Who will be Iowa's Comeback King?

Iowans will know early next month whether Terry Branstad or Chet Culver will claim the title of Comeback King.

Branstad, already Iowa's longest-serving governor with four terms from 1983 to 1999, is looking to rewrite history Nov. 2 if Iowans return him to Terrace Hill for four more years.

“I never imagined in my wildest dreams that I'd be in this position,” said Branstad, 63, a transplanted Lake Mills Republican. He retired a year ago as Des Moines University's 14th president to rekindle his dormant political career and take a shot at a fifth term. “But I never imagined we'd have a Gov. Chet Culver, either.”

For his part, Culver, 44, Iowa's 41st and current governor, is swimming upstream in a midterm election cycle where incumbents and Democrats appear to be out of style with voters. The West Des Moines Democrat is working feverishly to overcome a double-digit deficit in public opinion polls. National observers rank him as the “most-endangered” incumbent governor in 2012.

Having grown up the son of a politician and having taught high-school government classes, Culver said he gets it that the American democratic process works in cycles. He watched his father's 1964 U.S. House campaign benefit from a Democratic landslide, only to be swept out of the U.S. Senate 16 years later by a Republican tide that brought Ronald Reagan the presidency.

“There's a pendulum that swings back and forth. I'm just trying not to get hit by this one,” he said.

Culver and Branstad are ideological bookends, but with similar drives. Neither candidate has ever lost an election. Both have been forced to temper their goals because of significant challenges foisted upon them - Branstad with the farm-debt crisis and population exodus of the 1980s, followed by the Flood of 1993, and Culver with the state's worst natural disaster in 2008 and the deepest economic plunge since the Great Depression that still lingers.

“Tested by floods, tornadoes, pandemics and recession” is the way Culver described his first term.

Branstad is a farm boy

Branstad is the product of rural Iowa, having learned discipline, work ethic and a love for education growing up on his family's farm near Leland in northern Iowa. His early years included 4-H activities - years later he could still demonstrate his agricultural acumen by mimicking sheep calls at the Iowa State Fair - athletic participation that fueled his competitive juices and a budding interest in politics that blossomed into a passion.

“He had planted the seeds probably before he left grade school that he would serve somehow,” said Richard Schwarm, a longtime friend and former law partner.

Branstad's educational sojourn took him to the University of Iowa and later to Drake University, where he earned a law degree. That's also where he met Chris Johnson on a blind date; he proposed marriage to her five months later. The couple has three children and four grandchildren.

Before law school, Branstad served a stint as a military policeman at a North Carolina army base during the Vietnam War. After law school, he moved to Lake Mills to set up a law practice. The redrawing of political district lines after the 1970 census created an open House seat in Winnebago County and launched his political career.

After three terms as a state representative, he was elected as former Gov. Robert Ray's lieutenant governor. Four years later, in November 1982, he won his first term as governor with a campaign credo that he would never allow his opponent to outwork him.

“I only have one speed - overdrive,” said Branstad, which may explain his checkered record of speeding tickets and traffic mishaps that he has amassed over the years.

Public service as Culver family business

Culver took a strikingly different route to arrive at the same place.

As the son of former Iowa congressman and U.S. Sen. John Culver, Chet Culver said he had a front-row seat to the democratic process. Born while his dad represented northeast Iowa in the U.S. House, he learned a passion for public service, as well as witnessed the rigors of campaigning, the thrill of political victory and the agony of defeat.

“He grew up in a family where public service was kind of the expectation. It was the family business, and that rubs off,” said Sue Dvorsky, chairwoman of the Iowa Democratic Party and a fellow classroom teacher.

“His personal tenacity is best exemplified by the fact that he dove in again,” she said. “All over the country, incumbent governors in both parties did not run again. He knew what he was going to be up against.”

Culver attended high school in Maryland, where he was co-captain of a state champion basketball team. He earned a football scholarship at Virginia Tech, along with a political science degree. He also swam and played baseball and ice hockey, having been raised by parents who were athletically gifted and active.

During his stint at Virginia Tech, Culver spent a season worth of practices as a freshman red-shirt tight end, trying to block eventual NFL career sack-leader Bruce Smith - a hard-knock experience that he said prepared him for anything his political opponents can dish out.

