Cedar Rapids Mayor Ron Corbett visited several towns in Washington County yesterday, promoting his new book “Beyond Promises”.

Corbett describes how his book started, “It started a little over a year ago with the idea of really wanting to get down on paper the opportunity that I’ve had over the last eight years to be the mayor, and during the whole flood recovery and rebuilding of our city. There are a lot of pictures of Cedar Rapids both before and after the flood and certainly people have of memories, but I just felt being in the front row seat as the mayor over those last years I wanted to document that for history.” Corbett said the book then expanded to include his own memoirs of growing up in Iowa.

Corbett launched his book tour in Cedar Rapids last week with a stop in Des Moines and he said he is focusing the first few weeks of his tour in eastern Iowa. Corbett donated copies of his book to the libraries in Washington, Wellman, and Kalona and visited with the mayor and city administrator of Washington.

Corbett announced last December that he won’t be seeking reelection as mayor and he comments on his possible gubernatorial run, “This is the season where candidates start to announce and the primary is just basically a year away. So although for citizens they think ‘Oh well that’s a long campaign, 12 months’, but if you really want to get around the state and meet people at least once and maybe a second time you really have to start about a year out. So I’m using this book tour as really part of an exploratory effort in my decisionmaking process.” Corbett says he hopes to make a decision on running for governor sometime by the end of June.