Tonight the guy some Iowans (like former state legislator Sandy Greiner) want to step into the 2010 governor’s race will speak in northeast Iowa at a fundraiser for State Rep. Pat Grassley. Terry Branstad is being urged to run by Greiner, and her Draft Branstad political action committee yesterday began running radio ads highlighting his leadership as governor from 1983 to 1998. Branstad is expected to make a decision in October, and fellow Republicans interested in the governorship awaiting Branstad’s determination include Sioux Cityans Chris Rants and Bob Vander Plaats, Jerry Behn, Christian Fong, Rod Roberts and Paul McKinley.

Over the weekend I was paring some yellowing articles from boxes my wife had been after me to jettison. I came across a story from the last time Branstad won in Iowa, via a Journal piece by former political reporter Dave Dreeszen (now business editor) on Iowa Congressman Fred Grandy packing up his office and bringing eight years in office to a close in late 1994. Grandy had given up a safe seat to enter a bruising GOP primary against then three-termer Branstad. A lot of Republicans went for Grandy, but Branstad held on to win, 52%-48% in June.

Grandy said the GOP primary outcome showed that negative campaigning worked. After losing the primary, Grandy torched party unity plans for the fall ‘94 election, infamously stating, “I’ll hold my nose and vote for the guy,” rather than for Democrat Bonnie Campbell. Branstad won handily over Campbell.

Former “Love Boat” (younger readers, ever heard of Charo, Billy Barty, Shecky Greene or Paul Williams?) actor Grandy moved to Sioux City to run for Congress in the 1980s, which led to some carpetbagger references. Grandy contended Branstad’s “Made In Iowa” campaign forced him to defend his credentials as an Iowan all over again in the primary — he was born and lived in Sioux City through age 14.

Grandy said Branstad had a strategy of “win at all costs… even after eight years in politics, I naively assumed in the governor’s race you would have a real discussion of ideas, not an attempt to see who was the truer Iowan, or by association, the most dangerous of the candidates.”

“I’ve always believed in a spirited dialogue and my attacks, although critical and sometimes pointed and frequently sardonic, have never been designed to be personal petty assaults on people,” Grandy told Dreeszen.

“Drawing a bull’s eye around (U.S. Sen.) Tom Harkin and calling him the anti-Christ was never anything that filled me with great hope in our business. Demonizing Democrats or trashing liberals or otherwise labeling people by some kind of philosophical branding iron is something I abhor. That’s one of the reasons I got into the governor’s race. I felt the Republican Party in this state was becoming somewhat petty and mean-spirited and exclusive, not inclusive.”

Grandy was the GOP moderate in 1994. It’s the height of irony to consider Branstad is being urged to return to the political sphere because some see gubernatorial candidate Vander Plaats as too exlusionary on social issues and want a moderating voice.

One more blurb on the role of moderates in politics from Grandy’s exit interview: “What we’re seeing is a greater partisan divide, not a diminishing one. I am not sorry to leave my Democratic and Republican colleagues in Congress in some kind of pitched battle for the hearts and minds of the middle class.”