Uh, make way for the governor
Turns out the stage won’t belong just to former Gov. Terry Branstad today.
Gov. Chet Culver is launching a new television ad, this on the heels of a meeting with the Des Moines Register editorial board in which he said he hadn’t — and won’t — raise taxes, a not so subtle reminder that Branstad did.
The ad, which the Register reports will run in the Des Moines and Cedar Rapids markets, features Culver looking straight into the camera telling viewers he’s making the tough decision to cut spending (and not “passing the buck” to the Legislature).
He reminds us he cut, his own pay, too.
“I chose tough medicine today to build a stronger Iowa for tomorrow,” Culver says in the ad.
Culver will also be on IPTV’s “Iowa Press” program today.
All this guarantees that, for all the speculation about — and possibly even confirmation — of Branstad’s plans to run for governor, Culver is going to be in the face of Iowans, too, this weekend. And on his own terms.
The only people being crowded out, it seems, are the Republicans already in the race.
Yes, they’re still out there. It just might not seem so today.
UPDATE (11:20 a.m.): One of those Republicans just chimed in on Culver’s new ad. Christian Fong, of Cedar Rapids, says the governor failed to make the tough decision to cut spending the last two years.
In the campaign ad that Governor Culver began airing today he talks about his “choice” to cut spending, rebuild the state and to take the tough medicine of today. The “choice” Governor Culver fails to mention is his choice to sign budgets over the last two years that have grown state government by a rate that was clearly unsustainable. At the end of the day, ultimately it was Governor Culver’s choices that brought us to this point. Iowa voters will have a choice next November to choose fresh leadership and I look forward to being that alternative.”