Brad Zaun
A state senator who talked with Terry Branstad right after the governor fell ill this morning says Branstad will bounce back quickly. State Senator Brad Zaun of Urbandale was at a ceremony to mark the groundbreaking for a new Du Pont Pioneer facility in Johnston, listening to Branstad speak.
“You could just tell he was struggling and, you know, he was probably dehydrated,” Zaun says. “I’m very confident he’s going to be fine based on the conversations that I had with him, but most importantly what the EMS people did, asking him pertinent questions about where you’re at and who’s the president of the United States and that kind of stuff.”
Zaun says the governor even joked about his condition.
“That his wife said I probably shouldn’t work today,” Zaun says. “Like all of us — I’m getting over the flu, too — you just get tired, so we’ll just be saying a lot of prayers for him.”
Senator Chuck Grassley tweeted his well-wishes to Branstad, advising the governor to “do exactly what Mrs Branstad tells you to do.” Branstad sat down in the middle of his speech at today’s groundbreaking, then Zaun says a nurse suggested that Branstad lay down on the floor. Branstad was then transported by ambulance to a Des Moines hospital. Branstad spokesman Jimmy Centers says the governor is suffering from a “seasonal illness.”
Early this morning Branstad told reporters he’d been suffering from a “bad cold” for “a couple of weeks or more.”