Elected 1984, seat up 2002 Born: Nov. 19, 1939, Cumming Home: Cumming Education: IA St. U., B.S. 1962, Catholic U., J.D. 1972 Religion: Catholic Marital Status: married (Ruth)

Career:

• Political: U.S. House of Reps., 1974-84.
• Professional: Practicing atty., 1972-74; Staff Aide, House Select Cmte. on U.S. Involvement in SE Asia, 1973-74.
• Military: Navy, 1962-67; Naval Reserves, 1969-72.

DC Office: 731 HSOB 20510, 202-224-3254; Fax: 202-224-9369; Web site: www.senate.gov/~harkin

State Offices: Cedar Rapids, 319-365-4504; Davenport,319-322-1338; Des Moines,515-284-4574; Dubuque,319-582-2130; Sioux City,712-252-1550.

Committees:

• Agriculture, Nutrition & Forestry (RMM of 8 D).
• Appropriations (6th of 13 D): Agriculture & Rural Development; Defense; Foreign Operations & Export Financing; Labor & HHS (RMM); VA, HUD & Independent Agencies.
• Health, Education, Labor & Pensions (3d of 8 D): Employment, Safety & Training; Public Health.
• Small Business (3d of 8 D).

Tom Harkin, first elected to the Senate in 1984, is an accomplished veteran of Capitol Hill who still brings the attitude of the resentful outsider to his work. Harkin grew up poor in a rural town, where his father was a coal miner and his mother, a Slovenian immigrant, died when he was 10. His desire to use government to help those who are struggling comes not from academic theory but from tough personal experience. He worked his way through college and law school, spent five years in the Navy during the 1960s, ferrying planes from Vietnam for repair. Returning there in 1970 as an aide to Congressman Neal Smith, he discovered the infamous ''tiger cages'' prison cells. After a narrow loss in 1972, Harkin ran for Congress again in 1974 and invented ''work days,'' a campaign technique widely imitated since: he spent a day working at each of a dozen or so local jobs. He won solidly and held the seat with good percentages. Well before the 1984 election, he cornered the Democratic nomination to run against Senator Roger Jepsen. This was in the midst of Iowa's farm depression of the 1980s and Harkin was elected with 55% of the vote.

Harkin's record in the Senate may fairly be characterized as liberal, though not always on economic issues; he voted for the balanced budget amendment in 1995 and 1997. His biggest disappointment surely has been on farm policy. He came to the Senate as a self-styled populist, eager to expand government farm programs. His big initiative was the 1987 Harkin-Gephardt supply management farm bill, which would have raised overall food costs in order to benefit small farmers. But it was a nonstarter even in the 1980s, when Iowa farmers were hurting, and farm policy since has moved in the other direction: in 1996 Harkin voted--to no avail--against the Freedom to Farm Act which phased out most subsidies over seven years. With some reluctance, he voted for NAFTA: Iowa is the nation's leading producer of corn and pork, staples of Mexican cuisine.

Harkin's greatest impact has been on health policy. Two of his sisters died from breast cancer and one brother of thyroid cancer; another brother became deaf at age nine. At Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., a noted school for the hearing impaired, Harkin gave part of his speech in sign language when he withdrew from the 1992 presidential race; he used his chairmanship of the Labor-HHS Appropriations Subcommittee to establish grants for ''assistive technology'' for the handicapped and set up a new NIH Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. His interest in deafness prompted him and Senator Jennings Randolph to bring the first closed-caption TV to the Carter White House; in 1991 he passed a law requiring close-captioning on all 13-inch-plus TVs starting in 1995. As he notes, this is useful not only for the deaf but for a senator watching debate on C-SPAN while making phone calls.

Harkin also used that chair to promote the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. This was a great achievement, one that required overcoming resistance based on cost and qualms about the real-world effect of regulations, to build up a bipartisan coalition with the Bush Administration. Harkin, after he got relief from allergies by eating morsels of bee pollen, used his chairmanship in 1992 to create the National Center for Alternative and Complementary Medicine at NIH, then even in the minority got it elevated to an independent status within NIH, over the opposition of many medical scientists. Not all his health initiatives have been successful. The Harkin-Chafee-Graham tobacco bill was endorsed by Bill Clinton in March 1998 but no legislation was enacted that year. He favored funding of human cloning, to help understand diseases; but that was opposed by most senators and the Clinton Administration. Inspired perhaps by Iowa's giant hog lots, he has called for more research on animal waste and, by publicized incidents, for giving the USDA more powers to deal with meat contamination. He has taken on a crusade against child labor, in this country and abroad, trying to get rid of exceptions to current laws and double penalties; in Nepal in January 1998 he whipped out his camera to show the conditions under which 8-year-olds worked, much as he photographed the tiger cages 28 years before.

