Dems relying on Branstad to unify their ranks

To unify voters behind Gov. Chet Culver, who has consistently trailed former four-term Republican Gov. Terry Branstad in public polling of the November showdown, Iowa Democrats may let Branstad do the talking.

Gov. Chet Culver speaks to Saturday's Iowa Democratic Party convention (Flickr Creative Commons photo by Iowa Democratic Party)

Reports of dissension within the party and lackluster support for the Culver and Lt. Gov. Patty Judge are “isolated and overblown, but go away when Terry Branstad speaks,” said Norm Sterzenbach, the Iowa Democratic Party’s executive director.

“Democrats will come back home and campaign against Terry Branstad.”

During a day of political speeches intended to rally Democrats to “come home” to the party, candidates on the Nov. 2 ballot framed the gubernatorial race as a choice between forward-looking vision and last-century thinking at Saturday’s state Democratic convention.

“We have a choice to make,” Culver told delegates. “Are we going to continue to build on the progress we’ve made, or are we going backward to the 20th century with Terry Branstad?”

In the most optimistic of scenarios, Branstad’s hard line against bedrock Democrat issues translates to support for Culver.

In the days after his big GOP primary win, Branstad showed signs that he was courting his party’s social conservatives with declarations that his selection of a running mate would hinge on sharing his views on social issues, primarily opposition to same-sex marriage and abortion rights. Also, Branstad told business leaders gathered in Ames for a convention of the  conservative-leaning Iowa Association of Business and Industry that he would be a bulwark against labor bills if elected in November.

“Terry Branstad is further driving a wedge when he makes those statements,” Sterzenbach said. “He’s doing it because he has to unify his base – Bob Vander Plaats got 40 percent. He’s going to lose independent voters, and that is very helpful to us.”

Sterzenbach said Iowa’s gubernatorial races are historically close, and he doesn’t expect this contest to be any different.

“I think you will find by Election Day that Chet Culver has solid support among Democrats,” he said.

Others, however, said Democrats who make up the party’s base feel so alienated and rejected by Culver that the governor’s prospects of winning a second term are dismal.

Mobilizing Democrats behind Culver is a “Himalayan task,” said Ed Fallon, a former state lawmaker who ran unsuccessfully for the party’s gubernatorial nomination four years ago.

“It should be no secret that the Democratic Party is anything but unified,” Fallon said. “Just as the evangelical right has taken over the Republican Party, corporate backers have taken over the Democratic Party. The corporate element controls the party.

“Unless the elite within the party are willing to say no to what corporate backers want, a lot of rank-and-file Democrats aren’t interested. They are feeling rejected, and I think that makes it a pretty big task for Chet Culver.”

An example of the party’s internal struggle played out in a skirmish over how Democratic gubernatorial candidates select their running mates, Fallon said. The vote at Saturday’s convention amends the party’s constitution and gives the gubernatorial candidate sole responsibility to select a running mate. The procedural vote institutionalizes a practice that Democratic candidates for governor have been observing for the past 20 years.

The measure gathered 128 opponents among the 301 delegates who voted at the convention. Fallon said the opposition might not translate vote-for-vote into lack for support for Judge, but “it demonstrated a lot of disappointment with Patty Judge, but also with Chet Culver.”

“At the risk of being critical, it’s hard to get excited about Patty Judge,” said Leonard Tinker, a longtime progressive activist from Des Moines who became a Republican for a day in last week’s primary to support Vander Plaats, the Republican he thought Culver would have a better chance of beating in November. With Branstad as an opponent, Tinker thinks Culver’s re-election quest will be “hard and impossible.”

Tinker, who also opposed the amendment to the state party’s constitution regarding the lieutenant governor nominee’s selection, criticized Judge, formerly a state senator and secretary of agriculture, for her support for factory farming and concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs).

Signs of organized labor support were sparse inside the Polk County Convention Complex. Despite Culver’s executive order earlier this year encouraging state agencies to use project labor agreements in public projects, hard feelings remain surrounding his 2008 veto of the collective bargaining bill. At the time, labor leaders called the move an “out-and-out betrayal.”

They also don’t feel he has pushed hard for labor’s legislative agenda, despite huge labor support for his 2006 campaign against Republican Jim Nussle.

Sterzenbach said that though labor leaders may have been disappointed in Culver’s leadership during the past legislative session, “they know Democrats are on the right side of labor issues.”

Ken Sagar, president of the Iowa Federation of Labor AFL-CIO, said labor leadership is “solidly, 100 percent behind the ticket,” but Culver shouldn’t take for granted the support of rank-and-file union members who would like him to be more responsive issues that help workers. The risk to Culver in alienating labor is not that union members will vote for Branstad, but that they will sit out the November election.

Still, Sagar is confident union members will get behind Culver because of Branstad’s pledge to block pro-labor legislation.

Sagar acknowledged that labor interests don’t have the political clout they once enjoyed, in part, he said, because unions have been unfairly portrayed by the corporate media as violent and bloody, prompting political posturing among Republicans and Democrats alike.

“It makes it more difficult to get our message out, even though that message is no different than John L. Lewis’s message to struggling people,” Sagar said.

Speaking to The Iowa Independent, Culver downplayed the unity issue.

“We are certainly much more unified than Republicans, who had 100,000 Iowans show up against Terry Branstad as the nominee,” Culver said.

Culver said Branstad’s blanket refusal to consider labor reform issues important to Democrats “did us a favor.”

“He could not be more unfriendly to labor,” Culver said. “That much is clear.”