PROFILE: Branstad hopes for sixth term as Iowa's governor

The harder you work, the luckier you get could be Terry Branstad's motto.

'I'm a big believer in that,' he said. '…

I think both the farm work and being involved in high school athletics taught me to have a strong work ethic and to be very focused on doing the job.'

Born to a Norwegian-American Lutheran farm family in Leland near the Minnesota border, Branstad grew up with that strong work ethic, which he learned from his father, Edward, and with a great appreciation for education and the doors that it could open, which he got from his mother, Rita.

'When I was a kid, I had a lot of responsibility at an early age,' recalled Branstad, who attended school in Leland and later Forest City where he graduated from high school.

'We didn't have a lot of resources. We had to work hard. I had a lot of chores.'

He drove a tractor pulling an oat seeder when he was a kindergartner, baled hay as part of their custom-haying operation and worked long hours in the fields.

Contributed photo of Gov. Terry Branstad on a tractor.

During tough economic times for the family, his parents left home at 4 a.m. to commute to Albert Lea, Minn., where they worked packing plant jobs. That left Terry to watch after his younger brother and take care of 120 ewes having lambs before heading to school.

During his high school years, he played football and lettered in baseball for three years.

Rich Schwarm, a law partner with Branstad for eight years in Lake Mills, said he could forecast a political future when he first met Branstad, back when he was a sophomore College Republican at Morningside College in Sioux City and Branstad was a senior at the University of Iowa pursuing a double major in political science and sociology.

'Terry was always a candidate, almost going back to fifth grade I think is when he first talked about running for governor,' Schwarm recalled.

Branstad had been raised as a Democrat but gravitated to the conservative wing as a 'Goldwater Democrat' in 1964. However, he crossed over the partisan divide during his time in college, the two years he spent in the U.S. Army as a military policeman, until 1971, and when he headed to Drake Law School.

During the Vietnam War period, Branstad was drafted into the U.S. Army out of college, in September 1969. He scored well on an aptitude test, thanks to his course work in criminology, and that landed him in military police school and then a stint at Fort Bragg in North Carolina as a military police officer and as a driver for the provost marshal.

As anti-war demonstrations escalated, Branstad's police unit was assigned to guard Arlington National Cemetery and the Pentagon, and arrested actress Jane Fonda when she illegally came on the post at Fort Bragg.

'When you're in the military, you go where they send you,' he recalled. 'I didn't get sent to Vietnam. I had some friends that did. I was ready and willing to go if that had been the case, but we had plenty of action right there at Fort Bragg.'

He noted that several members of his police unit were killed or wounded in the line of duty.

POLITICAL CAREER

About the time Branstad returned to Iowa, the state's reapportionment process after the 1970 election had redrawn the legislative boundaries and left Winnebago County with an open Iowa House seat. Branstad threw his hat in the ring and divided his time between campaigning and law school classes.

'He's such a driven person,' said his wife, Chris, who met Terry on a blind date for Drake's homecoming in October 1971. 'He would drive down to Des Moines for law school and then drive back at night to campaign. He did that three days a week, like gee whiz.

'He just got this political bug I think probably in about eighth grade or sixth grade or something like that, and it just kind of drove him pretty much for the rest of his life,' she added.

During that whirlwind time, Branstad got engaged and then married, became a Catholic, won election as a state representative in 1972, and bought a share of a law practice in Lake Mills. At the firm, he and Schwarm handled real estate, probate, marriage dissolution, estate planning and some court-appointed criminal law — including a case in which one of Branstad's clients jumped from a second-story window to escape from custody at the county courthouse in Forest City, only to be apprehended later.

Many of the battles Branstad fought in the ensuing years were in the political arena as a state representative for three terms and then, when the opportunity presented itself in 1978, as Iowa's 41st lieutenant governor and presiding officer of the Senate during Gov. Robert Ray's final four years in office.

When Ray decided in 1982 to step down after 14 years as Iowa's then-longest-serving governor, Branstad landed the party's nomination and defeated Democrat Roxanne Conlin in a feisty general election to become, at age 36, the youngest chief executive in Iowa's history.

'He loves people and he really cares about what he's doing,' Schwarm said. 'Some folks will like the governing process, some will like the campaigning. Most don't like both. He does.'

