REGISTER ENDORSEMENT

In race for governor, we can't endorse either

The Register’s Editorial Board
The Des Moines Register editorial board declines to endorse Terry Branstad, left, or Jack Hatch for governor.

For anyone who has lived in Iowa for the past 30 years, the title of governor and the name Terry Branstad may seem inseparable. Branstad has held the job since 1983 with a 12-year break and is seeking an unprecedented sixth term.

One reason for this remarkable record is that Branstad is an unabashed cheerleader for Iowa. Regardless of their politics, Iowans generally find him to be likable.

And he lives to campaign: Branstad thrives on Fourth of July parades, chili contests and Rotary meetings. He plunges joyfully into crowds and bounds up to the stage when giving a speech.

His current campaign is a typical Branstad tour de force, fueled with tons of money and run with military precision as the governor and lieutenant governor crisscross the state. If the qualities of a good governor were measured by a talent for campaigning, Branstad would deserve to have the job for life. But his leadership and management of state government, which never matched his campaign talents, have been increasingly disappointing.

Branstad has certainly had the opportunity to be a visionary leader and to move the state in bold new directions. But he has squandered those opportunities, taking safe over bold.

While Branstad's re-election has an air of inevitability, that's more because he is blessed with a weak opponent than because his record suggests he deserves another term. Indeed, there are many reasons why he does not deserve re-election.

Branstad's focus on growing Iowa's economy has been largely to benefit those at the top of the economic ladder by calling for lower corporate and personal income tax rates and cutting property taxes for businesses. He has done nothing to temper simmering anti-immigrant sentiments and instead fueled them with a knee-jerk rejection of young children who have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border. And his unflinching support for Iowa agriculture ignores the need to do far more to stop soil erosion and protect Iowa's water from agricultural runoff.

At a time when Iowa should be investing more state resources to reduce water pollution and soil erosion, he vetoed an additional appropriation for conservation. And despite an enormous cache of political capital, he lacked the courage to push for a gas tax increase at a time when his leadership could have gotten the job done.

If Branstad's administrations have been competent it is because he put good people in key jobs and mostly let them do their jobs.

But the flaws in this hands-off style have been evident in "secret" settlements and the governor's reluctance to confront inept administrators, including those charged with protecting some of Iowa's most vulnerable residents.

Meanwhile, Branstad has stripped job protections from hundreds of state employees, making it easier for them to be fired for any reason or no reason, including chief administrative law judges who should be shielded from influence.

Branstad's management style has become increasingly autocratic, with the most notable example being his obsessive efforts to force the state's workers compensation commissioner out of this job that is intended to be free of political influence.

He arbitrarily refused to expand Medicaid, which created months of uncertainty and political problems, and has resulted in new programs with many problems. He defanged the state agency that should be more aggressively protecting residents of Iowa care facilities.

He appointed 10 members to the Iowa Board of Medicine who appeared to be laser-focused on closing down Planned Parenthood telemedicine clinics that give women access to legal pregnancy-terminating drugs.

Those are just recent examples.

The question is whether to endorse Jack Hatch, the Democratic candidate for governor, instead. But while Hatch has been a skilled state legislator, he has struggled to communicate with clarity and conviction a coherent vision for Iowa.

Even many of his fellow Democrats are not passionate about Hatch's candidacy. For the most part, his campaign is weak on specific policy issues and seems to be mostly focused on showing how he is not Terry Branstad. It requires more than that to persuade voters to unseat a veteran governor.

While it may seem a contradiction to not endorse either candidate, that is not the only purpose of an endorsement editorial. The purpose is not to anoint a winner but to state the values of this newspaper and see which candidate best measures up to those values.

In this election, sadly, we cannot endorse either candidate.

OUR OTHER ENDORSEMENTS

Go to DesMoinesRegister.com/Opinionto read the Register's endorsements in the races for Iowa's four seats in the U.S. House.

READERS WILL HAVE THEIR SAY

Send us your reactions to our endorsements. We will devote a full page in next week's Sunday Register opinion section to our readers' comments about the races for governor, U.S. Senate and U.S. House.