Noting that it will take “deft footwork” to move from a successful primary campaign to a successful general election campaign, the anonymous gossip peddler for the capital city alt-weekly ticked through reasons for the Rants prediction.

Those reasons include, among others, Rants being the “least offensive” candidate to the GOP’s moderate wing; being well versed on the issues; his ability to raise money; and the fact that Culver is vulnerable. The biggest of all, though, could be what Skinny considers a lack of competition for the nomination.

On the right, Bob VanderPlaats is a proven loser. No one has heard of Jerry Behn. Rod Roberts can’t get traction. Yes, there’s Congressman Steve King — a darling of the right but a guy who seems to be too coy by half as he drops hints about whether he’ll run. And Rants is more knowledgeable on Iowa issues. The efforts of Doug Gross and his band of check-writers to find a moderate candidate aren’t getting anywhere. The group has met at least four times to go over a list of a score or so of possible candidates, but no consensus has emerged. The top names have said “no.” As of last week, those folks were talking about Farm Bureau president Craig Lang (“he’s rounded second and heading toward third” in his decision to run, says one moderate), Barnstormers owner and former legislator Jeff Lamberti, longtime party operative and small-town lawyer Mike Mahaffey, and name-from-the-past Rand Fisher. But Lang has to run again for his Farm Bureau job and would have to give up a nice salary to go into politics. Lamberti, who lost to Congressman Leonard Boswell in 2006, has flatly said no. Mahaffey has indicated he’s rather take on Boswell — who barely beat him in 1996 — than Culver. And Fisher, who now is president of a trade association of electric cooperatives and municipal utilities, is unknown to most Iowans under 50.

As always, though, Skinny hedged his/her bet.

All that being said, remember: You get what you pay for. And Cityview is free.

Sac County (Source: Wikipedia)

The Sac County Republican Central Committee will host several potential gubernatorial candidates at their summer fundraiser on Saturday, June 27. Confirmed guests include state Sen. Jerry Behn, former House Speaker Christopher Rants, state Rep. Rod Roberts and Sioux City businessman Bob Vander Plaats. If any of them announce their candidacy, the party will share proceeds from the event with their campaigns, a move sure to garner some attention.

“Weeks before we put this together, I kept hearing about candidates who were not candidates. People who were not running for governor but still running around the state shaking hands and kissing babies and raising money,” said Brian Krause, chair of the Sac County Republican Party. “So I said, if we want to have these guys out, lets tease them a little and invite them to announce at our event.”

And an idea was born.

Invitations were sent out to any potential candidate the county party believed was serious about jumping in the race. Besides the four confirmed guests, several others also received invitations, including former state Sen. Jeff Lamberti.

“I really think Jeff Lamberti will get in this thing, but he had a prior engagement out of state that day,” Krause said. “There are a couple other guys out there, and the way I’ve left it with them is that if they get serious enough to attend our event, they can still let me know.”

Ultimately, Krause knows it’s unlikely he’ll see a formal announcement at his event.

“In all reality, I understand that Chris Rants is from Sioux City and he’ll announce there, and Bob Vander Plaats will announce in Sheldon,” he said. “I bounced it off Rob Roberts, since he represents two precincts in Sac County, and he laughed and said it was intriguing and he didn’t find it at all offensive. So we ran with it.”

The goal, Krause said, has less to do with making headlines and more to do with his county having a role in the gubernatorial campaign. The Iowa Caucuses give the Hawkeye State a disproportionate impact on the presidential elections, he said, because they happen first. Sac County may only have 12,000 residents, but the same benefits of being first could apply.

“If we get out early on this thing, maybe we can disproportionately play a part in this process of the governor’s race,” he said.

The fundraiser will begin at 8:30 a.m. with breakfast served at the Chautauqua Building in Sac City. At 9 a.m., the program will begin with each potential candidate allowed to make brief remarks. Tickets are $10 per person.

WHO-AM host Steve Deace, right, and blogger Craig Robinson

The pair has already winnowed the possible field down to four candidates – former state Sen. Jeff Lamberti, Senate Minority Leader Paul McKinley, former state House Speaker Christopher Rants and Sioux City businessman Bob Vander Plaats – and is asking their readers and listeners to vote by text message this Thursday. Results will be announced on Deace’s WHO-AM program that night.

Of the group of candidates included in the unscientific poll, only Vander Plaats has officially thrown his hat in the ring, and even he has not made his candidacy “official.” The roster does not include potential candidates like state Rep. Rob Roberts and state Sen. Jerry Behn, who have indicated in recent weeks they are considering entering the race. Robinson said he intentionally left them off the list because he only wanted to include candidates who he believes “have a better than 50 percent shot of being on the ballot on June 8, 2010.” He did not specify the criteria for his assessment.

