DES MOINES – In many ways, Michael Blouin was a reluctant candidate for the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, much preferring that Gov. Tom Vilsack or Lt. Gov. Sally Pederson take on the task.

After a couple of decades in private life, Blouin had grown comfortable with a behind the scenes role and the turmoil of elective politics wasn’t immediately appealing.

“I probably spent more time trying to convince Tom Vilsack to run again than anybody in the state of Iowa, other than Christie,” the governor’s wife, said Blouin. “When she gave up, I gave up.”

Blouin quickly tossed his allegiances to Pederson.

“We were on vacation down in Florida over Thanksgiving and she called and said ‘I’m not going to do it,”‘ said Blouin. “We did some serious thinking and some serious talking and decided to legitimately try this exploratory thing.”

With that decision, an old political warhorse got back in the saddle.

“It’s a big step,” said Blouin. “You are going to take yourself out of any income opportunity for a year. You are going to be spending savings. We are spending our children’s inheritance.”

The son of a Navy man, Blouin moved around after being born in Florida, going to school in Florida and Chicago, before getting a degree from Loras College in 1966.

Blouin, 60, and his wife, Suzanne, were married in 1967, both taking jobs as schoolteachers in Dubuque. Politics was never very far away in that turbulent era

“It was the era,” said Blouin. “People did one of two things in the midst of the ’60s, they either completely walked away from politics or they walked into it. Something about it attracted me.”

Elected to the Legislature at 22, Blouin chuckles about those days. He lost his teaching job because of his election, and his wife discovered she was pregnant shortly after, and lost her job in the days when pregnant women couldn’t teach.

“We went from a $10,000 income to a $4,000 in the Legislature,” he said. “But we loved it, absolutely loved it.”

Blouin was in the House for two terms before winning election to the Senate in 1972, when a possibility opened up. Democrat Harold Hughes announced he wasn’t running for another term, and then-Rep. John Culver began a campaign to replace him.