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Iowa: Junior Senator Sen. Tom Harkin (D) Last Updated July 25, 2003
Tom Harkin, a Democrat 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, and 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. In the midst of Iowa's farm depression of the 1980s, Harkin was elected with 55% of the vote. Harkin served as chairman of the Agriculture Committee from June 2001 to January 2003 and steered to passage the 2002 farm bill. This was a considerable achievement, and one out of line with his previous record. 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. In 1996, Harkin opposed the Freedom to Farm Act, which purported to phase out farm subsidies. But starting in 1998, Congress approved disaster relief every year for farmers, which had much the same economic effect. Harkin supported these efforts and worked to make conservation payments an entitlement and to promote 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. On taking the chairmanship in June 2001, Harkin worked to fashion a farm bill that would restore much of the subsidies (and end the need, supporters said, for annual disaster relief) and that could win bipartisan support, though it was clear that his predecessor as chairman, Richard Lugar, would not go along. His goals were to increase conservation programs, come up with a formula for countercyclical aid and fight concentration in agribusiness. In July 2001, the Agriculture Committee and the Senate voted for a $7.4 billion farm aid package over Lugar's $5.5 billion alternative; but George W. Bush insisted on a $5.5 billion limit and Harkin's side felt obliged to back down in order to pass the bill. In November 2001, Harkin introduced his bill, with no limit on subsidies (though Harkin had proposed one) and more spending for conservation and food stamps (to secure votes from non-farm states)--a contrast with the bill the House passed in October 2001, with higher subsidies and less for conservation and food stamps. Senate Republicans defeated the bill in December 2001, but it was revived and passed in February 2002, with increased but limited subsidies for grain and cotton and a doubling of conservation money. The total cost was estimated at $73.5 billion over 10 years, with most of that money spent in the near-years. Harkin put in subsidies to discourage the use of irrigated water and added dairy and peanut provisions that won votes from New England and the Deep South; it passed 58-40. It included a ban on meatpackers owning livestock--a key issue for Iowa Republican Charles Grassley. The bill went to conference committee, in which the House Republicans, led by Larry Combest from cotton-farming west Texas, insisted on higher subsidy limits and deletion of the ban on meatpacker ownership of livestock. Harkin brought the bill back and got the Senate to pass it; it was opposed, however, by his colleague Grassley and by his 2002 opponent, Congressman Greg Ganske, on the subsidy limits and livestock ownership issues. Apart from agriculture, 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. 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 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. 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 against 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 voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq in 1998, when Bill Clinton sought it; in October 2002, he opposed the initial resolution authorizing force for Bush as overbroad, but voted in favor of the final version of the resolution. In Iowa politics, Harkin has been a figure much like Jesse Helms in North Carolina: His fervent stands on issues and his hard-edged campaigning give him a large base of strong supporters and a large base of strong detractors as well. But, like Helms, he always seems to have more strong supporters: He has never won by a large margin, but he has never lost either, and in his career he has beaten no less than five officeholding Republicans--in his first House race in 1974 and in the Senate races of 1984, 1990, 1996 and 2002--but, like Helms, has never won with more than 56% of the vote. 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 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. In 2002, Harkin's opponent was Congressman Greg Ganske, a Des Moines plastic surgeon who had upset 36-year incumbent Neal Smith in 1994 and had been one of the lead supporters of HMO regulation in the House. Many Republican leaders thought Ganske's moderate record and base in usually Democratic Des Moines would make him a strong candidate. But first he had to face a primary opponent, 33-year-old farmer Bill Salier, who ran as a strong conservative. The Bush White House backed Ganske, but seemed unimpressed with his fundraising and campaign; George W. Bush came to Iowa for Congressman Tom Latham in March 2002, but pointedly ignored Ganske, though a month later he appeared at a Ganske fundraiser. Ganske won the June 2002 primary, but by an unimpressive 59%-41% margin. Against Harkin, Ganske argued that his work on HMO regulation showed that he could work on a bipartisan basis for solutions to problems. Harkin argued that with his seniority he could best serve Iowa's interests. Harkin attacked Ganske for supporting "privatization" of Social Security; Ganske said his plan would not affect workers over 50 and would give younger workers the choice of putting some of their taxes into individual investment accounts. Harkin touted passage of the farm bill; Ganske said it gave too much in subsidies to southern cotton and rice farmers and didn't include a ban on meatpacker ownership of livestock. Polls showed the race fairly close after the June primary. But Harkin had far more money and, for the first time, the endorsement of the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation. Then, in September, scandal struck. A Des Moines Democrat who had worked on Harkin's staff in the 1970s and in 2002 changed his registration to Republican and contributed $50 to Ganske attended a meeting of Ganske fundraisers with a tape recorder in his pocket. After the meeting, he turned it over to a 21-year-old Harkin campaign staffer. A transcript was leaked to a political reporter by "Democratic sources" quoting Ganske as saying, "You've never seen a campaign where anyone will attack him like we're going to. With a smile on our face. Not angry, not growling or scowling." Ganske protested that his meeting had been spied on and called for prosecutors to investigate; Harkin's campaign manager said his campaign had nothing to do with it. That lie was exposed and by the end of the week, the campaign manager resigned and Harkin apologized. At their next debate angry words flowed. It was a foolish incident all round. Ganske's comments were braggadocio (his campaign ran no such ads), the Harkin staff learned nothing useful from the spying (anyone could guess that Ganske might say negative things about Harkin) and Republicans' calls for prosecution were overblown. Many observers speculated that in squeaky-clean Iowa this caper would cost Harkin votes. Perhaps it did, but not very many. Iowa in 2002 was in a mood to reelect incumbents, Democratic and Republican, and Harkin's work on the farm bill and his endorsement by the Farm Bureau helped him win many rural counties he had never won before. His campaign and the Iowa Democratic party also ran an effective, high-tech voter registration and turnout operation, with volunteers equipped with Palm Pilots and wireless transmission devices; they appear to have maximized the Democratic vote not only in factory towns but in rural counties Democrats usually don't carry. Harkin won 54%-44%. Regional patterns of support evident in Harkin's 1990 and 1996 runs were not evident in 2002. He carried Des Moines, Cedar Rapids and all of Iowa's significant cities except Council Bluffs, but he won in most rural areas as well, carrying 79 of Iowa's 99 counties--far more than the 50 he carried in 1996 or the 63 he carried in 1990.
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