During the next 16 years, Branstad led the state through one of its toughest economic periods — the farm debt crisis in the mid-1980s. He also stressed education, economic development and fiscal responsibility while championing conservative causes — although he twice vetoed a state lottery before eventually signing it.

Contributed photo of Gov. Terry Branstad in the state legislature.

He subsequently ushered in an expansive period of casino gambling that began in 1989 when he signed legislation legalizing riverboat gambling in Iowa.

He fought a court battle with the state's largest employees' union over a salary bill won via binding arbitration, forged budget and spending reforms that included a sales tax increase, survived a tough primary challenge by former state Rep. Fred Grandy and left office in 1999 with an unprecedented $900 million surplus.

During his first four terms, he also served as chairman of the National Governors Association and led the Education Commission of the States.

David Roederer, Branstad's current budget director as head of the Iowa Department of Management and former legislative liaison for the governor characterized Branstad as 'a real student of government' and a master salesman who 'truly believes what he's selling,' whether it's on foreign trade missions, sell Iowa trips or pushing legislative proposals.

'He doesn't just participate in it, but he also understands it and makes the connections how one factor fits into another factor,' Roederer said.

LEGACY, PART TWO

After he left office in 1999, journalists wrote about Branstad's legacy as Iowa's longest-serving governor and Branstad founded a private consulting business, joined a law partnership, served as a financial adviser and, in August 2003, agreed to become president of Des Moines University.

However, Republicans became dissatisfied with the direction Iowa was taking under the 12-year leadership of Democratic Govs. Tom Vilsack and Chet Culver and formed a group to find a Republican challenger who could take on Culver.

'After a while when the process gradually evolved, (Branstad) said, 'Well, you're looking for somebody like me. I'm like me.' We say, 'Yeah, but you paid your dues, you've got a great job,'' Schwarm recalled.

'He was helpful in trying to recruit somebody like him. 'Like him' tended to end up being him.'

Among the chief naysayers urging Branstad not to come out of political retirement was his wife, Chris, who told him he was 'crazy' to give up a good job with a financial package paying nearly $400,000 a year to return to a job with a yearly salary of $130,000 and a lot of criticism that often goes with it.

'I was reluctant. I never envisioned that happening — ever …

,' she said.

Returning to Terrace Hill, the governor's residence, was 'just weird,' Chris Branstad said.

'To be here for 16 years and then leave and kind of get on with your life, that first day when we came back, you just walk around here and say, 'Oh, my gosh,' really it was like coming back home because we had been here for so long.'

Des Moines real estate magnate and perennial Democratic contributor Bill Knapp has thrown in with the Branstad camp this time around. Knapp said he has contributed to Branstad's 2014 re-election bid because the Republican governor is doing a good job.

'I don't think there's anyone that cares more about the state than Terry does,' Knapp said on a recent IPTV 'Iowa Press' show. '… I'm a Democrat, but I always go for the people that I think could do a good job, and I don't know of anyone that's probably ever been governor that's done a much better job than he has.'

Schwarm said he was not surprised that Branstad became governor, but he was surprised that he became a close associate of now-Chinese President Xi, who developed a friendship with the Iowa governor as a lower-level aide in a delegation that visited Iowa in 1985.

Another thing that does not surprise Schwarm is that Branstad is running for a sixth term, which, if successful, will make him the longest-serving governor in U.S. history by any measure. Branstad — himself a history buff — ranks as the longest-serving governor under the U.S. Constitution, but former New York Gov. George Clinton is the longest-serving governor in U.S. history, with 21 years in office.

'I've got a feeling that if I did work with the longest-serving governor in the history of the United States that I probably won't get any more fuel-saver discount than anybody else. We don't look at it that way,' said Roederer in joining Branstad in downplaying the possible distinction that Branstad said would be a historical footnote to the more important measure of what he accomplishes while in office.

Schwarm chuckled that Branstad said in 2010 that he would come back for one term, get the state in order and probably not run again.

'I said, 'I know you believe that, but I don't. I think if your health is there, I can't imagine you not running for at least a second term,' and I said, 'I'm not even going to stop at that.' So, no, it does not surprise me at all. I assumed that he probably would once he got the opportunity,' Schwarm said.

'From my point of view, I hope he has another four years and, who knows, he hasn't said beyond that. He hasn't ruled it totally out.'

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