DES MOINES - The Republican Party of Iowa picked a new chairman on Saturday, a Sioux City businessman who is a longtime GOP activist.

"I am very excited to serve as the party's next chairman and will work hard to see we regain the governor's seat and the majority at the Statehouse in the next two years to come," Ray Hoffmann said Saturday.

He spoke after being unanimously elected by the state party's central committee to the position on Saturday. He had no opposition.

Hoffmann was born and raised in a poor family in West Germany. He came to the United States at 16 in 1959 and joined the U.S. Marines two years later.

He met his wife, Kathleen Flemming, in 1965 and they moved to Sioux City in 1984.

Hoffmann, a father of three, started his own business, the Victorian Opera Company, and later became owner of an Italian restaurant.

Party Co-chairman Leon Mosley, a Black Hawk County supervisor from Waterloo, had led the Iowa GOP since November 2003, when Chairman Chuck Larson Jr., a major in the Army Reserve, was activated for duty in Iraq. Iowa Statehouse leaders have said Larson could return as early as next month.

Mosley and Hoffman were delegates to the Republican National Convention in New York last summer. Mosley is believed to be the first African American to lead either major political party in Iowa.