Culvers preparing to move back into the private sector

DES MOINES - Mari Culver is making the transition from first lady of Iowa to private citizen.

Having been issued an eviction order of sorts by Iowa voters who chose Republican Terry Branstad over her husband, Democratic Gov. Chet Culver, in last month's election, the Culvers have begun the process of 'the big move' to relocate their four-member household out of the Terrace Hill mansion and back to their 'real house' in West Des Moines.

'It's hard to move out of Terrace Hill. Not just sentimentally, but you tend to accumulate a lot of things,' said Culver, who effectively is doing her spring cleaning during the winter. 'I'm making my Goodwill piles and I'm also getting ready for Christmas. We've got a tree but I don't have it decorated yet.' Culver said she is busy sorting through the things the couple has amassed during their travels around Iowa and the nation the past four years.

With the hard-fought campaign in the rearview mirror, the Culvers are finishing out the final weeks of a four-year term that produced 'some really good, important things' for the state even though they had hoped for additional time to accomplish even more, she said.

'Chet and I are both competitive people. Certainly, we like to win, but we're fine. Nobody died, and everybody's got their health. The voters went a different direction and, when that happens, when there's a big swing in the pendulum like that, someday it will swing back.

But, that's politics, that's the way it goes,' Culver said in an interview after a recent tree-lighting ceremony at the Capitol.

'You just move on. You get all that rhetoric out of your head. The voters chose someone else and that's their prerogative,' she said. 'We're good sports.' Culver, a mother of two who focused on issues related to shelters for women and children during her time as first lady, said she expects she'll return to practicing law as a private attorney and easily adjust to living outside of the public spotlight again.

'It will be nice to make money. That's never a bad thing,' she said. Her husband has expressed interest in a future public or private position related to the renewable energy industry or possibly a post in the Obama administration. But Culver said she expected they would remain in Iowa.