Mike Chapman’s authorized biography of Terry Branstad includes significant insights into the Republican governor’s conservative philosophy and remarkable durability.

“Iowa’s Record Setting Governor: The Terry Branstad Story” traces Branstad’s conservative roots to his junior year of high school, when he was inspired by Barry Goldwater’s 1964 campaign book, “The Conscience of a Conservative.” 

“I have little interest in streamlining government or making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size,” Goldwater wrote. “My aim is not to pass laws but to repeal them.”

“I became convinced right then,” Branstad told Chapman, “that I was a fiscal conservative.” 

Whether you agree with Goldwater’s philosophy or not, you have to admit it explains Branstad’s recent efforts to dismantle long-standing functions of state government, including Iowa’s mental health institutions and the state girls’ training school. 

The key to Branstad’s longevity, David Fisher and other Branstad associates told Chapman, is his phenomenal recall of names and faces and his genuine likability, coupled with a travel schedule that has him on the road probably more than in his Statehouse office. 

Notably absent from the book, though, are explanations, or even acknowledgments, of the many contradictions and transformations in Branstad’s career. 

There is no mention of his decision, soon after taking office in 1983, to approve an increase in the sales tax from 3 percent to 4 percent. Just months earlier, he had bashed his opponent, Roxanne Conlin, for proposing tax increases as a way to reboot Iowa’s collapsing farm economy.

Nor is there any discussion of a second sales tax increase to 5 percent in 1992. To be sure, there were valid economic reasons for the increases, and in both cases, Democrats did the heavy lifting.

With no explanation, one can only assume that Branstad reversed courses for the same reason he initially opposed, but later signed, gambling legislation. Namely, it was politically expedient. (Chapman did write that Branstad’s change on gaming occurred after he “was booed at a Hawkeye football game and at a rodeo in Fort Madison” because of his earlier vetoes of gambling bills.)

Nor is there mention of the five times between 1983 and 1989 when fuel tax increases were approved and the four times cigarette taxes were raised. (All were parts of more complicated legislative packages, and mentioning them would have complicated the narrative.)  

There is, however, one allusion to the 1987 revenue-neutral restructuring of Iowa’s income tax code based on this quote from The Des Moines Register: “Branstad got himself in political hot water with the conservative wing of the Republican Party when he called for a major restructuring of Iowa’s income tax code.”

Another notable absence from the book involves the Iowa Communications Network, the state’s $400 million statewide fiber-optic 
network. Branstad was a strong supporter of the ICN, which placed state government in competition with the telecommunications industry, a strange move indeed for a conservative governor.

Branstad’s justification was that the ICN would catapult rural schools to the forefront of technology. For a variety of reasons, that never happened, and technology today has leapfrogged any unique capabilities that the network ever had. 

At the end of the book, Chapman wrote, “Perhaps longevity is Branstad’s greatest legacy.” 

On that, he is correct. In fact, Branstad did little of substance during his six terms as governor to advance the two issues he mentions most frequently: education and economic development. 

And for good reason. Goldwater believed that government was “the chief instrument for thwarting men’s liberty.” He made clear in his 1964 book that government’s job is not to provide vision or resources. The job of governors, according to Goldwater, is to hold the line and pull back as much as possible on public spending.