Tom Vilsack(born December 13 1950) is a two-term Democratic governor of Iowa.
He may help balance the testosterone heavy foreign policy ticket with home and hearth values. He was an orphan, adopted from an orphanage. Apparently, he has overseen the increase in health care coverage for Iowa's children to 94% coverage.
Various quotes that indicate how he might play on the Democratic ticket:
"The first year of his second term saw the creation of the Iowa Values Fund, a $503-million fund designed to help boost the Iowa economy by creating higher-income jobs."
"Vilsack was elected to the Iowa State Senate in 1992. As a State Senator, Vilsack helped pass a law which allowed workers to receive their health coverage when changing jobs. In addition, he wrote a bill which required the state to pay for 50% of county mental health costs."
Tuesday, May 18, 2004
Vilsack for VP
Posted by The Law Talking Guy at 12:24 PM
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4 comments:
Vilsack is supposedly a popular, midwestern, DLC (read moderate) Democrat. He would play into a Midwestern strategy which Kerry has said he favors. Good stuff.
I suppose the guy can be forgiven for being a big supporter the ethanol pork barrel. Good for Iowa bad for everyone else. You gotta expect an Iowa politician to be pro-corn. If only there was a way to run cars on pork by-products too then Iowa would really cash in!
For some reason, everytime I hear Vilsack's name I think about this old Polka band leader called "Whoopee John Wilfahrt" (I purchased one of his albums as a gag Christmas gift for a friend back when I was in college).
"Whoopee" Tom Vilsack for VP? Hmmmm, could be.
Well, cutesy nickname or not, he does fit the requirements the Dems want: well-liked governor from the midwest. However, Gore won Iowa in 2000 and you'd expect Kerry to do the same. Evan Bayh is another guy that's just really likeable, which is more than you can say about Dick Cheney. I'd like to see a debate between those two.
Gore won Iowa by fewer than 4,000 votes. The Reform party got 5,000 and Nader got 29,000. Iowa is up for grabs very much. Also, the thinking is that Vilsack can tap into the midwestern working class democrats and carry nearby Missouri, which has similar voting patterns and went for Bush by a small margin (also voted in the dead Democrat Carnahan over the incumbent Republican Ashcroft for senate).
I've always heard that Iowa voters are famously isolationist. That could mean an even bigger turnout for Nader now that he's a "Reform" party guy which gives him more of a centrist look than his "looney left" Green party identity. Vilscak might neutralize that.
Iowa voters would probably also like the Kerry as war hero bio-adds - they liked them a lot the first time around!
I'm thinking that with the polls the way they are, putting a Bush state in play (like Indiana) could really bury the Republicans.
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