Culver on Mistakes

The leading candidates for Iowa governor, Gov. Chet Culver and Terry Branstad, each spent an hour or so with our editorial board this week.

I'm transcribing a few portions I think are interesting and will be posting them on the blog over the next couple of days.

Here's a segment of Tuesaday's meeting with Culver when he was asked what he's learned from his mistakes in office. His campaign ran a TV ad this fall conceding mistakes while arguing that learning from missteps made him a better governor.

Q – One of the themes of your campaign has been `we've made some mistakes but we learned from them.' What have you learned?

“Well, we've learned the importance of communicating with the people of Iowa. I-JOBS for example. Polls will show that people didn't feel as though we did a good enough job of explaining why we moved forward with it. I focused much of my time and energy on the legislative process to secure the funding, to get the legislation enacted, to move forward on these 1,700 projects.

“Mayors get it. Local economic development people get it, in terms of investing in infrastructure and why that's so important.

“And so I think one thing we have to do a better job of in the future is communicating directly with the people of Iowa in terms of our legislative agenda, why are we proposing certain legislation, who does it benefit, to make that argument in advance. We, for whatever reason, could have done a better job at that.”

Q – What about oversight? That seemed to be the problem with the film tax credit, alcoholic beverages and some of those issues.

“Well, I think with any big organization, and, again, you're talking about a $14 billion organization in terms of the state budget when you factor in all the different federal funds, etc. There's always going to be some challenges. Um, and, I think the real question is how do you respond to those problems when they are discovered.

“And in the case of alcohol beverage and in the case of the film office, we did move quickly. In the case of economic development, I replaced a number of individuals. I brought in one of the most respected business leaders in our state, Fred Hubbell, to be the interim director. We found a fantastic permanent director in Brett Mills, and we haven't missed a beat. And that's why we've had this economic record in terms of partnering with these 267 companies who've agreed to invest the $5.3 billion and help create 20,000 new jobs.

“But, having said that, it is critically important to make sure we have that oversight and the communication to avoid those situations in the future. But every governor is going to have challenges with respect to their departments and state agencies.

“Terry Branstad had 20 different incidents in 12 different agencies when he was governor. One difference in our leadership style and our approach is that I've acknowledged the fact that some mistakes were made and that I'm a better governor because of those challenges. In the case of Terry Branstad, he still hasn't wanted to talk much about the 20 different problems he had in 12 different agencies. And I think that says a lot about our governing and our leadership styles.

Q- So the mistakes have just been in communicating? They haven't been in substance?

“I think primarily just not doing an effective job in terms of, in some cases, communicating exactly what we wanted to do. And the public polling has showed that.“I think the point is, I think the larger point here, is that I'm human like everybody else and we make some mistakes. And we learn from them. And so we're acknowledging the fact that we haven't batted a thousand, never have and never will. But we are focused on getting the job done every single day. We have made very good decisions and we are moving this state forward.”