Landmark longevity: Branstad seals governor tenure record

LELAND, Ia. — Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad pulled his trench coat tighter to block a chill wind last month as he strolled across the Winnebago County farmstead where as a boy he slopped hogs, cradled newborn lambs and spent long days baling hay alongside his father.

In high school, his head hit the pillow at night full of political aspirations — albeit dreams that did not stray beyond the Mississippi River.

Today this smattering of machine sheds and grain bins is headquarters for his brother and nephews' farm business. His leaky, ramshackle former home has been relegated to spillover storage and is due to be demolished.

The governor's great-grandfather from Norway purchased this original 144 acres in 1883.

"It would be hard for him to imagine what this farming operation has really come to," Branstad said of his ancestor.

Or perhaps harder for him to imagine that his great-grandson would not plow fields for a living but become an attorney, state lawmaker and, eventually, the longest-serving governor in American history.

On Dec. 14, the Republican governor with the signature mustache who's serving a record sixth term will mark his 7,642nd day in office.

PHOTOS: Branstad in Iowa's highest offices

He will surpass George Clinton of New York, a Revolutionary War general and founding father who aspired to the national stage in Washington, D.C. After his gubernatorial tenure, Clinton served as vice president under both Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. (If you hear that Jeff Kaufmann, chair of the Iowa GOP, bestowed Branstad with a Clinton biography as a gift, don't be shocked: It was a bio of this Clinton, so that the governor could prepare for the inevitable questions of historical comparison.)

In his nearly 21 years as governor, Branstad has tirelessly pursued economic development, but has also seen rural population shrink in the face of farm consolidation. He's steered state budgets to address business community priorities, while keeping a tight-fisted grip on other spending areas. And he's maintained his conservative stances on social issues, most notably opposing same-sex marriage, even as the Iowa and federal courts made landmark rulings to legalize it.

Branstad, 69, will spend Monday pressing the flesh at a Capitol open house, then be feted at an official celebration that night at the Iowa State Fairgrounds. His new biography will be released, with proceeds to benefit a new Iowa History Fund.

RELATED STORIES:​

• Presidents, Iowa leaders offer Branstad congratulations
• Ferentz: "I just think the world of (Branstad)"
• 5 ways Branstad changed Iowa forever
• How Branstad reinvented governorship

He swears that since boyhood his political dreams ended 140 miles from tiny Leland, beneath the golden dome of the Iowa State Capitol. It wasn't because he never saw a valid shot at Congress or the White House, but because he never craved one.

"I love Iowa," he said, "and this is where I could best serve."

Des Moines at the time seemed like enough of a world away.

"Growing up here," he said, "most people in Winnebago County never saw the governor."

PHOTOS: Branstad returns home to Lake Mills, Forest City

Even foes praise zest for retail politics

Branstad ran for a seat in the Iowa House during his second year at Drake Law School and hasn't looked back.

This is his first county of the 99 that he continues to visit systematically each year on his perpetual campaign.

Even Branstad's foes agree that this guy genuinely loves retail politics and has been an enthusiastic, unwavering cheerleader for Iowa — with an emphasis on fiscal conservatism and big business.

"He can rattle off talking points on just about any topic," said Iowa Sen. Joe Bolkcom, an Iowa City Democrat locked in a furious political battle to block the governor's controversial privatization of the state's $4.2 billion Medicaid program. But he qualified his praise: "Just don't get too far into the weeds."

"He's tenacious," Bolkcom added. "What can you say. … He loves to travel around and talk to people."

"I think a great deal of his success is precisely because he's everywhere," said Bonnie Campbell, a former attorney general who ran and lost against Branstad in 1994. "Any ribbon cutting, any invitation, he gets to meet with Iowans and their communities — here, wherever — he will do."

Branstad never has been accused of being flashy. This is a guy whose big regret is that in college he didn't major in accounting.

He sounds as enthusiastic about attending the 60th anniversary of the Iowa Asphalt Association as the festivities for his own milestone.