Deace has hosted a drive-time show on Iowa’s largest radio station since 2006. His show centers on evangelical Christianity and how it shapes his politics. No stranger to controversy, Deace has upped the ante of late, spending time questioning the authenticity of a state senator’s faith, attacking TV personality Oprah Winfrey for being the “high priestess of American paganism,” and most recently for celebrating the death of Kansas doctor George Tiller.

The Tiller comments landed Deace a prominent spot on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show in a segment on the country’s radical anti-abortion movement.

Deace has also been an outspoken critic of leading figures in the state’s Republican Party, including two of the poll’s candidates:  McKinley and Rants.

Robinson’s blog, The Iowa Republican, is focused on conservative politics and religion. Other than Robinson, who served as political director for the Republican Party of Iowa in 2007 and who runs his own campaign consulting and fundraising firm, the blog is entirely made up of anonymous bloggers who offer commentary on the day’s news. The site’s team of anonymous writers have been particularly tough on so-called “moderates” within the party, especially 2002 GOP gubernatorial candidate Doug Gross.

Robinson is also a regular commentator on Deace’s show.

Larson becomes the latest in a series of Republicans to publicly put to rest rumors of potential gubernatorial aspirations next year. Monday, state Auditor David Vaudt said he would seek re-election rather than throw his hat in the ring to challenge incumbent Democratic Gov. Chet Culver. Former Gov. Terry Branstad and Vermeer Corp. CEO Mary Andringa said they were not running earlier this month, and Iowa Ag Secretary Bill Northey appears to be leaning towards running for re-election as well.

Meanwhile, former state Sen. Jeff Lamberti told Des Moines NBC affiliate WHO-TV that he is thinking about a run for governor. Lamberti, who co-owns the arena football team the Iowa Barnstormers along with Republican Party of Iowa Chairman Matt Strawn, said influential activists have been talking to him about running, and he will make a final decision by this fall at the latest.

Currently, two Sioux Cityans are the only Republicans publicly seeking support for a run, although nothing is “official” for either yet  — businessman and two-time gubernatorial candidate Bob Vander Plaats and former House Speaker Christopher Rants.

Former Gov. Terry Branstad and Vermeer Corp. CEO Mary Andringa both scored highly in a recent poll commissioned by the Iowa First Foundation, a group organized by former GOP gubernatorial nominee Doug Gross. Respondents were given descriptions of different candidates and asked to rank how appealing each sounded, and Branstad and Vermeer’s descriptions ranked the highest. That led many Republicans to believe both were considering a run.

However, Branstad told the Register he didn’t want to “give anyone the impression that I’m thinking about it, because that would be not really correct,” and Vermeer said she is “not pursuing the Republican nomination for Iowa’s next governor.”

The paper also spoke with Jeff Lamberti, a former state senator who currently co-owns the arena football team the Iowa Barnstormers, along with current Republican Party of Iowa Chairman Matt Strawn. Lamberti said he is in the early stages of making a decision on whether to run. His most recent campaign was an unsuccsessful bid in 2006 to defeat Third District U.S. Rep. Leonard Boswell.

Cigarette makers agreed in 1998 to pay up to $2 billion to Iowa over 25 years. In 2002, the state sold off the rights to most of those payments for about $500 million in immediate cash. The plan then was to funnel the money into a standing fund whose earnings would pay for anti-smoking campaigns, cancer treatment and other tobacco-related expenses. But the state hit hard budget times, and legislators dipped into the fund for other needs, critics say.

Former Republican state Sen. Jeff Lamberti of Ankeny help put together the deal for the trust fund. Lamberti says there was talk of the tobacco companies going into bankruptcy to avoid paying some of the settlement, so the lump sum deal made sense.

“The model was good other states were doing it. I think in hindsight the thing we’ve learned is if government has an unrestricted pot of money to spend they will spend it and that’s unfortunate because I think the model was the right model for us to do,” Lamberti says.

American Cancer Society lobbyist Cathy Calloway said the idea that cigarrette companies were going to go bankrupt was always “preposterous.” She now worries about finding funding for tobacco prevention and programs to help people stop smoking. Her group opposed the 2002 sale of future payments.

Sen. Jack Hatch, D-Des Moines, said the money had to be used to fund rapidly increasing health care costs.

“So this is going to happen, it’s not that were spending the money wrong we just don’t have enough of it to spend,” Hatch says.