Vilsack explores presidential run

By JAMES O'TOOLE
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
With the ballots of one national election barely counted, Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack formally kicked off the next one as he became the first candidate to form a 2008 presidential exploratory committee.

The two-term Democratic governor signaled his candidacy legally as he filed the papers to form the committee with the Federal Elections Commission last Thursday.

The public debut of his bid came with the launch of a Web site in which he speaks of his presidential ambitions while acknowledging his underdog status in a Democratic race against several unannounced but better-known candidates.

"I've never started a race that I've been expected to win, and I've never lost," Vilsack says in a video on the new site.

Nearing the end of his second term, Vilsack was elected in 1998 as the first Democrat to lead Iowa in more than three decades. He has cultivated a centrist image while emphasizing increased spending on health care, education and economic development. He chairs the Democratic Leadership Council, a group intent on steering Democratic policies to the moderate center of the political spectrum.

Vilsack's announcement came two days after Iowa Democrats rode the crest of the national political wave to their strongest position in a generation, capturing majorities in both chambers of the Legislature, while retaining the governor's mansion for Democrat Chet Culver, who will be Vilsack's successor.

Vilsack's early march on the 2008 field still leaves him a long shot against the candidacies of a variety of better known, better funded Democrats. Leading that list is Sen. Hillary Clinton, the presumed front-runner and the champion fund-raiser among Senate candidates in Tuesday's election. Former Sen. John Edwards also is actively considering the race, along with Sen. John Kerry, who occupied the top of the ticket Edwards shared in 2004; Illinois Sen. Barack Obama; and Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware.

With the decision by former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner not to pursue the Democratic nomination, Bill Richardson of New Mexico is the only other governor prominently mentioned as a 2008 possibility.

Vilsack will ceremoniously announce the presidential bid on Nov. 30 in Mount Pleasant, his Iowa home.

(James O'Toole can be reached at jotoole(at)post-gazette.com. For more stories visit scrippsnews.com)