Branstad, Culver highlight differences

AMES – Newly elected GOP gubernatorial nominee Terry Branstad told an Iowa business group Wednesday that “help is on the way” in their defensive efforts to block Democrats' “job-killing” agenda while Gov. Chet Culver pledged to fight his GOP rival's plan to move the state backwards.

The one thing Branstad and Culver agreed on was that Iowa voters would have a clear choice when they return to the voting booths on Nov. 2.

“I am excited to be back in the arena and I can say yesterday was a thrilling day,” Branstad told attendees at an Iowa Association of Business & Industry conference.

Branstad, 63, of rural Boone, who previously served as governor from 1983 to 1999, scored a decisive victory in Tuesday's three-way GOP primary election by polling 50.4 percent of the Republicans who posted the party's highest turnout since 2002 with more than 227,000 ballots cast. He outpaced Bob Vander Plaats, 47, a Sioux City business consultant making his third bid to become governor who garnered 40.9 percent support, while five-term state Rep. Rod Roberts finished third with 8.8 percent in his first bid for statewide office.

In his first public appearance since claiming his party's nomination for governor, Branstad touted his plans to create 200,000 jobs, boost Iowans' income by 25 percent, shrink state government by 15 percent, return Iowa's education system to world-class status, and halt what he called Culver's mismanagement of state finances and borrowing spree.

Democratic efforts to reshape labor laws in favor of unions, repeal federal deductibility for state taxpayers and do nothing to ease commercial property tax burdens – all of those ideas are dead when I become governor,” Branstad told ABI members.

“I can tell you help is on the way. Change is on the way,” he said.

Earlier in the day, Culver and his wife, Mari, stopped by a Des Moines preschool to highlight progress the state has made to expand access to 4-year-olds and to warn that Branstad was on record during the GOP primary of reversing the state's involvement in early-childhood education.

“(Iowa voters) need to know that Terry Branstad is on the record saying he wants to pull as much as $100 million in funding for these preschools,” he said. “If he does that, these preschools will not survive. They will shut down. To add insult to injury, he wants to take that $100 million and give it away to out-of-state corporations in the form of a corporate income tax cut.”

Culver said Branstad's stance during the just-completed primary also indicated he would turn the clock back on civil rights, worker's rights and women's rights if he succeeds in thwarting Culver's re-election bid. However, he said he was confident he will win a second term if Iowans understand the choice they will face in November. He also said Branstad has been outright lying in telling Iowans the state's surplus is gone when there are actually $325 million in reserve.

“Terry Branstad spent millions running ads, making untrue and false attacks on my record all the while telling Iowans that he is a radical, right-wing Republican,” Culver said in a post-primary statement. “He wants to take us backwards by repealing pre-school education and our historic investments into Iowa's infrastructure and even reversing our progress on civil rights, women's rights and stem-cell research.”

Branstad said what he wants to do is halt the parade of scandals plaguing the Culver-Judge administration, end the “revolving door” of people moving in and out of the governor's office and key state agency posts, and return honesty, openness and transparency to state government.

“This is starting to sound like Illinois,” he said.

Sen. Jack Hatch, D-Des Moines, who attended the preschool event with the Culvers, said the governor was smart to point up differences early in the race before Branstad tries to move toward the center to expand his appeal to Iowa voters.

“I think you're going to have to watch whether or not Gov. Branstad is going to be true to what he said in the primary or whether he flip-flops to provide a greater message to a greater constituency,” Hatch said.

During his weekly teleconference with Iowa reporters, U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said he believes Branstad will be the next governor of Iowa.

 “Compared to what has happened now to the budget in the last two to three years, he was a fiscal conservative even though he did increase taxes and, you know, with inflation you spend more, but he left a big, big surplus when he left office and it's gone now,” Grassley said. “So I think you'll have a return to fiscal sanity.”

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