The woman Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mike Blouin will introduce as his runningmate today (Thursday) donated money to Republican Jim Nussle’s campaigns for congress. Cullen Sheehan, the executive director of the Republican Party of Iowa, says he hopes Andrea McGuire — Blouin’s runningmate — will not only donate to Nussle’s campaign for governor this year, but that she’ll vote for Nussle, too.
“It seems that she contributed to Congressman Nussle in ’92 and ’94,” Sheehan says. “I think it’s fascinating to have a candidate running for statewide office against someone that they’ve supported in the past.” Sheehan says McGuire’s four donations to Nussle’s congressional campaigns totalled four-hundred dollars.
A spokesman for the Blouin campaign says McGuire also donated 250-dollars to Chet Culver in 2003 — and Culver is now one of Blouin’s competitors for the Democratic party’s gubernatorial nomination. Individuals, particularly those in the business world, often donate to candidates of both parties, but Sheehan, the Iowa Republican, says there’s a distinction in this case. “They are historically not candidates for statewide office,” Sheehan says. “I think that’s the unique part of this.” Andrea McGuire issued a short, written statement, saying “like many Iowans, when Jim Nussle first ran for office, (she) had hopes he would represent Iowa’s values. He walked away from our values.”
And McGuire says she has therefore walked away from Nussle. McGuire is an executive at American Republic Insurance in Des Moines and will join Blouin on the campaign trail today, beginning with an event at nine a.m. in Waterloo.