Chet Culver as Willy Loman
With the news that AFSCME is trying to play hard to get with its support for Chet Culver, it’s worth revisiting the central political predicament of Chet Culver’s career. Like Willy Loman, Chet is “liked but not well liked.” He is currently playing the populist by taking on the road construction industry but is not embraced by many on the left; he’s taken on AFSCME and other public employees unions by vetoing collective bargaining but has not been embraced by business interests; he has pushed forward stem cell research but does not come to mind as a leader on social issues such as a woman’s right to choose or equal rights for gays and lesbians. Culver does not have a natural geographic base either, while Iowa may broadly be “Culver Country,” there aren’t any “Culver Counties.”
Part of this is because of how Culver became Governor in the first place. His campaign focused on electability in the primary (and was helped by attacking Mike Blouin for his pro-life past and Andy McGuire for her pro-Greg Ganske past). In the pro-Democratic mood of the 2006 general was able to run a campaign attacking Jim Nussle as a Washington insider. But the problem is while a majority of Iowans still have positive feelings towards Chet Culver, very few of them have strongly positive feelings.
In fact, the Iowa Poll has Culver losing handily to Bob Vander Plaats and getting wiped out by Terry Branstad. While these numbers probably represent a low tide before the campaign has gotten started, they still represent a big problem. In a year with an environment that will be nothing like 2006, Culver will need a motivated core of voters to come out for him and will not be able to count on a surge of Democratic turnout. While he will be aided by what is shaping up to be a vicious GOP primary for Governor, Culver still needs to cultivate a core constituency he can count on in November, 2010. Without some sort of energized base, Culver’s political career might end as unhappily as Death Of A Salesman.
1 comment December 14th, 2009
