Steve King won't enter race for Iowa governor

By James Q. Lynch

The Gazette

Western Iowa Rep. Steve King won't be a candidate for governor.

King, a four-term conservative Republican in Iowa's 5

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District, announced this morning that he will take a pass on the governor race and instead concentrate on continuing his work in Congress.

“I have decided I can be of better service as a member of Congress than as a candidate for governor,” King said, adding “barring unforeseeable and dramatic events, I will not be a candidate for governor in 2010,” King said in a statement released this morning.

In announcing his decision, King, who won 60 percent of the vote in a three-way race and carried all 32 counties of the 5

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District in 2008, said the challenges facing Iowa are staggering.

“Iowa is drowning in a pool of nearly a billion dollars of red ink,” he said. “Seven activist supreme court judges have defied the will of Iowans while our state's taxes and regulations swallow so much production Iowa is at a competitive disadvantage in the Midwest and nationally.

“We are a rich state with poor leadership,” King continued. “Iowa needs a competent governor who will stick to principle and put us back on a prosperous and family friendly path.”

He's encouraged that “good candidates are stepping up to the governor's race.”

As bad as Iowa's situation is, the nation's is in even worse shape, King said, and ““I find myself well positioned to continue to effectively oppose the hard leftward lurch of the Pelosi Congress.”

“Seven hundred billion in TARP funding, $787 billion in stimulus spending, the nationalization of three large investment banks, AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Chrysler and General Motors all swallow up part of the free market system,” King said. “All of which I have opposed and all of which could be reversed by the signature of the next president.”

However, the passage in the House of cap-and-trade followed by a strong Obama effort to pass a national health care act while faced with the likelihood of an attempt to pass a comprehensive amnesty bill “are permanent decisions that, in my estimation, can never be effectively reversed,” King said. “America is on the brink of permanent transformation into the abyss far to the left of liberalism.”

King has emerged as a vocal conservative critic of President Obama's policies, ranked in the top five by U.S. News and World Report.

He is the chairman of the Conservative Opportunity Society, an organization formed by Newt Gingrich and others credited with producing the core ideals that won the majority for Republicans in the House in 1994. King serves on the Agriculture, Small Business, and Judiciary Committees.