Democrats who are trying to choose their party’s nominee for governor in 2008 will get no public guidance from either of the top two Democrats in the state.
Governor Tom Vilsack will not endorse a candidate and Senator Tom Harkin says he won’t either. “I love ’em all,” Harkin says of the eight Democrats who are running for governor. “We’re going to have a good, spirited primary…and I think the debate that we’re going to have in our party will highlight the differences between what our candidates would do as governor and what either Mr. Nussle or Mr. Vander Plaats would do as governor.”
Jim Nussle and Bob Vander Plaats are the Republicans running for governor, and Iowa’s other U.S. Senator, Republican Charles Grassley, has said he won’t endorse either candidate before the G-O-P primary in June, either.
Harkin says he sees no problem with having so many Democrats in the field. Harkin contends Iowa is better off after eight years of having a Democrat Governor in Tom Vilsack. “I think they want to continue that kind of leadership and they’re looking to the Democratic Party to continue that kind of leadership, so it’s not surprising that we have a lot of great candidates out there,” he says.