Senate Journal: Page 992: Wednesday, April 7, 1999

  caused as many Catholic and evangelical voters left the Democratic party
  over the
  abortion issue.  For the most part, they have not returned and the shape of
  politics has
  been different ever since.  The change in politics was affirmed in 1980 by
  the Reagan
  landslide, an election that fundamentally changed the nation's philosophy
  toward
  government.
  The change rippled through legislative politics too. Democrats who had won
  the
  Legislature during the Watergate era lost it to the Republicans in 1978.
  The GOP
  control would be short-lived, thanks to the farm crisis of the 1980s that
  made
  Democrats out of many rural voters.
  The only good news for Democrats that year was the election of Tom Miller as
  Iowa's new attorney general.  He defeated the eminently quotable Richard
  Turner, who
  was always a reporters best friend on a slow news day.

  Bob Ray won yet another term as governor, defeating Jerry Fitzgerald.  Lt.
  Gov.
  Art Neu retired from that job, having grown tired of waiting around for Ray
  to leave
  his job.  That enabled an unknown state Representative named Terry Branstad
  to win
  the Lieutenant Governorship and we just all knew that little guy was going
  nowhere in
  Iowa politics.

  A new generation of leaders emerged that year.  Lowell Junkins became
  minority
  leader in the Iowa Senate.  Cal Hultman became majority leader.
  Those two have proven that there really is life after the Legislature and
  it's often
  quite profitable too.
  What the election of 1978 illustrated was something that is still true
  today. Iowa
  has a healthy, vigorous two party system.  The two parties in Iowa compete
  hard with
  one another for the support of Iowans.  When that competition turns nasty
  we're all
  losers.
  But when that competition turns positive as each side tries to out do the
  other by
  offering the best candidates and best ideas they can find, then all of us in
  Iowa are the
  winners.
  That's the kind of session you are having this year and it's commendable.
  A healthy two party system is alive and well in Iowa today.

  The 1979 session of the Legislature was memorable for a couple reasons.
  They had
  a $150 million surplus that year and gave a third of it back to the tax
  payers in a
  rebate.  That's not been repeated since but just imagine what these boys
  could do today
  with a $900 million surplus!
  They also started income tax indexing.  Inflation was 9.4 percent that year
  so that
  meant something to taxpayers. Unlike the rebate, indexing's an idea that
  successors
  have kept around.
  They legalized graduated payment mortgages and variable rate mortgages. They
  cut unemployment benefits and allowed credit unions to run checking
  accounts.
  Much has changed since 1978 and not all of it for the better.  Budgets are
  larger.
  Staffs bigger. The costs of campaigns has exploded and they're about to
  become more
  expensive now that corporate contributions are legal.

© 1999 Cornell College and League of Women Voters of Iowa

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