It was January 3, 2012 and Mitt Romney was holding his final rally before the Iowa Republican presidential caucuses at the Competitive Advertising building in Clive, Iowa.
Amid the sea of people, I spotted an older gentleman who was drawing quite a bit of attention himself. Could that be former Gov. (1968-82) Bob Ray, I asked?
“Yes!” replied former Polk County (Des Moines) GOP Chairman Kim Schmett, “You should definitely be talking to Governor Ray. He’s more moderate than most of the folks going to the caucus—for sure—but they listen to what he has to say. He’s the reason Iowa is what it is today. And everyone likes him.”
Ray’s death July 8 at age 89 evoked memories of that evening six years ago and Schmett’s characterization of a governor no one could really dislike.
Today, the Hawkeye State’s three top Republican politicians—Governor Kim Reynolds, Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst—are, like most GOP office-holders nationwide, decidedly to Ray’s right.
All would surely take opposite positions from Gov. Ray on key issues. He opposed the death penalty, supported collective bargaining for public employees, and was an advocate of immigration who opened Iowa’s borders to more than 5,000 Vietnamese refugees fleeing the Communist takeover of their homeland.
Reynolds, Grassley, and Ernst all attended Ray’s funeral July 13 and hailed him as a great friend.
A U.S. Army veteran and graduate of Drake University (Iowa), Robert D. Ray worked part-time in a butcher shop while earning his law degree at Drake’s law school. He lost bids for Polk County District Attorney and the state legislature. But in 1965, he took the unwanted job of Republican state chairman.
“Unwanted” was the right adjective. The year that Ray assumed the party helm, Democrats controlled the governorship, both houses of the state legislature, and five of the six U.S. House seats. But under Ray’s leadership, Republicans in 1966 regained three U.S. House seats and elected 88 new Republican state legislators.
In 1968, Ray sought the nomination for governor against two more conservative opponents: Don Johnson, former national commander of the American Legion, and Centerville newspaper publisher Bob Beck.
Ray was helped in the race by the contacts he made statewide and by an unexpected and near-tragic development: a plane crash. On April 22, Ray, a campaign pollster, and a pilot crashed their small plane. All survived, but the candidate suffered a broken leg and ankle and had to be hospitalized. His wife Billie Ray made nightly briefings on his condition and won high marks as a campaign spokeswoman.
When Ray walked out of the hospital on crutches, he was better-known and more widely admired than when he went in. He won the primary with a plurality and in November, he handily defeated Democratic State Treasurer Paul Franzenburg.
Ray would go on to win two more two-year terms as governor and, after state law was changed, he handily won two four-year terms.
“He pushed for a plan that shifted the state’s revenue stream from property taxes to income taxes,” the Des Moines Register recalled, “He worked with legislators to create an education funding plan that equalized per pupil funding, putting schools in poorer regions of the state on more equal financial footing with those in better-off areas.”
The legacy of Ray’s revolutionary plan was to ease local property taxes, which meant less of a burden on farmers and improved school funding. Several states have since copied “the Ray way” of school financing.
Ray also had his “ups and downs” with fellow Republicans in the legislature. He vetoed a bill permitting wiretapping, which was widely favored by lawmakers.
So it was no surprise in 1972, when Lieutenant Governor Roger Jepsen announced he would challenge Ray for re-nomination, more Republican state legislators backed Jepsen than the sitting governor. (Jepsen eventually abandoned his challenge and resurfaced to win election as U.S. Senator in 1978).
Ray will probably be best remembered for his help to the South Vietnamese refugees who came to the U.S. in 1975. When President Gerald Ford asked the nation’s governors to help resettle the refugees and promised federal help, only one governor responded--Ray. Moved by a report he saw on “Sixty Minutes” on the South Vietnamese fleeing their homeland, Ray welcomed the Tai Dam community of roughly 3,500 to Iowa and helped them keep their tightly-knit community together.
In 1979, he took in 1500 more refugees from Vietnam as well as Thailand and Cambodia. This came as a poll in the Des Moines Register showed 51 per cent of Iowans opposed further immigration by Vietnamese.
As a private citizen and president of his alma mater Drake University, Ray stubbornly maintained his centrist persona just as the Republican Party with which he had a lifelong association moved to the right.
“He’s be cut to pieces in a primary today,” said his onetime Lieutenant Governor Arthur Neu.
“Bob was a moderate in a conservative party, but he remained respected throughout his life because of what he did and who he was,” Kim Schmett told us, “He wrenched Iowa into the 20th Century and we are what we are largely because of him. And he had a big heart.”
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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