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 (Chmn.).
• Appropriations: Agriculture & Rural Development; Defense; Energy & Water Development; Foreign Operations; Labor, HHS & Education (Chmn.); VA, HUD & Independent Agencies.
• Health, Education, Labor & Pensions: Employment, Safety & Training; Public Health.
• Small Business.

Tom Harkin, first elected to the Senate in 1984, is an accomplished veteran of Capitol Hill who still brings the attitude of the aggrieved 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 is now the chairman of the Agriculture Committee and has one of the most liberal voting records in the Senate. 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 has moved on, to the Freedom to Farm Act, which was intended to phase out subsidies in seven years. In 2000 Harkin sought to make conservation payments an entitlement, with higher payments to those in a "higher tier" of conservation; he has promoted the use of ethanol and alcohol fuels. Farm exports are important to Iowa, and Harkin, despite his warm feelings for labor unions, voted, apparently with some reluctance, for NAFTA in 1993 and PNTR for China in 2000.

Harkin's greatest impact has probably 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. He insisted on having a sign language interpreter present for his brother for his swearing-in in 1985, and when he left the 1992 presidential race he spoke partly in sign language at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., a noted school for the hearing impaired. 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--useful, he notes, not only for the deaf but for a senator watching debate on C-SPAN while making phone calls. Harkin was a key player in shaping 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. As chairman and ranking Democrat on the Labor-HHS Appropriations Committee Harkin worked creatively and determinedly to double the budget for the National Institutes of Health over five years--strengthening one of America's greatest research institutions in a way that may be remembered gratefully 50 or 100 years from now. He has also used that post to to establish grants for "assistive technology" for the handicapped and set up a new NIH Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders and a National Center for Alternative and Complementary Medicine. With Arlen Specter, he prepared a bill to address medical errors in 2000. He was one of the lead sponsors of the unsuccessful tobacco legislation in 1998 and 1999, and had a bill to give the FDA authority to regulate tobacco in 2000.

On other domestic issues, Harkin has weighed in against cash-balance pension plans, which vastly reduce the pensions of longtime employees. He has long decried what he considers the high-interest-rate policies of Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. In 1996 he delayed Greenspan's confirmation until June, extending his term to June 2000, thus giving Bill Clinton little option but to reappoint him; when he did Harkin was one of four senators to vote against confirmation. Harkin and Iowa colleague Charles Grassley successfully moved to eliminate the limited slots at four major airports, including O'Hare and Reagan National; high airfares are an issue in increasingly white-collar Iowa, and the Iowa senators wanted more competition from small, budget and startup airlines. In November 1999 Harkin sponsored a resolution honoring Shoeless Joe Jackson, the baseball hero who in the movie comes to the Field of Dreams in Dyersville, Iowa.

On foreign policy, Harkin's views seem to have been shaped by the Vietnam war. He was a vocal opponent of Contra aid in the 1980s and of the Gulf war resolution in 1991, bringing a lawsuit aganst President Bush to try to prevent him from using force without congressional approval. But he favored the threat of force in Haiti in 1994. He is on the lookout for excessive military perks, in 2000 opposing unsuccessfully the leasing of nine executive jets for admirals and generals (don't the services already have a lot of planes?). 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; he has spotlighted abusive child labor in such distant countries as Nepal and Pakistan.

Harkin has never had strong bipartisan support in Iowa, but he has beaten four incumbent Republican members of Congress--Bill Scherle in his first House race, Senator Roger Jepsen in 1984 and Congressmen Tom Tauke in 1990 and Jim Ross Lightfoot in 1996. He ran for president in 1992. 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. He went on to campaign gamely for Clinton, and in 1996 and 2000 he campaigned heartily for Clinton and for Al Gore. He supported Clinton fervently during impeachment, calling the House managers' case "a pile of dung" and made the only objection during the trial, 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. In 2000 Harkin endorsed Gore in the Iowa precinct caucuses and appeared with him all over the state--an important factor in Gore's smashing victory. Harkin was mentioned in July 2000 as a possible vice presidential nominee and was interviewed twice by Warren Christopher. Harkin strongly supported Gore in the Florida recount; afterwards, he and Arlen Specter sponsored a bipartisan commission to study elections.

Harkin's 1996 victory over Lightfoot came after a hot campaign, and was --by only a 52%-47% margin--his closest race yet. In 1998, Lightfoot ran for governor, and Harkin made it a personal project to defeat him, raising $300,000 for little-known Democrat Tom Vilsack and sending his topnotch political consultants into the campaign; Vilsack won a 52%-47% upset victory. Harkin comes up for re-election in 2002, and he is likely to get a strong challenge from Republican Congressman Greg Ganske. Harkin tends to polarize the electorate, and in early 2001 Ganske was running even with him in his home district where he is well known. In a year when most senators of both parties seem utterly safe, this could be one of the more seriously contested races in the country. Others mentioned as possible opponents are Congressman Roger Latham and farmer Bill Salier, a young conservative. But anyone who takes on Harkin will have a fight, as four former Republican members of Congress from Iowa can attest.

Cook's Call:
Highly Competitive. Republican Congressman Greg Ganske's challenge to Harkin sets up one of the best races of this cycle. But Harkin has beaten tough opponents before. Though Ganske is a moderate and well positioned for the race, he will have to work to avoid getting pushed too far to the right, a tactic Harkin has used successfully in the past against other moderates.

Group Ratings
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	CON	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2000	95	71	85	100	54	93	10	57	4	0	15
1999	100	--	100	89	68	--	6	47	4	--	--

National Journal Ratings
	1999 LIB	--	1999 CONS		2000 LIB	--	2000 CONS
Economic	90%	--	0%		90%	--	7%
Social	81%	--	12%		79%	--	0%
Foreign	87%	--	0%		95%	--	0%

Key Votes of the 106th Congress
1. Educ. Savings Accts. N 2. Prescrip. Drug Benefit Y 3. Delay Ergonomic Standards N 4. Phase Out Estate Tax N 5. Review Movie Violence Y 6. Gun Show Bckgrnd. Checks Y		7. Ban Part.-Birth Abortion	N
8. Broaden Hate Crimes List	Y
9. NATO War in Serbia	Y
10. Table Cuba Travel Ban	N
11. Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty	Y
12. Perm. Trade with China	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