An early look at the 2010 gubernatorial campaign

With more news that the field of 2010 gubernatorial candidates is narrowing, it seems prudent to take a moment to review what next year’s race against Culver might look like.

There are two candidates who are publicly seeking support from Republican activists for their candidacy: social conservative politico Bob Vander Plaats and state Rep. Christopher Rants.  Interestingly, both are from Sioux City.

Most recent news reports have implied that Vander Plaats is the only ‘official’ candidate, but Rants probably belongs in that category now, too.  Vander Plaats has an exploratory committee, which he needs because he has no other Iowa-based campaign account to raise and spend money.  Rants needs no exploratory committee because he already has a state legislative campaign account that can pay for a web site and other bare necessities as he weighs the idea of running.

Rants and Vander Plaats are both already traveling from one end of the state to the other to meet with activists and assess their chances of winning.  I put them in the same category because, though neither has registered a fully-fledged campaign committee, both are publicly seeking support.

Vander Plaats has run for governor multiple times, and each time he has lost.  In 2006, his Republican primary campaign was coopted by frontrunner Jim Nussle, who represented Iowa’s 1st district in Congress at the time.  Nussle used Vander Plaats mostly to reassure social conservatives during the primary and to rally the Republican base in western Iowa during the general election.  That gave Vander Plaats few opportunities to build up his name identification in the more moderate corners of the state.

If Vander Plaats has one major weakness, it is his reputation as something of a one-trick pony.  While he has spent time in recent months talking to reporters about economic issues, he built his reputation on abortion and same-sex marriage, and it remains unclear whether fiscal conservatives in his party will give him much of a chance.  In past campaigns, they haven’t.  And Doug Gross, a social moderate and fiscal conservative who defeated Vander Plaats in the 2002 GOP gubernatorial primary, has already rejected Vander Plaats’s candidacy this time around.

At this point, Rants is seen as a more mainstream candidate than Vander Plaats.  A former Speaker of the Iowa House, Rants could likely raise more money than Vander Plaats.  And, since he oversaw all Republican campaigns for state house earlier this decade, he probably has a good perspective on what it will take to win statewide.

But Rants’s political experience is both a blessing and a curse.  He launched his career in politics early, leaving him few outside-the-capitol accomplishments to run on.  If the GOP’s best hope of a 2010 victory is by running as ‘outsiders’ against entrenched Democratic incumbents, Rants might not be a good fit.  And for a party that seems unusually interested in ideological purity these days, Republicans might not be willing to overlook compromises Rants had to make as a legislative leader to get anything done.  Anyone who has taken as many votes as Rants will have at least a few chinks in his ideological armor.

Aside from Rants and Vander Plaats, there are other names that are mentioned as potential candidates, but none has taken public steps to actually run.  Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey has not made a final decision yet, but he has not spent as much time in the limelight recently as a guy who was planning to run probably would.  Market to Market and Big Show personality Mark Pearson, state Rep. Rod Roberts of Carroll, millionaire agribussinessman Bruce Rastetter, and a few others have also been mentioned as possibilities.

For Culver’s part, the plan for the next six months is pretty much the same regardless of which Republican challengers emerge to take him on: raise money.

So far, the governor is doing well in that department, but it remains to be seen how much cash will continue to roll in from labor organizations, who still feel the sting of recent, high-profile defeats.  In 2008, Culver vetoed a labor-backed bill to expand collective bargaining rights of public employees, and in 2009, he was apparently unable to whip sufficient Democratic votes for any of labor’s four key legislative priorities.

Regardless of that, though, unless someone who can self-finance jumps into the race, Culver will likely have a bigger war chest by June of 2010 than whoever wins the GOP primary that month.  Depending on how fractured the primary is, the disparity could be narrow or wide, but Culver, the incumbent, is almost certain to be ahead financially.

That makes the 2010 gubernatorial race Culver’s to lose, even if his mediocre approval/disapproval numbers remain where they are today.  The GOP still has time to build the foundation of a winning gubernatorial campaign, but it’s not there yet, and the Democrats already have a big head start.  There are many reasons why Iowa almost never unseats a sitting governor in an election, and you can expect Culver to take advantage of all of them.