Corbett cooks up a campaign, sans ‘raw, red meat’

Usually, cooking classes at NewBo City Market in Cedar Rapids happen indoors. But on Tuesday evening, 200-plus folks got their culinary lesson on the front lawn in the late-day sun.

The chef? Cedar Rapids Mayor Ron Corbett.

'I don't really like our politics today. It seems pretty toxic to me,” Corbett said as he announced his candidacy for the Republican gubernatorial nomination. He blamed the cooks, in this case our candidates, for politics' bitter flavor.

'I'm not going to be a raw, red-meat candidate. If you want someone like that to be your governor, you need to go to a different rally,” Corbett told the crowd.

'You see, if you eat too much raw, red meat, what happens? You get sick. And that's what's happened to our political system, it's sick. You gotta cook the meat, right? I'm a meat lover. You talk to any good backyard barbecuer, they'll tell you. You gotta cook the meat … We've got to focus on an honest assessment of our policies,” Corbett said.

This came as a relief to the crowd, which had just devoured free hamburgers.

Corbett is jumping head first into the toxic stew. At a moment when our politics is trench warfare between tribes, Corbett says he's not big on labels. In an era of alternative facts, Corbett says he'll deliver honest assessments. Instead of serving the slabs of outrage hungry, angry partisans crave, Corbett is serving policy vegetables they may not like.

Bon appetit. And good luck with that, chef.

'We have a water quality crisis in our state,” Corbett said, likely becoming the first GOP candidate for governor in Iowa history to describe the Gulf of Mexico's 'dead zone” in his announcement speech, and advocate a tax increase to pay for cutting pollution.

With Republicans already in control at the Statehouse, he called for new leaders and new ideas. Corbett criticized shortsighted budgeting practices and the failure to address Iowa's teetering individual health insurance market, its struggling mental health system and its sliding public schools. He says tax reform is needed, but so is bipartisan cooperation to make it lasting.

'You see, we've come to the close of the Branstad era,” Corbett said.

Trouble is, former Gov. Terry Branstad's handpicked heir, Gov. Kim Reynolds, is in the GOP race and is heavily favored to crush Corbett in 2018. The Branstad political machine, its allies in the GOP establishment and its hefty donor base beg to differ. Nothing's over until they say it is.

Honest assessment? The primary won't be about new ideas. It will be about Reynolds and allied groups using their massive financial advantage to build her up and tear Corbett down. The straight-shooting ideas guy will become a traffic camera-wielding big brother and union sympathizer.

That's too bad, because there's a cup of nutritious sanity in Corbett's insistence that Republicans more carefully assess the broader, long-term effects of their policies and not swiftly steamroll opposition just because they can. It's a recipe for the empty calories of hollow, fleeting victory.

But I see no evidence his party's base is in any mood to swallow it. In our current climate, for candidates insisting on well-done governing, victories will be exceedingly rare.

l Comments: (319) 398-8262; todd.dorman@thegazette.com