There were two notable bits of campaign news in Iowa today.  State Auditor Dave Vaudt endorsed Terry Branstad’s bid for a fifth term as governor and Vice President Joe Biden is coming in next week to campaign with Governor Chet Culver as Culver kicks off his bid for a second term.

Listen to the Vaudt/Branstad announcement here.  After their opening statements, I asked a question and I’ll share some background before sharing the text of the Q-and-A session. Vaudt is a Certified Public Accountant, as was his predecessor — long-time State Auditor Dick Johnson.  Johnson is a Republican.  In 1994, Johnson endorsed Fred Grandy’s GOP primary challenge of Branstad and Johnson has been and continues to be a supporter of Bob Vander Plaats, a Republican who is competing against Branstad for the GOP’s 2010 nomination for governor.

Here’s the transcript:

Question: “Which CPA are we to believe:  you or Dick Johnson?”

Branstad: “First of all, you want me to an…” (Branstad is referring to Vaudt.)

Vaudt: “Yeah.”

Branstad: “Let me answer that question. First of all let me say I learned a lot. Dick Johnson made some valid criticisms back in the ’80s when the Democrats controlled both houses of the legislature and as a result we put together the committee to reform state spending in ’91 and we passed the spending reforms and I didn’t satisfy, I didn’t just accept the legislature saying, ‘Well, this is all we can do.’ I brought ’em back twice in ’92 until we got all the spending reforms and then not only did we do that, then we got a Republican controlled House after the ’92 election and I strictly enforced the 99 percent spending limitation all the rest of the time that I was in office and so I think if you look at the record, there’s some valid criticisms that were made back in the ’80s but those were corrected and we lived with it.  What’s sad is what’s happened since I left office and that’s why it needs to be restored and corrected and we need to again have the budget balanced on generally accepted accounting principles and strictly enforce the 99 percent spending limitation and we want to go further and that is, biennial budget and put together a five-year fiscal plan for the state.”

Question: “Dave, did all three candidates personally ask for your endorsement?”

Vaudt: “I’ve met with all three candidates.  I took the independent approach of evaluating each candidate and selecting the candidate I thought was best qualified and ready to lead Iowa in this very challenging time.”

Question:  “But did they ask you?”

Vaudt: “No one asked me for their endorsement.  I did that on my own.”

Question: “Other than a news story about this event, what does this endorsement mean for Governor Branstad?”

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