Ailes advised Branstad in two campaigns

Before he created Fox News, Roger Ailes advised GOP politicians, including Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush - and Terry Branstad.

In his second and third campaigns for the Iowa governorship - in 1986 and 1990 - Branstad turned to Ailes for media advice. At last year's Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Branstad reminisced about those days.

'I used to go into his studio in New York to practice. He had what he called the pepper drill,” Branstad recalled. 'He'd put you at a podium with a microphone, he'd video it and ask you all the toughest, meanest questions there were. Then he'd play it back and freeze-frame it. He's show you your body language, your facial expressions. I learned a lot about that. It's not only what you say.”

Ailes taught him to never repeat an accusation contained in a question. And always gesture with an open hand, not a closed fist. 'The signal that it sends is just more positive,” Branstad said.

It was Ailes, Branstad said, who came up with the 'Junk Bond Junkins” nickname for his 1986 opponent, Senate Majority Leader Lowell Junkins.

'He did the commercial, the Junkins junk bond plan. That was a killer ad,” Branstad recalled.

Branstad beat Junkins by nearly 36,000 votes in 1986, and then beat former speaker of the state House Don Avenson by more than 200,000 votes in 1990.

Thursday, after news of Ailes' death was reported, the governor's office issued a statement that said, in part, Ailes was 'the best media consultant Gov. Branstad had ever worked with.”

Todd Dorman and Rod Boshart of The Gazette contributed to this report.