Campaigning for Clinton in Carroll, Vilsack Seeks to Return Favor

Former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack Thursday helped formally open Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign office in Carroll with about two dozen Democrats, most of them supporters of the New York senator.

“The senator is by far in my view the most experienced person running for office,” Vilsack told Iowa Independent and the La Prensa newspaper before the event. “Having been in the White House for eight years she knows precisely the challenges this country faces and how to get about fixing them.”

In the hour-long campaign stop at Clinton’s office at 514 N. Court Street (the McNabb Building), Vilsack’s intention was to stoke the base as most there clearly were sold on Clinton’s credentials.

“It’s 2 for 1,” said former State Rep. Rep. Jim Drees of Manning. “You can’t beat experience. She’ll be good.”

Like Drees, veteran agri-businessman and long-time St. Anthony Regional Hospital board member and advocate Urban Knobbe of Carroll sees Clinton’s candidacy as something of double-team venture.

“I think she’s the best candidate,” Knobbe said. “Two for one is good odds.”

In the newspaper interview, Vilsack, who served as Iowa’s governor from 1999 until January, said Clinton is the best-prepared to elevate America’s stature in the world. Having visited 82 different countries, she can hit the ground running with foreign policy, he said.

“Because of her travels around the world as a senator and first lady, there is a great deal of confidence in her ability to restore America’s place in the world,” Vilsack said. “She says often that the day after she’s elected she intends to send people of great respect, including her husband, around the world to various parts of the world to suggest the days of cowboy diplomacy, which has been the hallmark of this current administration, are over. And I think that will do a lot to send a message to the world.”

Vilsack has said he’d go “to Hell and back” for Clinton. The reason: personal loyalty, said the former governor, who shocked many Iowans with his ascendency from a little known state senator to Terrace Hill resident.

“She was only one of a couple of people nationally who paid any attention to my race (for governor),” Vilsack said. “She was there for me and I want to be there for her.”

In his race against former Congresman Jim Ross Lightfoot, Vilsack, who started with a gulf of a disadvantage in name recognition, found himself down more than 20 points in the polls a month before the November 1998 election, Vilsack recalled Thursday.

But as he picked up ground in the polls Hillary Clinton noticed.

In the days leading up to that election, Hillary Clinton could have made a strong case to stump for candidates elsewhere, but she came to Iowa, Vilsack said.

Clinton has said that if elected she is interested in having both former Gov. Vilsack and his wife, Christie, serve in her administration. Vilsack said there have been no discussions about what role Iowa’s former first couple would play in Washington.

“It is way premature and her focus needs to be and is on securing the nomination, which starts by doing well in Iowa,” Vilsack said.

Iowa Independent also questioned Vilsack on his strongly worded remarks about Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City.

Speaking during a television interview recently, Vilsack, Clinton’s campaign co-chairman in Iowa, raised the issue of Giuliani’s three marriages. Vilsack went further, getting into speculation about the relationship the former New York mayor has with his children.

“I can’t even get into the number of marriages and the fact that his children – the relationship he has with his children – and what kind of circumstances New York was in before September 11,” Vilsack said during an interview on NY1.
“There are lot of issues involving Mayor Giuliani. … He’s got a very interesting past.”

Vilsack’s comment came months after another one-time resident of Terrace Hill — the Iowa governor’s mansion — told the Carroll Daily Times Herald that Giuliani faced some challenges where his personal life intersects with politics. In that article, former governor Terry Branstad, a Republican, said Giuliani had “baggage” from his personal life.

Vilsack said it is important to consider context.

“It wasn’t a question of judging other people’s families,” Vilsack said. “It was put in the context if Mayor Giuliani were the Republican to Senator Clinton, would Senator Clinton be at a disadvantage. You have to understand the context. Having said that, I think it would have been better for me, and wiser for me, to have prefaced my answer by starting where I ended, which is that this isn’t really what this election should be about.”