BVP on Culver: “Hope and Wait” Policies

The primary that will decide the Republican nominee to challenge Governor Chet Culver is still eleven months away. That didn’t stop The Iowa Republican from commissioning a poll to determine who the frontrunner is at this early date. As I had predicted last month Bob Vander Plaats is the clear frontrunner in the race for the Republican Gubernatorial nomination. In fact Vander Plaats is clearly dominating the rest of the field by more than thirty percent. In the wake of this poll I had the opportunity to have a conversation with Vander Plaats. During the interview he very clearly took aim at Culver and never let up.

Vander Plaats clearly articulated that there will be many issues in play over the next year and a half, but that without a doubt the single biggest issue facing Iowa at this time is the impending budget deficit that by most accounts could top $1 Billion. Contrary to what some may be saying, Vander Plaats is not ignoring economic issues in his campaign. In fact during our conversation Vander Plaats went right after the Governor’s continued assertions that there are no problems with the state budget. Culver’s most recent solution to last year’s budget crunch was to use one time revenue to help balance the budget, clearly a solution that resulted from a lack of leadership. Rather than focusing on across the board cuts, Vander Plaats would utilize targeted cuts where essential services would be less affected than non-essential services.  Furthermore he has indicated that he would implement statewide government reforms with the goal of increasing efficiency allowing the state to get the best bang for the buck.

Vander Plaats also took aim at Governor Culver’s train trip to promote high speed rail service from Des Moines to Chicago. He stated that Culver can promote high speed rail all he wants, but the fact remains that he continues to ignore more pressing concerns such as the looming budget crisis. He also pointed out that by continuing to push for high speed rail at a time when the state is facing massive budget shortfalls is irresponsible further illustrating the failure of leadership in the Culver administration.

Our conversation next turned to Iowa’s business climate. As we are all no doubt aware by now Iowa has one of the worst business climates in the nation. Taxation and regulation of businesses large and small inhibit the engine that promotes economic growth. Vander Plaats feels that one of the keys to reversing this is as stated above, reforming Iowa government to run more efficiently and less obtrusively. The state government must tie this together with a more competitive, fairer tax rates, and common sense regulations in order to attract and encourage growth of the Iowa economy.

I asked Bob what were the common themes that he has been hearing around the state from the people attending his events. The number one issue that he mentioned was the lack of leadership at the statehouse. The Culver administration has , from all appearances, been AWOL on the issues that the citizens of Iowa care about. Whether it be the bottle bill that they tried to pass, the lack of courage on the Supreme Court ruling, the decrepit state of Iowa’s education system, or the denial of budget problems. As Vander Plaats pointed out during our conversation, Governor Culver seems to have adopted a modified form of President Obama’s campaign philosophy of “Hope and Change.” When it comes to the problems facing the state Culver appears to be practicing the philosophy of “Hope and Wait.”