt said he will be analyzing the high-profile campaigns for insights into what form the emerging identity of the Republican Party is taking.
“Branstad in Iowa is going to be part of that national struggle,” Schmidt says.
That said, political anglers make the mistake of viewing any election in any state as nationally defining, Schmidt said.
“This is a giant, diverse country even within what we call Republicanism,” Schmidt said.
One of the Iowans who best knows Branstad is his former chief of staff, David Oman, a Des Moines businessman who co-chaired the Iowa GOP for nearly a decade in the 1980s and 1990s.
Oman said he finds himself with a “wry grin” when he hears suggestions that Branstad may not be conservative enough for some in the party today.
Is Terry Branstad a conservative?
“Yes,” Oman says.
And his conservative credentials were minted before his occupancy in Terrace Hill, says Oman, who also served as chief of staff and press secretary to Gov. Robert Ray.
“He (Branstad) was very conservative as a state legislator and lieutenant governor,” Oman says.
In fact, Branstad backed the patron-saint of modern conservatives, Ronald Reagan, in the 1980 Iowa Caucuses when many other leading Iowa Republicans were firmly in the camps of Howard Baker and President George H.W. Bush.
“People who will remember will appreciate that he is a conservative Republican, and he has remained so,” says Oman, who supports Branstad.
Branstad stepped down as president of Des Moines University last month in preparation to enter a Republican primary field that includes political figures with far less stature but summer and fall calendars that were jammed with campaign appearances.
They aren’t just going to step aside, said one of them, State Rep. Rod Roberts, R-Carroll.
“I do not believe that Republicans will automatically give him (Branstad) the nomination,” Roberts said recently just after attending a Harrison County GOP event in Missouri Valley.
To be sure, Roberts said, Branstad would enter the race with some substantial firepower. But the Iowa Republican world, which Roberts has been living in day and night for months now, is a far different one than when Branstad left office in 1999 after serving through the better part of that decade and the 1980s, Roberts says.
“Iowa, and Republicans specifically, are in a different place, politically and socially, than they were 20 to 25 years ago,” Roberts said.
Roberts has been campaigning aggressively but says he holds no ill will for Branstad who has been stringing along a decision.
“I have no resentment, no bitterness whatsoever,” Roberts said. “I have the utmost respect for Gov. Branstad and consider him a friend.”
There’s a good reason for Roberts’ measured language where Branstad is concerned: Republicans are getting a very different message from Sioux City businessman Bob Vander Plaats, a social conservative who tosses jabs on the economy and budgetary issues but throws inspired haymakers on gay marriage, abortion and other issues that make for red meat in his party.
Should Vander Plaats successfully suit himself in the role of an Iowa version of Marco Rubio, Branstad, who would likely emerge from the ensuing donnybrook, may need to reassure an offended right flank. Selecting Roberts as lieutenant governor, with his brochure-friendly looks, genial bearing and camera-comfortable speaking style, may be a way to do that.
But first, there will be a fight.
Recently, Vander Plaats publicly raised the fact that Branstad appointed pro-choice Republican Joy Corning as his running mate in 1994. Conservatives also seem ready to make an issue of the initiation of state-sponsored gambling and two sales tax increases on the watch of the Branstad Administration. While serving as governor, Branstad also appointed the Iowa Supreme Court Justice, Mark Cady, who wrote the decision on same-sex marriage issued in April.
Vander Plaats said in an interview that he would make the marriage issue a top one during the campaign.
The 2010 race will be Vander Plaats’ third consecutive run for governor. He was in the last primary for a time before signing on as Republican Jim Nussle’s lieutenant governor candidate. Vander Plaats also ran for his party’s nomination in 2002.
While he’s been unsuccessful in three political runs, Vander Plaats built considerable political clout in the 2008 Iowa Caucuses as he chaired the campaign of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who won the first-in-the-nation Republican presidential nominating contest.
“I believe we have a great network throughout the entire state of Iowa,” Vander Plaats said. “We have really good name identification throughout the state of Iowa in particular with Republican voters.”
Vander Plaats said he senses the mood today among Iowans is one of wanting people in political office with “real life leadership” and “real life experience.”
“I think what they’re saying is we’d like to get back to a citizens’ form of government,” Vander Plaats said.
Team Vander Plaats will try to define the race as more than a mere election of governor. They’ll sprinkle it with celestial seasoning. It will be cast as a fight for nothing short of the GOP’s soul. And Vander Plaats will have company in that framing business.
In late October, Mike Demastus, a preacher at the Fort Des Moines Church of Christ, was part of a group of social conservatives who met with Branstad.
Demastus was hardly out the door before he ripped the former governor in a posting on his “master pastor” blog.
