Branstad: Caucus candidates must support biofuels
Source: Mike Wiser, Quad City Times • Posted: Monday, November 25, 2013
“If they want to have a chance in Iowa, they better embrace it, and they better join us,” he said. “I mean this is pretty loud and clear.”
Branstad said ethanol wasn’t a big issue in the last election because of fluctuations in the price of corn.
“People say, ‘Well, ethanol wasn’t a big issue in the last election.’ Well, yeah the price of corn was sky high,” Branstad said after an event at Lincolnway Energy in rural Nevada to rally support for a higher Renewable Fuel Standard. “Well, now, it’s down to the cost of production, and the EPA is trying to reduce the RFS. It is going to be a huge issue.”
The RFS is the federally mandated Renewable Fuel Standard that requires a certain amount of biofuels in the national transportation fuel supply.
Proposed rules from the Environmental Protection Agency released last week cut the amount of required renewable fuels that would be required in coming years.
“He would deny that’s a threat, of course,” Drake University Politics Professor Dennis Goldford said. “But the governor vehemently represents what is an interest group.”
That interest group is the agriculture industry, which benefits from the guaranteed market created by the Renewable Fuel Standard. Iowa ethanol and biodiesel manufacturers produce billions of gallons a year.
Iowa, because of its first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses, is a key launching point for presidential campaigns. Doing well in Iowa can bring notice and otherwise unattainable media coverage to a candidate, making it important for candidates to curry favor with Iowa interest groups.
Or so the thinking goes.
“The leverage (Branstad) has is ‘you won’t do well in the caucuses if you don’t endorse ethanol,’” Goldford said. “I don’t know if that’s the case. Maybe it is, but I haven’t seen evidence of it. It might be a make-or-break issue for some, but it’s not one of those broad-based issues.”
For instance, Goldford asked rhetorically, would a rural Iowa Republican caucus-goer for a Democrat if the Democrat was a bigger supporter of ethanol than the GOP candidate?
“I think that’s hard to say with certainty,” he said.
Several national political figures and potential presidential candidates have been through Iowa in the past few months, including Republican Texas Gov. Rick Perry, U.S. Sens. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and, last Saturday, Republican U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, who was the guest of honor at Branstad’s 67th birthday party.