Democrats see that bet, and raise it

In June at the Iowa Democratic Party’s state convention, Governor Vilsack announced the Democratic Governors Association was giving Chet Culver, the party’s gubernatorial nominee, $500,000 and Vilsack chipped in $100,000 from his Heartland PAC.  Last night Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney was in Dubuque and announced the Republican Governors Association was giving Iowa GOP nominee Jim Nussle $500,000 (Radio Iowa story here). So, this morning, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson was in Des Moines and announced the Democratic Gvoernors Association was going to give Chet Culver, Iowa Democrats’ candidate for governor, MORE money (Radio Iowa story here).

As you can read in the story, Richardson poses an interesting reason for plugging more money into Iowa:  it’s for 2008 because it’ll be a lot easier to have the state vote for the Democratic presidential nominee with a Democratic governor.  Past history in Iowa, though, doesn’t seem to support that theory.  In 1988 Republican Terry Branstad was governor and Iowa was one of two states to vote for Mike Dukakis.  In 1992 and ’96, Branstad was still governor and the state voted for Clinton both times. By 2000, Vilsack was governor and Iowa did swing into Gore’s column by about 2,000 votes.  But in 2004, Vilsack was still governor and the state went in the Bush column by about 10,000 votes.