His exclamation of choice tends to be the inoffensive "Holy socks!"

PHOTOS: Off-beat moments during Branstad governorship

Branstad was first elected governor in 1982 shortly before his 36th birthday, making him the nation's youngest chief executive at the time.

This was before cell phones. Before "Field of Dreams" elevated Iowa's film stature. Before the birth of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, a company whose massive data center in Altoona is the kind of big-fish economic development prize that Branstad takes pride in landing.

Branstad moved into the 12,300-square-foot Terrace Hill governor's mansion and earned an annual salary of $60,000, plus a $5,000 tax-free expense account.

The key to his first gubernatorial victory, The Des Moines Register reported, was a strong showing in traditionally Democratic urban areas in an election that drew more than 1 million voters — a turnout higher than in any previous off-presidential year.

Branstad often touts his perfect 20-0 record of election victories. Not all were contested, but he did overcome three party primary challengers in his governor races.

A few factors help account for Branstad's long run: good fortune, those modest aspirations and, crucially, Iowa's statistical zeal for the warm familiarity of incumbents.

PHOTOS: Branstad's historic six terms as governor

Iowa incumbents get 'a little bit of a break'

It was a newly redrawn legislative district on his home turf, along 72 miles of the Minnesota border, that enabled law student Branstad to launch his first campaign for the Iowa House in 1972 without having to face an incumbent.

A decade later, it wasn't until February 1982 that Branstad's predecessor, beloved Republican centrist Gov. Bob Ray, announced that he wouldn't run for re-election that year, when many had assumed the opposite. That paved the way for Branstad, then lieutenant governor and a more conservative disciple of Ronald Reagan, to seek the top job.

When he left office after his first four terms, he didn't stray far — unlike his successor, Democratic Gov. Tom Vilsack, who ran for president and ended up as U.S. secretary of agriculture. After a decade in the private sector, Branstad felt called to run again.

So Branstad — much like congressmen Neal Smith, Tom Harkin and Chuck Grassley, or Attorney General Tom Miller — reaped the full benefit of Iowa's love for incumbents.

Chris Larimer, associate professor of political science at the University of Northern Iowa, literally has written the book on governors' longevity. "Gubernatorial Stability in Iowa: A Stranglehold on Power" shows that among the 14 states without term limits for governors, Iowa reigns supreme.

If you discount that then-Lt. Gov. Robert Fulton became governor for two weeks in January 1969, filling in for Harold Hughes, who joined the U.S. Senate, Iowa in the modern era has kept governors for an average of a decade compared to the other states, which averaged six years.

"If (Iowa) voters feel comfortable with you," Larimer said, "if they feel like you're accessible, they seem to give you a little bit of a break, a little bit of leeway."

John Dickerson, political director of CBS News and anchor of "Face the Nation," will interview Branstad Monday night at the fairgrounds in a live Q&A. Long tenure in office seems consistent with the Midwestern stereotype of steady, sturdy folk, he said.

"A long record of service feels like it fits ... in a place where people get up every morning and work the farm in a kind of quiet, thorough way," Dickerson said. "That feels like that syncs up with a public servant who would do the same thing."

Branstad's toughest general election was his 1986 campaign against Iowa Sen. Lowell Junkins at the depths of the 1980s farm crisis.

"In the first term, we closed 38 banks, and land values dropped 63 percent," Branstad said. "My strength is rural Iowa, and rural Iowa is battered."

Farm implement dealers, main street businesses and population dwindled.

Susan Neely, Branstad's press secretary for his first term in office, saw "traumatic fundamental change" play out in front of her.

"There were times when I'd park my car outside the door to the governor's office, and there were picketers outside," Neely said.

His impact far-reaching, and still playing out

Branstad's tenure has continued to chart Iowa's political course in ways far beyond his formal policies and executive orders.

His cultivation of Kim Reynolds of Osceola as his lieutenant governor and presumed successor paved the way for Joni Ernst to run for Reynolds' open state Senate seat — echoing Branstad's first foot in the door of Iowa politics. And then of course Ernst in 2014 ran for U.S. Senate and became the first woman from Iowa elected to Congress.

