Daily Iowan

Issue date: 5/8/08 Section: Metro

Media Credit: Robin Svec/The Daily Iowan [Click to enlarge]

Earlier this year, Michael Gartner relinquished his polarizing three-year-long tenure as president of the state Board of Regents. It was just the latest chapter in a life that has taken him from a young boy answering phones at the Des Moines Register to a high-power journalism career, followed by public service and the purchase of a minor-league baseball team. Throughout, he has left his mark on the minds of many: sometimes positively, sometimes negatively, but always memorably.


Michael Gartner appears to have but one head shot.

It's the photo there, to your right. The one where he is smiling, not exuberantly, but more in an expression of passive pleasure, or at the very least, simple contentment. His head of waning white hair is slightly cocked, his signature bow-tie locks the eye.

In other places, the photo surfaces next to the author description in the back of a book he wrote about newspaper editorials, it looks on monochromatically from both the webpage of the state Board of Regents and the official site for the Pulitzer Prize, and it has been paired with countless news articles ranging from stories about the tribulations of a university's presidential search to an editorial on the death of his beloved son, Christopher.

It's the stalwart image of a man of many accomplishments, much renown, and a good deal of scorn. A native Iowan who has lead a life centered on one theme: newsmaking. It's just sometimes he's the subject, others the writer, and always a self-described agent of change. Someone who - in the process of accomplishing what he believes is best - may make allies or completely enrage an entire community.

Which one? He doesn't really care.

"Prickly. Prickly. That's the way Jack Welch, who was head of GE described it: 'Michael Gartner is prickly.' I said, 'As long as it has an 'ly' on it, I'm fine,' " Gartner recalled recently. Welch, who led the company that owns NBC Universal, told The Daily Iowan through an assistant he would call Gartner "Smart and Prickly," not just "Prickly."

On to public service in Iowa

Therefore, it seems fitting that when he was appointed to his recently completed stint as president of the regents in 2005 - a job for which he gained much notoriety in Iowa City - the nine-member governing body of the state's universities was marred by controversy.

In January of that year, John Forsyth, the former regents' president had just resigned - along with two others - amid allegations of conflict-of-interest. UI Hospitals and Clinics was renegotiating its reimbursement contract with Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Iowa, of which Forsyth happened to be (and still is) chairman and CEO.

So then-Gov. Tom Vilsack tapped Gartner to fill one of the vacancies.

Vilsack is in the ally category of Gartner's acquaintances. They first met in the late 1980s over lunch at Vilsack's Mount Pleasant, Iowa, home on the recommendation of a Des Moines Register political columnist who invited Gartner to come and meet "the next governor of the state of Iowa." At the time Vilsack was still mayor of that southeast Iowa town, but Gartner continued to follow the politician's career as he ascended to state senator and eventually became Iowa's 40th governor in 1999.

Reflecting now on why he originally chose Gartner for the regents' post, Vilsack said: "I thought he was very intelligent, obviously. He understood the significant role universities are going to play in the economic development of the state."

Vilsack already knew Gartner could oversee a large project. The new Democratic governor had previously appointed Gartner (also a Democrat) to serve as the first chairman of the Vision Iowa board, which was charged with doling out millions of state dollars to help Iowa communities attract tourists.

Gartner counts his time on that board as one of his proudest accomplishments, despite telling his wife before taking the position: "I just agreed to do something for Vilsack, and when it is all over, three people in the state are going to be happy and 500,000 are going to be pissed off.

"But as it turned out, we ran it in a way that we stretched the money far more than anybody thought we could. We didn't give the money where everybody assumed we would give the money. They thought we would be easy; we were very, very tough," Gartner said. "As a fellow board member said, we were equal-opportunity pricks."

In fact, he said the Vision Iowa program was one of the best initiatives the state had taken on during his lifetime.

"[Gartner] just had a remarkable capacity to figure out how to solve problems," Vilsack said earlier this year.

So shortly after he joined the regents, the board unanimous voted him into the presidency position vacated by Forsyth.

Gartner recalls the transition with mixed feelings, saying Forsyth's departure was a "real loss to the university system and state."

"I think it was an unfortunate event. I think John was a very good regent and a very good president of the regents."

But Gartner said he was excited about taking the post. "I thought it would be interesting," he said.

It was.

During his tenure as regent leader - he stepped down at the beginning of this year, although he's scheduled to remain on the board until 2011 - he participated in tussles with the state Legislature on funding, discussions over continually rising tuition, and two presidential searches. To a public eye, at least, each issue seemed to come with some sort of conflict. And to this day, the one that sticks most solidly in many people's minds is the search for a new president of the UI.

Iowa City conflict

On Jan. 21, 2006, then-UI President David Skorton, who had previously pledged to retire in Iowa City, announced he would instead move to take the top position at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.

Many saw his departure as further fallout from the Wellmark controversy of the previous year - a few months after that dispute ended, the regents met to approve pay increases for all three university presidents. The result: Gregory Geoffroy at Iowa State University received a 5 percent boost, as did Robert Koob at the University of Northern Iowa; Skorton, however, saw just a 3 percent bump in his paycheck.

"I thought President Skorton was treated unfairly by the board, and my principal regret from the time that I've been on the board was that in August of 2005, when his compensation was reviewed, I didn't take a public stand on it at that time. I've acknowledged that was an error," said Regent Robert Downer, referring to what he calls Skorton's "woefully inadequate" pay increase. Skorton had initiated the contract renegotion with Wellmark in January 2005.

(Skorton declined, through an assistant, to be interviewed for this article).

Downer said there have probably been more disagreements between Gartner and him than between any two other regents during the Iowa City lawyer's five-year term on the board, including a time as interim president.

Despite his opposition to pay differences, Downer justified his vote by saying he was simply trying to project the board as a united front - something that he believes was important to Gartner.

"I think he feels he is certainly a strong - and I think dynamic - leader, and this I think puts more emphasis, more strength behind what the board is doing as opposed to when there is a split vote," Downer said.

It's a point that makes sense for a man whose career has been devoted to running businesses, writing poignantly, and arguing his opinion.

Those who know Gartner describe him as someone who brings a strong passion to whatever he chooses to do and approaches issues with a robust appetite for information. When he figures out what he wants, he goes for it.

"Michael is a guy whose world is black and white. He has definite views on what is right and wrong," said Troy McCullough, an interactive news writer with the Wall Street Journal Online who started working under Gartner at the Ames Daily Tribune in the late-1990s. "If you screwed up, he was going to tell you you screwed up."

Gartner was, nonetheless, gentle with the Tribune's reporters, he added.

When Gartner and two others bought the Tribune in 1986, he was investing in a state he loved and the one where he procured his passion for the profession that pulses through his veins.

Gartner's father, Carl Gartner, was the editor of the Register, where young Gartner started working at the age of 15, answering phones and writing minor sports stories.

"He always seemed like a happy guy, and I thought, 'Boy this is pretty neat,' " Gartner said about his father, who died in 2004. "I always assumed I would go into newspapers."

This experience launched a career that would take him to the Journal as the Page-One editor, make him president of NBC News, and allow him to become the general news executive at Gannett Co. and USA Today before eventually purchasing the Tribune. The Ames paper became his "little journalism school" and forum for Pulitzer-Prize-winning editorials.


Yet, when he came to head the regents he had never directed an agglomeration of academics before.

Check tomorrow's Daily Iowan for the second part in this two-part series.

E-mail DI reporter Bryce Bauer at:

bryce-bauer@uiowa.edu

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