Voter enthusiasm lifts GOP’s hopes of congressional wins

IOWA CITY - Gov. Terry Branstad was introduced at an Iowa City campaign rally at as the quarterback of Iowa Republicans' election team.

Branstad, who is looking to extend his undefeated record to include an unprecedented sixth term, is also the team's cheerleader.

'We've got a phenomenal group of hardworking people who really want to serve the people of Iowa,” Branstad said about the slate of candidate who joined him at the at the Johnson County GOP headquarters.

'Republicans are energized. They're excited. This is Johnson County, the most Democratic county in the state, but you can just sense it,” Branstad said about the rally that drew about 100 people. 'We saw it in Cedar Rapids the other night. We saw it in Dubuque. We saw it in Cedar Falls. I'm seeing and sensing it across the state of Iowa.”

He gives credit to state Sen. Joni Ernst who, he said, 'came out of nowhere” to leading the race for the first open Iowa U.S. Senate seat since 1968.

'She was totally unknown a year ago, but because of her Iowa values and because of her record of a lot of responsibility and working hard she has helped us get Iowa on the right track,” the governor said.

Voters in northeast Iowa also are excited about the prospects of electing Dubuque businessman Rod Blum to succeed Ernst's opponent, 1st District Rep. Bruce Braley.

'I think there is a real possibility that could happen,” he said about Blum's prospects of defeating former speaker of the Iowa House, Rep. Pat Murphy, also of Dubuque.

'No one would have ever predicted that we could beat Braley and take his district, but I think that can happen,” Branstad predicted.

Campaigning alongside his lieutenant governor, Kim Reynolds, Ernst, 2nd District challenger Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Auditor Mary Mosiman, Branstad joked that the GOP slate was his 'war for women.”

Republicans see a real possibility of making Ernst the first Iowa woman and the first female combat veteran elected to the Senate, and are hoping Miller-Meeks is the first Iowa woman elected to the U.S. House.

Iowa is at a crossroads of what Ernst calls the 'Iowa Way” and the 'Washington Way.” Ernst predicted voters will choose the 'Iowa Way” of less government, lower spending, stronger national security and quality, affordable health care.

'Iowans are pushing back on President Barack Obama and Bruce Braley,” she said. 'We need a new direction.”

'We are going to make a difference,” Ernst promised.

Blum sounded a similar themes while in Cedar Rapids Monday afternoon.

'People are tired of what's going on in Washington, tired of the hyperpartisan politics and the career politicians,” Blum said. 'I represent something outside the political class.”

Branstad acknowledged that the enthusiasm he's seeing at campaign stops doesn't guarantee victory. But it helps, he said.

'It's certainly important because it generates involvement and gets people to do that one more thing - make that additional call, drag a friend of neighbor who otherwise wouldn't have voted to vote,” he said.

He also believes that history is on the GOP's side. Typically, the president's party loses congressional seats in the sixth year of a two-term presidency.

If Republicans are energized, enthused and working together as a team, attorney general candidate Adam Gregg said Democrats appear to doing the opposite.

'Are they traveling together? Are they working together,” he asked about Democrats. 'Heck no. They don't want to have anything to do with one another. They're pointing fingers at each another. They're throwing each other under the bus. They can't even get each other's names right.”

Like the other candidates, Gregg, who faces 32-year incumbent Democrat Tom Miller, asked supporters to keep up their work through 9 p.m. Tuesday when the polls close.

'Some of us are going to win in a blowout,” he said looking at Branstad. 'Some of us are hoping to win with a field goal going through the uprights as time expires.”