In 2014, Gov. Terry Branstad was re-elected to his sixth overall term with 59 percent of the popular vote, winning every county except Johnson County. He is now the longest serving governor in U.S. history. Obviously, he must be doing something right to receive support from Iowa’s voters for this long. But has Branstad’s Iowa prospered as much as he promised it would?

The Des Moines Register examined this question, interviewing the governor last month and comparing the state’s growth (or lack thereof) to Branstad’s statements. What it found is largely unsurprising: Iowa has enjoyed modest job growth since Branstad took office at the tail end of the Great Recession. But it has slumped in such state services as access to health care; other areas, including K-12 education, have only made slight gains. 

And Branstad’s appointments to the state Board of Regents have caused great controversy at the University of Iowa, where questionable funding proposals and a presidential-selection process marred with allegations of favoritism and hidden agendas have led many to denounce the governor in the same breath as they do the regents. 

Branstad’s hallmark pledge has been to bring 200,000 new jobs to Iowa, and it’s a promise that has resonated with voters. To the governor’s credit, a net 110,000 new jobs have come to Iowa, and its unemployment rate in December 2015 was a remarkable 3.5 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, down 3 percentage points from the height of recession in 2009. 

But the biggest question about these rates is whether Branstad can truly take credit for them. After all, the national unemployment has been cut in half during a similar time period, falling from 9.8 percent in February 2010 to 4.9 percent today. In 2013, the Business Journal analyzed U.S. governors’ job-creation records, using private sector job-growth rates. Branstad was ranked 28th out of 45 (governors who had recently taken office were omitted). 

One telling statistic is the governor’s approval rating. In the Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa poll, the percentage of Iowans that approve of the way Branstad is handling his job has fallen significantly, from more than 60 percent in February 2014 to 47 percent last month. Public Policy Polling found similar results in November 2015: Branstad only had a 38 percent favorability rating, coupled with 50 percent disapproval. 

Though the state’s overall economic fortunes have improved, perhaps Iowans just feel the governor hasn’t done enough to address the issues he campaigned on, such as raising family incomes and reducing the cost of government (according to 2014 exit polls, 80 percent of Branstad voters thought government was “doing too much”). Or maybe, after closing in on two decades in office, Branstad has started to wear out his welcome.
Regardless of the reason, the nation’s longest serving governor won’t be up for re-election until November 2018, giving him two and a half years to improve his approval ratings and, hopefully, the state of Iowa along with them.