Terry Branstad

Terry Edward Branstad (born November 17, 1946) is the 42nd and current governor of Iowa since January 2011. Branstad has previously served as the 39th governor of Iowa from 1983 to 1999. He became President of Des Moines University from 2003 to 2009, and then chose to run for Governor again. He is a member of the Republican Party.

Ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council
On its website, ALEC described the meeting that took place in 1973 which led to the founding of the organization:


 * "More than 30 years ago, a small group of state legislators and conservative policy advocates met in Chicago to implement a vision:


 * A nonpartisan membership association for conservative state lawmakers who shared a common belief in limited government, free markets, federalism, and individual liberty. Their vision and initiative resulted in the creation of a voluntary membership association for people who believed that government closest to the people was fundamentally more effective, more just, and a better guarantor of freedom than the distant, bloated federal government in Washington, D.C."

ALEC identified Governor Branstad as one of the politicians who attended that meeting.

Ag-gag Laws
Ag-gag laws are laws intended to prevent whistleblowers from exposing animal cruelty on farms. The term "ag gag" for the laws was coined by Mark Bittman in an April 2011 New York Times column.

In Iowa, Senate File 431 and House File 589 prohibit anyone from producing, possessing, or distributing a record of a “visual or audio experience occurring at [an] animal facility.” The House bill, which passed March 17, 2011, was originally introduced by Rep Annette Sweeney. Sweeney operates a family cattle operation and she is the former Executive Director of the Iowa Angus Association. In the Senate, the bill was initially introduced by Tom Rielly. One of his top campaign contributors in 2008 was the Iowa Farm Bureau.

The bill passed and was signed by Governor Branstad on March 2, 2012. According to the DesMoines Register, "The National Institute on Money in State Politics has found that almost 10 percent of the $8.9 million Gov. Terry Branstad raised in his most recent campaign came from the agriculture industry. And almost $8,000 -- more than one-fourth of all the campaign money raised in 2010 by Sen. Joe Seng of Davenport, a self-proclaimed moderate Democrat who led discussion on the bill -- came from the ag sector, according to the nonprofit, nonpartisan watchdog group."