Senate Journal: Page 1409: Tuesday, April 25, 1995

         Representative Running is going to be the representative of the
    Secretary of Labor for region 7 -- Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri and Kansas.
    And if you will finish your business here pretty soon, he can actually
    go to Kansas City and get to work --which I would appreciate.

         Im delighted to be back in Iowa.  I had a wonderful day here, and
    it was good to be here when it was dry -- although a little rain doesnt
    do any harm.

         We had a wonderful meeting today at Iowa State University with
    which Im sure all of you are familiar, this National Rural Conference we
    had, designed to lay the groundwork for a strategy for rural America to
    include not only the farm bill,  but also a rural development strategy
    and a strategy generally to deal with the problems of rural America --
    with the income disparities with the rest of America, the age
    disparifies with the rest of America, and the problems of getting
    services and maintaining the quality of life in rural America.

         I want to thank Govemor Branstad for his outstanding presentation
    and the information he gave us about the efforts being made in Iowa in
    developing your fiber optic network and developing the health care
    reform initiatives for rural Iowans and many other areas.  I want to
    thank Senator Harkin for his presentation particularly involving the
    development of aitemative agricultural products as a way to boost income
    in rural America.   And I want to say a specia word of thanks to the
    people at Iowa State.  They did a magnificent job there, and I know you
    are all very proud of that institution, and you would have been very,
    very proud of them today, the way they performed.

         Im also just glad to be back here in the setting of state
    government. You know, Govemor Branstad and I were once the youngest
    governors in America, but time took care of it. And now that hes been
    reelected, he will actually serve more years than I did.  I ran for a
    fifth term as govemor.  We used to have two-year terms, and then we
    switched to four-year terms.  And only one person in the history of our
    state had ever served more than eight years, and only one person had
    ever served more thann -- two people had served more than two terms, but
    those were two-year terms -- in the whole history of the state.  So I
    was -- I had served 10 years. Id served three two-year terms and one
    four-year term, and I was the attempting to be reelected.  And I had a
    high job approval rating, but people were reluctant to vote for me,
    because in my state people are very suspicious of too much political
    power, you know.  And I thought I was still pretty young and healthy,
    but half of them wanted to give me a gold watch, you know, and send me
    home.

         And I never will forget one day when I was running for my fifth
    term, I was out at the State Fair doing govemors day at the State Fair,
    which I always did, and I would just sit there and anybody that wanted
    to talk to me could up and say whatever was on their mind, which was,
    for me, a hazardous undertaking from to time -- since they invariably
    would do exactly that.  And I stayed there all day long, and I talked
    about everything under the moon and sun with the people who came up and,
    long about the end of the day, this elderly fellow in overalls came up
    to me and he said, Bill, you going to run for governor, again? And I
    hadnt announced yet.  I said, I dont know.  If I do, will you vote for

Iowa General Assembly

Index: Senate Journal (76th General Assembly: Session 1)

© 1995 Cornell College and League of Women Voters of Iowa

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