During a recent day spent with Branstad on his home turf, he stopped for lunch with friends and family at the Grand Café in downtown Lake Mills, across the street from the office where for eight years he practiced law with lifelong ally Richard Schwarm.

Branstad sat at a large round table in back, in a room whose walls are plastered with photos of local faces, beneath the banner "Who's Who in L.M."

The governor sat next to his 93-year-old aunt, Helene Iverson. Also at the table was Don Grotewold, who gave Branstad his first campaign donation when he ran for lieutenant governor.

"He was just kind of a go-getter from day one," Iverson said of her nephew. The only salacious detail she could conjure was that Branstad apparently "cut his hair a wild way once."

The governor talked about one of his favorite mentors, his late eighth-grade history teacher, Lura Sewick, whom he credits with instilling a love of history and politics.

He's always been a student of history, Branstad said, and now he's going to be a part of it. He never would've imagined it.

George Clinton's record had held for more than 200 years, and Larimer doesn't expect that any future governor — other than perhaps an Iowan — is likely to leapfrog Branstad.

Will Branstad now advocate for term limits to help protect his record, I wondered?

That got a laugh out of the table.

But then America's longest-serving governor isn't even ready to officially declare that this will be his last term.

IDEOLOGY: Goldwater book shaped conservative mind-set

Gov. Terry Branstad's self-perception of his legacy is that he will leave Iowa "a much more diversified, growing, prosperous state where young people want to stay."

"It's all about economic opportunities."

Setting aside vociferous rebuttal from political opponents, Branstad nevertheless acknowledges what is echoed by many observers: The governor's reputation as a stalwart fiscal conservative may define his record tenure.

"Part of his legacy," said Chris Larimer, associate professor of political science at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, "is that voters for whatever reason seem to turn to (Branstad), or at least trust him during a time of economic uncertainty."

The farm crisis defined his first term, and he came out of political retirement in the wake of the Great Recession.

Yet Branstad's fiscal-conservative adult mind-set was hardly obvious from a young age. He hailed from a jumbled stew of family heritage and politics.

The two big shifts in his worldview came courtesy of a book and a blind date.

Branstad grew up the son of Edward and Rita Branstad — a Norwegian Lutheran father who farmed and a Jewish mother who worked at Reuben's department store in Forest City.

"She would ride the umpires, I'll tell ya," Branstad said of his mom as a spectator at his childhood ballgames.

"I think that's where I got the voice that carries."

PHOTOS: Noteworthy moments from Branstad governorship

His mother also was an energetic Democrat. Her oldest son helped plaster the county with bumper stickers on behalf of Democratic Gov. Herschel Loveless (1957-61). In 1960, he supported Kennedy and Johnson for the White House.

But by 1964, he was an ardent fan of Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater after he read the Republican presidential candidate's seminal book, "Conscience of a Conservative."

"Goldwater's philosophy appealed to him," said Branstad's biographer, Mike Chapman of Newton. "We've got to control the size of government, or they'll control us."

Branstad switched parties during his second year at the University of Iowa.

As former Register journalist David Elbert noted in a 1978 profile: "Many of his generation went to the University of Iowa apolitical and came away liberal. Terry went to Iowa City a Democrat and left a conservative Republican."

The fateful blind date was Oct. 23, 1971: Based on her high school picture, Branstad agreed to accompany Christine Johnson on a date to Drake's homecoming: dinner, the football game and a Helen Reddy concert.

The next morning she invited him to Catholic mass, and Branstad declared that same day that he would like to convert to Catholicism — a move that helped cement his opposition to both abortion and same-sex marriage.

"We compromised," Branstad said on the campaign trail in the early '80s. "I became a Catholic, and she became a Republican."

Branstad gave Christine an engagement ring that Christmas. They married on June 17, 1972 — the day of the infamous Watergate break-in.

