The congressman from the 3rd District is Ron Kind, a Democrat elected in 1996. He is a moderate who focuses on health and agriculture issues from his perch on the Ways and Means Committee. Read More

The congressman from the 3rd District is Ron Kind, a Democrat elected in 1996. He is a moderate who focuses on health and agriculture issues from his perch on the Ways and Means Committee.

Kind grew up in a large family in La Crosse, the son of a telephone repairman and a secretary in the local schools. He went to Harvard University on a scholarship and played quarterback. He worked as a summer intern for Democratic Sen. William Proxmire, doing research for Proxmire’s Golden Fleece awards pointing out wasteful government spending. Kind attended the London School of Economics and the University of Minnesota’s law school, practiced law in a large firm in Milwaukee, and then returned home to La Crosse to work as an assistant prosecutor on rape and sexual abuse cases.

Kind started running for Congress soon after moderate Republican Steve Gunderson announced in 1994 that he would not seek re-election. Former state Sen. Jim Harsdorf won the Republican primary and made a case for a balanced budget and for Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson’s “Wisconsin Works” welfare reform program. Kind presented his own balanced budget proposal and urged reform of the campaign finance system. Kind won, 52%-48%.

In the House, Kind is the vice chairman of the business-oriented New Democrat Coalition. He formerly co-chaired the Congressional Sportsmen’s Caucus of pro-conservation hunters, and received the National Rifle Association’s endorsement in 2010. He refused to support liberal Democrat Nancy Pelosi in her bid for minority leader in January 2011, casting his vote for Tennessee Democrat Jim Cooper, another moderate. Kind complained to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in November 2010 that his party, in losing its majority, failed to retain many of the districts between the Appalachian Mountains and the Rockies, “yet we have a leadership that is East Coast, West Coast.”

With dairy farming prominent in his district, Kind is vitally interested in issues affecting farmers. In 2007, he joined with conservative deficit hawks and suburban and urban Democrats in an attempt to add provisions to the farm bill that would have changed federal policy for agricultural subsidies and provided more funds for land conservation and school nutrition. “For too long, we’ve had large taxpayer subsidies going to a few very large farming entities to the disadvantage of family farmers,” Kind said. “It ultimately distorts the marketplace and distorts trade policy, which also hurts agriculture.” Kind won 200 votes for similar provisions in the 2002 farm bill, but this time around, the Democratic leadership was worried about angering farmers’ groups in rural swing districts and refused to allow a vote by the full House. The plan died in committee. Kind voted against the final version of the farm bill, calling it a “nightmare.” He said that congressional negotiators “managed to avoid every opportunity to reform wasteful, outdated subsidies while piling on additional layers of unnecessary spending.”

Despite the farm subsidies that flow to the district, he said that the vast majority of producers he represents don’t get huge agriculture subsidies because they’re not large agribusinesses. When President Barack Obama unveiled a plan in April 2009 to save nearly $10 billion by putting strict limits on subsidies, Kind worked with the White House to revamp the measure. On Ways and Means, he also has championed tax credits aimed at encouraging farmers to control animal waste while producing renewable biogas energy. He has encouraged the development of alternative crops such as wheat and soybeans for farmers in Afghanistan, saying it could help create a stable society there.

Kind got an early start on the health care overhaul debate in 2009, co-sponsoring a bill to put greater emphasis on quality and coordination of care in reimbursing health care providers. He was dissatisfied with the version that passed Ways and Means the next month and was one of three Democrats who joined committee Republicans in opposing it. But after a series of lengthy meetings that he and others held with Pelosi on containing the spiraling costs of Medicare, he pronounced himself satisfied with the legislation. He ultimately succeeded in getting $800 million in immediate payments for doctors and hospitals as well as a commitment for a value-based system for paying providers, and backed the version that became law.

In 2004, Kind had his first credible challenger, Republican state Sen. Dale Schultz, a moderate in the Wisconsin legislature for more than two decades. Schultz ran with an unlikely Republican theme, criticizing Kind as a free trader who had sent jobs overseas. Kind affirmed his support for trade agreements, but he criticized the Bush administration for failing to enforce their labor and environmental protection terms. Kind won, 56%-43%, and two years later did even better, attaining 65% of the vote.

He passed on the opportunity to run for governor in 2010, saying he wanted to focus on passing health care legislation. But that year, another serious challenger emerged for his House seat, Dan Kapanke, a Republican state senator who lambasted Kind for his support of the health care bill and Obama’s economic agenda. Less than a week before the election, Wisconsin Republicans alleged that a Kind staffer asked for campaign contributions in 2007 to arrange a meeting between the congressman and a group of doctors. Kind called the charge “blatant lies” and questioned the timing of the complaint. He survived with a 50.3%-46.5% win.