Nearly a dozen potential Republican presidential hopefuls head to Des Moines this weekend for the Iowa Ag Summit -- a first of its kind event convened by a prominent Republican party donor and agribusiness entrepreneur.
The prospective candidates, including Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and former Gov. Jeb Bush, are to field questions on agricultural policy, ethanol subsidies and other topics from Bruce Rastetter, the Iowa Board of Regents president whom the Des Moines Register says has given more than $1.1 million in state political contributions since 2003.
Rastetter has said he hopes the event will elevate the role of agricultural policy in the presidential race. But The Iowa Republican website bills the event as a “presidential cattle call,” noting the pressure will be on Bush, who appears to have Republican party establishment support but is viewed warily by many conservatives and on Walker, the governor from a neighboring state who has been riding atop the polls since his January appearance at the Iowa Freedom Summit.
Bush on Friday released a two-minute video ahead of the event, using footage from his raucous appearance at last week’s Conservative Political Action Conference Union to cast himself as a conservative by touting his record as governor and nickname as “Veto Corleone” because of his penchant for striking lawmakers’ pet projects out of the state budget.
“I'd put my record up against anybody's, to be honest with you,” Bush told the Des Moines Register. “That's a solid conservative record."
Conservative activists have their doubts: "It's hard to reconcile his membership in the Republican Party as anything more than a multigenerational family tradition," Cary Gordon, a Christian conservative pastor at a Sioux City church, told the Register.
The visit is Bush’s first to the state in three years, and amid reports that other would-be candidates already have ramped up operations in the state, he’s added several retail political events to his schedule. Bush will raise money for Rep. David Young at an event Friday night and plans to meet privately with Iowa activists and volunteers before a public meet-and-greet Saturday night at a Pizza Ranch in Cedar Rapids.
The pressure is also on Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, the Republican reported, noting that Graham “stumbled in January when he gave new infamous hog castrator Joni Ernst an instrument for castrating bulls.” The Republican noted that savvy Iowa farmers “immediately noticed the faux pas” and it warned that a pattern of similar slip ups “will severely dampen a candidate’s viability in Iowa.”
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