Ron Corbett

Cedar Rapids Mayor Ron Corbett ended his final “State of the City” message on Wednesday with a few surprise “notes.”

Corbett, a Republican, is considering a run for gonveror after serving two terms as the mayor of Iowa’s second-largest city. Corbett spoke for about an hour yesterday, outling the lessons he believes were learned from floods that hit the city in 2008 and 2016.

“Get things done,” Corbett said. “Lesson number two: be open for business. Lesson number three: don’t throw in the towel.”

For weeks, Corbett had been promising to deliver a surprise in the speech and many guessed it would be a formal declaration of his candidacy for governor. The surprise turned out to be a tune.

Corbett wrote words to the tune “Sweet Home Chicago” — substituting the name of his home city in the lyrics. A local band was on stage for the song and dance.

Corbett is a former state legislator who rose through ranks to become speaker of the Iowa House. He left that position to take over as leader of the Cedar Rapids Chamber of Commerce. Corbett has formed a think tank and has been traveling the state to gauge how much support he might have in the 2018 race for governor against fellow Republican Kim Reynolds.

(Reporting by Iowa Public Radio’s Dean Borg in Cedar Rapids; Radio Iowa’s O. Kay Henderson in Des Moines)