PHOTOS: Branstad family through the years

SHIFTING GOP: His path consistent, but party moves right

When Terry Branstad was elected to the part-time lieutenant governor job in 1978, according to the Register, he was "known in Statehouse circles as one of the most conservative Republicans in the Legislature."

"He is popular with many persons who like his conservative pro-business views and aggressive campaign style," wrote political reporter David Yepsen. "He is disliked by others who view him as a pushy, right-wing kid."

Branstad's support of cost-cutting in Iowa unemployment benefits in 1979 "made him a popular speaker on Iowa's chamber of commerce summer luncheon circuit" but also a "bull's-eye for labor leaders who see him as a nemesis to Iowa's working men and women."

The recent onset of tea party libertarians and right-wing evangelicals in GOP politics occasionally casts Branstad as more of a modern centrist. But arguably he has tilled a fairly consistent political path, while his party has shifted right.

Branstad and Richard Schwarm first met in 1968 as fellow college Republicans at separate schools, then reconnected at Drake Law School. They practiced law together for more than eight years in Lake Mills before Branstad became governor.

The friends opened their firm June 17, 1974 — the same year that Iowa GOP icon Chuck Grassley was first elected to the U.S. House.

"Both Terry and I were involved with Ronald Reagan when that was the wild outsider, the group called the Conservative Coalition of Iowa," Schwarm said recently as he and Branstad lingered in downtown Lake Mills. "I don't feel I've changed my views. … But now we're viewed from being some crazy right-wingers to too establishment, even that 'moderate' word."

"This was the era that moderates controlled the Republican party," Branstad added, "and even Rockefeller liberals you might say. But now it's changed a great deal."

Branstad in 2010 staved off a primary challenge from the right by evangelical lightning rod Bob Vander Plaats, the president of the Family Leader.

In 2014, he also was able to woo the support of real estate mogul Bill Knapp, the longtime Democratic backer, who had for decades spent his money against Branstad.

These days when Branstad is asked whom he supports in the Iowa caucuses — and he's asked nearly daily — he reiterates that he has remained officially neutral and is "trying to be a good host."

RURAL LIFE: Farms grow bigger, but population shrinks

Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad remains haunted by the story of a debt-ridden farmer named Dale Burr.

On Dec. 10, 1985, Burr, 63, walked into Hills Bank and Trust in southeast Iowa and gunned down the bank president. He also killed his wife and a neighboring farmer before committing suicide.

The banker's daughter had been one of the Branstads' baby sitters.

Those slayings put a gruesome exclamation point on the 1980s farm crisis, a decade that saw the state shed 5 percent of its population.

Iowa agriculture has rebounded and even helped to sustain the state during the Great Recession. But record cropland values have since given way to sagging commodity prices.

Branstad's nephew, Jordan, 33, now helps farm the Winnebago County land where the governor grew up.

But the operation is far from the quaint, bucolic acreage of Branstad's childhood, when a gaggle of pigs, poultry and other livestock grazed in pastures. Branstad Brothers feeds thousands of head of cattle, runs 18 semi trucks and has 25 full-time employees. The farm has diversified into custom fertilizer spraying and also disinfects truck traffic for a local egg producer in an effort to prevent the spread of bird flu.

"You have to farm 4- to 5,000 acres at least, just to get the deal on the inputs," Jordan said as he sat next to his uncle, adding that he also must keep a wary eye on market prices.

"You're making the same amount," Jordan said of farm income in the last decade since he graduated with an ag degree from Iowa State University, "but it takes twice that much (money) to do it."

Farming has grown into massive international agribusiness throughout the Branstad era, even as rural population has dwindled. The landscape now is dotted with wind turbines, giving Iowa nearly one-third of its energy. But increasing environmental concerns also have led to such disputes as Des Moines Water Works' lawsuit against three northwest Iowa counties.

Branstad acknowledges that his hometown of Leland — with fewer than 300 residents — has faded, like so many small towns, despite revitalization efforts. Winnebago County, where Leland is located, had nearly 14,000 people at its population height in 1940, but is down to about 10,600 now.