On foreign policy, Harkin is very much a product of the Vietnam experience. He opposed Contra aid and verged on being an apologist for the Nicaraguan Sandinista government in the 1980s and fervently opposed the Gulf war in 1991, bringing a lawsuit against President Bush to try to prevent him from using force without congressional approval. But Harkin was just as fervent a sponsor of an embargo on Haiti in 1994 when the military was in power and of threatening to use force to install then-exiled President Aristide.

Harkin has never had the widespread support enjoyed by Charles Grassley, but has become the first Iowa Democrat to win three full terms in the Senate. In 1990 he won re-election with 54% against a tough Republican opponent, Congressman Tom Tauke. In 1991 he surprised many by running for president. In angry phrases, with a Trumanesque zest, Harkin preached that George Bush and the Republicans helped only the rich and that government must get involved to help the poor and middle class. But organized labor withheld an early endorsement despite his 90%-plus AFL-CIO voting record--a great tactical victory for Bill Clinton. Harkin's sweep of the Iowa caucuses February 10, actually an impressive testimonial to his home state popularity, was mostly discounted by the media. He finished with only 10% in New Hampshire; though he won the Minnesota and Idaho caucuses March 3, he got only 7% in South Carolina March 7 after campaigning there with Jesse Jackson. In debt and ineligible for matching funds, Harkin quit the race.

Harkin went on to campaign gamely for Clinton; after the election, Clinton appointed his wife Ruth Harkin--a Washington lawyer who combines good humor, competence and strong beliefs--to head the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. But he opposed Clinton in 1996, when he put a hold on Alan Greenspan's nomination for another term as Federal Reserve chairman and delayed his confirmation from February to June 1996. The chairman's four-year term starts on confirmation, which means Clinton may be forced to renominate Greenspan in 2000, or hold him over for appointment by the next president--not the result Harkin wanted.

In 1996 Harkin had tough opposition from 3d District Congressman Jim Ross Lightfoot, who noted that Harkin had voted for pay raises and higher taxes and that he lived in a big house in northern Virginia, saying Harking was out of touch with Iowa. The race was tight, but Harkin had far more money and got a crucial late appearance from Clinton. Harkin won 52%-47%, his closest margin, and embarked on a project of preventing Lightfoot from being elected governor in 1998. Despite some speculation, he declined to run himself in May 1997. After the little-known Tom Vilsack won the June primary, Harkin was responsible for an estimated $300,000 raised for Vilsack. Harkin enlisted his topnotch political consultants in the campaign and campaigned himself solidly for the last two weeks.

Harkin enlisted just as heartily in the fight against the impeachment of Bill Clinton. The House managers' case against Clinton, he declared ''a pile of dung.'' He made the only objection during the presentation of the House managers' case, arguing that senators should not be called ''jurors'' because their duties went beyond those of jurors and they were not limited by the Constitution or the Federalist Papers to just a narrow finding of fact. Chief Justice William Rehnquist, presiding over the trial, agreed.

Group Ratings
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	CON	NTU	NFIB	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
1998	95	100	100	100	35	10	50	50	5	4	10
1997	85	--	89	--	61	29	--	70	12	--	--

National Journal Ratings
	1997 LIB	--	1997 CONS		1998 LIB	--	1998 CONS
Economic	75%	--	24%		81%	--	17%
Social	71%	--	0%		74%	--	0%
Foreign	92%	--	0%		95%	--	0%

Key Votes of the 105th Congress
1. Bal. Budget Amend. Y 2. Clinton Budget Deal N 3. Cloture on Tobacco Y 4. Education IRAs N 5. Satcher for Surgeon Gen. Y 6. Highway Set-asides Y		7. Table Child Gun locks	N
8. Ovrd. Part. Birth Veto	N
9. Chem. Weapons Treaty	Y
10. Cuban Humanitarian Aid	Y
11. Table Bosnia Troops	Y
12. $ for Test-ban Treaty	Y

Election Results
1996 general	Tom Harkin (D)	634,166	(52%)
	Jim Ross Lightfoot (R)	571,807	(47%)
1996 primary	Tom Harkin (D)	unopposed
1990 general	Tom Harkin (D)	529,571	(54%)
	Thomas J. Tauke (R)	453,273	(46%)

Campaign Finance
1996	Receipts	Receipts from PACs	Expenditures
Tom Harkin (D)			$6,070,137
Jim Ross Lightfoot (R)			$2,439,679