“I asked him if he would openly campaign against retaining those justices and speak out against their decision,” Demastus wrote. “He bristled at the thought. He said that privately he feels that way but he can not publicly do something like that. WEAK! I told him that I was concerned about Doug Gross’ influence in the campaign and his potential future administration. Doug Gross, in case you aren’t aware, spent lots of money polling people in the state to try to prove that social issues need to be put on the back burner if Republicans are going to win elections. Branstad just ignored my concerns and didn’t even respond to them. All in all, if Branstad wins reelection, he will simply be a Republican version of Culver. He is a politician through and through.”
What will be interesting to watch is how Branstad, a creature of pre-Internet politics, adapts to the 24/7 viciousness of public life today in which seemingly marginalized characters, fringe players, can have surprisingly outsized voices, if but ephemeral, in defining issues of the day. If they pick the right days, it can be devastating for a candidate.
Branstad, perhaps like no other Iowa politician of his generation, has been successful at defining himself to voters. That’s the coin of the realm in politics. He’ll also have network and nostalgia in his favor. What’s more, some people just like to be on the winning team. (Remember what some fathers and the Daley Machine told us, “Don’t back no losers, son.”)
“Branstad has a huge advantage over anybody else,” Schmidt says of the primary field. “They remember him as being from the good old days. They’re going to give him money. They’re going to work for him.”
In eastern Iowa, Tim Palmer, chairman of the Linn County Republican Central Committee, says Branstad is clearly a household name and a proven leader as a former governor and president of Des Moines University.
“That said, however, we don’t coronate our leaders, we elect them,” Palmer says. “Terry will once again find himself on the campaign trail practicing the art of retail politics. He’s proven in past campaigns he possesses formidable connections and skills. I suspect that after his formal announcement, Branstad will immediately peak in all the polls and then the real primary campaign begins with the field set after one or possibly two candidates step aside.”
Palmer is the founder and editor of a popular conservative blog, HawkeyeReview.com. The leading post on the blog last weekend was one from GOP gubernatorial candidate Christian Fong, an eastern Iowa businessman who made a name for himself in that part of the state through his involvement with flood recovery.
“The danger to the Branstad campaign is he peaks too early and should that occur we may have a real horse race,” said Palmer, in an interview.
Another prominent conservative blogger, Craig Robinson of The Iowa Republican.com, said in an interview that the primary shouldn’t be written off as over before it starts with Branstad officially in the field.
“I think we’re going to see a very spirited, hard-fought Republican primary all the way through June,” Robinson said.
Like others, Robinson agrees that the GOP is in the midst of an internal struggle for identity.
“I think the most vocal people in the state will be the ideologues,” says Robinson, the former political director of the Republican Party of Iowa.
If Branstad can drive a higher turnout in the primary it will be to his benefit, Robinson says.
Russ Cross, the recent chairman of the Story County Republican Party who counts himself as a Branstad supporter, warns the former governor about veering too far to the right in a primary.
“It hurt Romney. It hurt Giuliani,” says Cross, who worked for former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s presidential campaign in Iowa.
Both Giuliani and Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, suffered as their positioning wasn’t viewed as authentically conservative by Iowans. Listening to Romney explain his views on abortion was akin to hearing a speeder offer up a litany of ill-considered excuses for a heavy foot.
Cross, who said he will support Branstad, believes social conservatives will hold him accountable, to a degree, for having had a pro-choice running mate, even if it was more than a decade ago.
“I think it’s clearly remembered by folks as is his Supreme Court appointments, which led to this (same-sex marriage) decision,” Cross said.
What Branstad needs to avoid, Cross says, is provoking the following response from conservatives, “Ah, just what I thought. Another conservative Republican I can’t relate to.”
Branstad has proven he can handle that challenge by holding the base but reaching out with an economic message that has broad-based appeal, Cross said.
“That’s what he did before,” Cross said. “He very carefully handled social issues.”
In the end, Oman says, Iowa Republicans must remember that their state is a two-party one. That means a successful GOP candidate needs to appeal to independents and Democrats. Branstad can do that, chiefly by running as trusted hand, a statesman at a time when people are frightened about their economic futures, says Oman, who has spoken with Branstad about this race.
“I also believe he’ll run a very aggressive campaign, and he’ll appeal to a large swath of the Republican Party,” Oman says. CV
Caption: branstad: 07-04-09: Despite criticism, key Republicans feel Terry Branstad is conservative enough to win the party’s nomination. Photo by Douglas Burns
Caption: Roberts rod profile: Republican Gubernatorial candidate Rod Roberts says Republicans will not automatically give Branstad the nomination. Courtesy of Carroll Daily Times Hearld
Caption: vander plaats bob 09-06: Bob Vander Plaats has been unsuccessful in three political runs but still has considerable political clout. Photo by Douglas Burns
Caption: straw branstad: Former Gov. Terry Branstad chats with J.C. Watts, a past congressman and college football icon from Oklahoma, during the Iowa Republican Party’s presidential straw poll in Ames in the summer of 2007. Photo by Douglas Burns
Caption: vander plaats 3: Bob Vander Plaats will cast “a fight for nothing short of the GOP’s soul.” Courtesy of Carroll Daily Times Hearld