As remedies, the governor touts state investment in road infrastructure and rural broadband access, as well as niche agriculture such as Iowa's 300 commercial vineyards and nearly 100 wineries. He boasts of Iowa's nation-leading biofuels industry: 43 ethanol, 12 biodiesel and two cellulosic ethanol plants.

"The answer is not to try and reinvent the past," he said.

GAMBLING: He fights, then yields; industry mushrooms

One of the most dramatic changes to everyday life in Iowa on Branstad's watch has been legalized gambling — both the state-run lottery and regulated casinos.

The governor initially opposed pari-mutuel betting while in the Legislature. But in his first year as governor, a horseman from Kossuth County convinced him that a regulated horse- and dog-racing industry would benefit the state.

Branstad felt differently about a lottery: "The state is actually running a gambling operation, fleecing its own people," he said. "I didn't think that was right."

But the tide of public opinion appeared to oppose him. Branstad at one point even received a flood of Illinois lottery tickets that had been mailed by eastern Iowans to prove a point that their dollars were slipping out of state.

"It became obvious the public didn't see a distinction," he said.

The lottery "was somewhat of a train that was headed into the state anyway," said Jerry Mathiasen, who was Branstad's deputy chief of staff and now is president of the Pottawattamie County Community Foundation. "And I really thought that the leadership of the governor, connecting some of his top economic development priorities to giving in to the Legislature on the lottery side of things, really showed his leadership on sticking with his economic development priorities and using the lottery as a leverage to get those."

The governor vetoed the bill for two consecutive years before signing the lottery into law in 1985.

Yet to this day the governor claims never to have purchased a lotto ticket. He attends governors' meetings in Las Vegas and barely touches a slot machine.

Iowa's first riverboat casinos opened in 1991. Branstad was adamant that each county must pass a referendum to allow a casino, its license would be held by a nonprofit, and there would be background checks for the owners and low betting limits for gamblers (which eventually were raised).

Today there are 18 state casinos and three operated by Indian tribes in a $1.4 billion industry in Iowa. The newest wagering palace on the prairie, Wild Rose in Jefferson, opened this past summer.

PHOTOS: Branstad managing crisis

SOCIAL ISSUES: His views unwavering in face of change

How will history judge Gov. Terry Branstad based on the key social issues that in the last 40 years have seen sweeping change — particularly same-sex marriage, which was legalized by the Iowa Supreme Court in 2009, just before he mounted his comeback campaign?

Has he been a consistent defender of core conservative values, or did he fail to seize the moment as an early, compassionate advocate for human rights before they became a foregone conclusion in national law?

How you answer that likely depends on your politics.

In an April 1978 debate at Iowa State University against two fellow nominees for lieutenant governor (Willard Hansen and Brice Oakley), Branstad argued against a proposed Equal Rights Amendment, which would have guaranteed equal rights for women and men. Branstad contended such a change might permit same-sex marriage. He was known as the most conservative candidate.

The following year, in January 1979, he was the only state official to address an Iowans for Life rally. The then-lieutenant governor told the crowd of 330, "I can see the time coming when the concern for the right to life will become the law of the land, and when Christians, Jews and moral people can hold their heads up and say they helped."

After the Supreme Court issued its unanimous ruling legalizing same-sex marriage, the issue became a central theme of Branstad's 2010 Republican gubernatorial primary contest against Bob Vander Plaats, now head of the conservative evangelical group the Family Leader.

"I took a beating from both sides," Branstad said of a year in which Vander Plaats attacked him from the right on the marriage issue and then-Gov. Chet Culver, a Democrat, hit him from the left.

Throughout the 2010 race, Branstad said Iowans should be allowed to vote on whether to amend the state's constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman.

After Vander Plaats lost the primary, he launched a campaign to oust three justices up for retention votes who had participated in the landmark ruling. Branstad angered some social conservatives by declining to join the effort. A spokesman said at the time: "He respects the secret ballot and believes people should vote their conscience."