The Culver family would spend summers in McGregor when Congress was in recess, and he often boasts of being “a proud fifth-generation Iowan” whose grandfather owned Culver Motors. Both maternal grandparents were public-school teachers in Cedar Rapids, a city he has visited more than 100 times in the past two years to help with flood recovery.

Culver returned to Iowa after graduating college in 1998. He spent stints working as a field staffer for the Iowa Democratic Party, as an associate of the late Ed Campbell's lobbying firm and as an investigator within former Iowa Attorney General Bonnie Campbell's office, while earning a master's degree in education at Drake by evening and weekend classes.

He also married Mariclare Thinnes, who calls him “the Big Lug” in campaign commercials, a great father to their two children and an intense competitor who “has the heart of a lion.”

Culver held teaching and coaching assignments at two Des Moines high schools. While trying to get his government-class students interested in politics, he was spurred by an embarrassingly low voter turnout in the 1996 election to run for secretary of state.

At age 33, he became Iowa's youngest holder of that office, where he served two terms before deciding to seek the governorship when Tom Vilsack stepped down after eight years.

Benchmarks of term

For benchmarks since he took office in January 2007, Culver points to raising the state minimum wage, raising teacher salaries to the national average, expanding preschool and health-care opportunities for children, expanding renewable-energy production, dealing with flood recovery in the midst of a national recession and engineering one of the largest infrastructure upgrades in Iowa since the Depression.

State Treasurer Mike Fitzgerald, a fellow Democrat, said Culver's camp probably has been deficient in effectively communicating what's been accomplished in keeping the state's budget balanced, maintaining a sizable cash reserve, achieving an AAA credit rating and piling up favorable national rankings.

Most recently, Iowa was ranked the third-best-run state in the country in a 24/7 Wall St. study and the eighth-fastest-growing economy by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

“We're doing a lot of things right, and we're making progress,” Culver said. “Why would you want to fire the coach? You're third in the nation. Most coaches would get an extension; they'd get a raise.”

Fitzgerald said it's interesting that the governor took the extraordinary step of slashing state spending by 10 percent in response to a recession-driven dive in tax collections and he's taken heat from Republicans for it.

“The guy in New Jersey does it, and it's like the second coming,” Fitzgerald said.

Jim Larew, an Iowa City attorney who serves as Culver's chief of staff, said the governor's drive, determination and compassion have shown through as he has dealt with the disasters that beset the state.

“He's clearly the leader on the field. He is instinctively drawn into the heart of the battle,” Larew said. “His competitive streak showed through in going after federal money. The success there isn't because it came on the first ask. He's been going eyeball to eyeball with Cabinet secretaries and not taking ‘no' for an answer. He does it diplomatically for sure, but he's been extraordinarily successful.”

Branstad in it for long haul

Branstad counters that Culver has been “erratic, reckless and irresponsible” in managing the state, a problem so significant it persuaded him to come out of retirement and give up a comfortable salary to re-enter the political arena.

Former law partner Schwarm said Branstad made the decision to run - one that drew a less-than-enthusiastic response from his wife, Chris - after other prospective Republicans declined for a variety of reasons.

“I think somebody probably jokingly said to him, ‘Well, maybe you ought to consider it,' ” Schwarm said, “and the first time he laughed, and the second time he laughed, and the fifth time he laughed, but over a period of months he started to think, ‘Well, maybe it should be me.'

“But it certainly didn't start out that way. It just gradually evolved.”

Branstad has lost

14 pounds since he began his political run and said he has adopted healthier habits since he underwent an elective medical procedure in May to treat a partially blocked artery in his heart. He suffered a heart attack in December 2000.

Branstad's long-range goals - for creating jobs, increasing personal income levels, reducing corporate and commercial property tax burdens, and improving education - may take more than four years to accomplish.

“He recognized when he started the process that there were serious problems that were going to require difficult solutions,” Schwarm said. “Where we're at probably can't be done in less than five years, and it may take more than that. It wouldn't shock me if he runs and gets elected for one term, and it wouldn't shock me if he runs and decides it will take two.”