Not only was asking Secretary of Agriculture Patty Judge to serve as his running mate premature, a top-ranking state official told us, but it was also, quite possibly, one of "the worst" choices Chet Culver could have made in his bid to become Iowa governor. Our source, who has yet to back a candidate, says that in an attempt to get an even bigger numbers boost and distract big-money types regarding candidate Mike Blouin's "huge" union endorsements last week (IBEW Union and the Quad City and Waterloo Building Trades), Culver "made a bad misstep." "And I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why," he said. "Chet has all this momentum, he sounds better than ever before, Mike is having trouble raising money and still has no message, and then this. It makes no sense." According to our source, Judge cannot raise money, has a caustic relationship with legislators (they call her "Patty the Pig" because she is "bought and paid for" by big corporate farms interests) and has a "shabby" record that doesn't match her rhetoric. "The Register wrote how she is aligned with Culver on going after Blouin on being pro-life, but if they bothered to have their reporters dig a little into her Senate record, they'd see that couldn't be further from the truth," this person said. "Add to it that Culver once lobbied for IBP and is pro-death penalty, and this is starting to look like a Republican ticket, not the one that can carry on the Vilsack-Pedersen legacy, which is too bad, because Blouin can't beat Jim Nussle, only Chet can." Rumors abound that Culver agreed to pay off Judge's campaign debt if she stepped down and Judge upped the ante by insisting on being his number two. But a cynical Blouin-backer told us that, "We couldn't have picked a better ticket to run against."

We're still a few weeks from learning what the governor's taskforce has to say about the TouchPlay debate, and, depending on who you talk to, the machines will either be gone in a month or they'll be regulated better. One thing is for certain, though, Gov. Vilsack himself cannot get far enough away from the controversy surrounding the machines. Vilsack, you'll recall, helped lead the charge to get Iowa Lottery CEO Ed Stanek to boost the state's bottom line because expanded gambling would likely cause lottery revenues to decrease. And now that the masses are screaming for blood, politicians who were in the loop regarding the machines are running away from them. "The governor has done a good job insulating himself," said a top pol. "He's come up with reasonable people (for the taskforce) who will likely make a reasonable recommendation to the Legislature and we'll see where it goes. But it's kind of up to us to fix it." A source close to the governor called legislators who claim that Stanek is not on the up-and-up "goddamn liars" and insisted that the governor doesn't need to run away from anything because there are simple solutions to fix the problem. "No one knew this was going to take off like this. It was an experiment and (Stanek) did exactly what he was asked to do: find a way to keep the state in the game," our source said. "Now we have people who say they were never shown what the machines were going to look like, giving knee-jerk reactions to the anti-gaming folks, saying we should pull the plug. Well, here's a newsflash: we can't." Sen. Jack Kibbie's proposal to pull the machines after 30 days ignores the fact that both the lottery and the state would be liable for tens of millions of dollars poured into the system by private business, this person said. "And while you guys are right that sentiment seems to be against it, the situation is taking on a very urban-versus-rural theme, with rural warming up to the machines and their legislators listening." Vilsack, like many other politicians, has been hearing about it from anybody and everybody, but thinks he can ride out the storm, we are told. "Everyone has a theory on what will happen, and everyone is wrong," we're told. "And this can be one of those 'you read it here first' deals. The governor's taskforce will come back with a recommendation to let the existing ones and the ones in the pipeline remain but no more, mute them, throw a fence around them, make it necessary to swipe an ID to play and then phase them all out completely in five to seven years. That way the anti-gambling people have their restrictions, the Bill Krauses get money back on their investments and then some, and the gaming industry has a timeline they can point to when they will have the field all to themselves again. And the governor, most importantly, won't get his uniform muddy."

The state Capitol is abuzz with pending ethics complaints against Sen. Jeff Lamberti. A Senate insider tells us that Lamberti will be the subject of several conflict-of-interest complaints regarding ethanol, as well as the TouchPlay controversy mentioned above. As we reported first, Casey's General Stores has approximately 1,000 Touch-Play machines on order today and Lamberti's silence on the Touch-Play video moratorium is "deafening," we're told. Lamberti also voted in the minority with his wealthy family interests in the convenience store chain and against expanding ethanol throughout the state.

Meanwhile, Lamberti's congressional opponent, incumbent Leonard Boswell, was spotted at a recent Urbandale Chamber of Commerce meeting and, we're told, "He's obviously on the mend, but he looks like death warmed over."

Staci Appel should prove to be the cherry on top of what is looking like an overwhelming majority in next year's Iowa Senate for Democrats. Appel was slated to run against Republican Doug Shull, but Shull dropped out of the race to run for a seat in the Iowa House.

From the bloggers come these tidbits: From a variety of sources, the latest on Democratic presidential comings-and-goings in the great state of Iowa. The big news: Lou Susman, one of the chief national fundraisers for Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry's '04 presidential bid, has signed on to be a senior adviser for Vilsack's Heartland PAC. Susman might also become the PAC's national finance chair. Heartland PAC does not play in federal races and therefore accepts "soft" money. Vilsack's political minders, including some who help with his national aspirations, spend lots of time at the Iowa Democratic Party these days, and rightfully so: If a GOPer replaces Vilsack as gov or if Dems lose seats down-ballot, Vilsack's presidential aspirations might be nipped in the bud. Patrick Dillon, the young ex-John Edwards Iowa press staffer who is managing Culver's gubernatorial campaign, is said to be first in line to become Edwards' Iowa state director if Edwards runs for president. Ex-Iowa Democratic Party Executive Director Jean Hessberg and Ron Parker, current chief of staff Iowa Senate Democrats, are being courted both by advisers to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) and Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN).

And finally, the latest word is that the $21 million spent to date for the Des Moines Public Schools Central Kitchen (Colonial Bread Building) is not enough (again). New cracks in the floor will require another large infusion of repair cash, while the general response to the food being carted around town to the schools seems to be that it is not as good as what once was available on site. CV

Comment on this story | Return to top