In an interview earlier this month, Branstad said: "Three members of the (Iowa) Supreme Court lost their jobs because of what they did. The people of Iowa cast their judgment. I stayed out of it."

Branstad has been grilled before about whether he would defer other civil rights to a public vote. But on these issues the governor seems unwavering.

"I'm a Catholic," he said. "I believe in protecting human life and believe in traditional marriage."

TWO TENURES: More deliberative, he says, in polarized times

An entire room in Forest City's Mansion Museum is dedicated to Terry Branstad's first four terms as governor.

Only about one-fifth of the collection is on display, yet the room bursts with miniature ceramic elephants, campaign buttons, Bob Feller baseballs and even Branstad's MP helmet from his Army days. (No, contrary to rumor, Branstad didn't arrest actress and Vietnam protester Jane Fonda at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. But he did provide his commanders with a legal brief on why she could be arrested.)

During his dozen years in the private sector between gubernatorial tenures, Branstad sold securities and served as president of Des Moines University and on the board of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.

Has he been a dramatically different governor on either side of that hiatus?

Branstad thinks that he's cultivated more patience and perseverance throughout his career. Experience in office, he said, has made him more deliberative.

What the governor considers to be his strangest or most surreal day dates to his second term: July 19, 1989, when United Airlines Flight 232 crashed in Sioux City. Out of the 296 people on board, 111 died — a remarkably low death toll from a fiery, tumbling landing.

Branstad was across the state in eastern Iowa and skipped a joint appearance with then-Vice President Dan Quayle to rush to the site.

Asked what personally was his unhappiest day in office, Branstad mentioned the 1991 car crash in which his then-16-year-old son, Eric, was the driver at fault in an accident that killed an older, married couple from Des Moines. The tragedy "really hurt our family," the governor said.

At the opposite end of the emotional spectrum, the highlight Branstad mentions most often from his sequel stint in office is his improbable friendship with the world's most powerful communist. Thirty years ago, Xi Jinping first met Branstad as a relatively minor provincial official on an agricultural trade mission to Iowa. As vice president, Xi returned in 2012 to visit Branstad and Iowa, a year before ascending to the presidency.

But what about Branstad's governing style in his two tenures?

"He's made decisions that are more contentious now," said Bonnie Campbell, a former attorney general and Branstad's 1994 Democratic challenger. "They seem to be, but honestly it could be the context of our times, which to be sure is contentious."

Campbell singled out Branstad's "endless battle with the state employee unions" as "needlessly harsh."

Branstad sees no change in his willingness to compromise. Regarding the current seething battle over Medicaid management, Branstad avoids the word "privatization." He calls it "modernization using managed care like 26 other states have done."

People hate change but love progress, he said, and he has learned to tackle these difficult issues early in a term.

He agrees with Campbell that modern politics is burdened with a "much more polarized Congress and a polarized Legislature."

"The other side has gotten more shrill in attacking," he said. "But I would say my side probably has, too."

Note: This column was corrected to reflect that Gov. Terry Branstad was stationed at Fort Bragg in North Carolina when he served in the Army.

Public events Monday

To commemorate Terry Branstad's 7,642nd day of service as governor, the public is invited to two events Monday.

• A free open house will be held from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.at the governor's formal office in the Iowa Capitol, 1007 E. Grand Ave. Visitors are encouraged to make a reservation for a Capitol tour by calling 515-281-5591 (visit www.legis.iowa.gov for information). Tour participants will be guided to the governor's office.
• A dinner and program will be held at the Paul R. Knapp Animal Learning Center at the Iowa State Fairgrounds. Doors open at 6 p.m., and the program begins at 7 p.m. CBS News Political Director and "Face the Nation" host John Dickerson will interview Branstad on stage. Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds and members of Iowa's federal delegation will attend. Tickets cost $50 (availability is limited) and benefit the governor's new nonprofit, the Iowa History Fund. All attendees also will receive a copy of the governor's new biography, "Iowa's Record Setting Governor: The Terry Branstad Story."