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Wisconsin: Senior Senator Sen. Herb Kohl (D) Last Updated July 14, 2003
Herb Kohl, a Democrat first elected in 1988, is one of the richest members of Congress, and one of the least flamboyant, a mild-mannered but persistent and successful politician. His parents immigrated to Milwaukee from Russia and Poland in the 1920s and opened a food store, which became a Wisconsin supermarket and retail chain. He grew up in Milwaukee and graduated from the University of Wisconsin and Harvard Business School. He worked at Kohl's and was president in the 1970s; the firm was sold in 1979, and today is one of the fastest-expanding national retail chains. Kohl was a Democratic contributor and chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic party in the mid-1970s. In 1985 he became a local celebrity, in a city smarting from sports franchises with lousy records and eager to move elsewhere, when he bought for $18 million the Milwaukee Bucks basketball team to keep it from moving out of Milwaukee; in January 2003 he said he was willing to sell, but only to those who would keep the team in Milwaukee (Forbes estimated the team was worth $168 million). In 1976 he bought a ranch near Jackson, Wyoming, from Senator Clifford Hansen, a Republican who says Kohl has been a "good steward of the land"; like the Bucks, the property is worth far more today than when he bought it. When Senator William Proxmire retired in 1988, Kohl decided to run for the Senate. He spent his own money liberally, running an extensive ad campaign with the theme, "Nobody's senator but yours." He won 47% in the primary to 38% for former Governor Tony Earl. In the general, against moderate Republican Susan Engeleiter, Kohl stressed his support of defense cuts--popular in dovish Wisconsin--and for requiring businesses to provide medical insurance; Engeleiter stressed her environmental stands, her legislative experience and her status as a wife and mother. This turned out to be one of the closest Senate races in the country, with Kohl winning 52%-48% after spending $7 million of his own money. Kohl is a pleasant, shy, almost painfully earnest man, of transparent good will and seemingly little guile. He personally funds the Herb Kohl Educational Foundation, which has given more than $3.6 million in scholarships and grants to Wisconsin students, teachers and schools, and he donated $25 million to the University of Wisconsin for the Kohl Center arena which opened in 1998. His voting record has been moderate to liberal; he dislikes the clash of partisan fighting. He opposed the Supercollider, the space station, and Trident II missiles, and has tried to keep defense spending increases down to Clinton budget levels. He was one of 12 Democratic senators who voted for the Bush tax cut in 2001 but he opposed the Bush tax cut in 2003. Kohl has supported gun control and wrote the 1990 law banning guns in schools; when that was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1995 (on the ground it had nothing to do with interstate commerce). His amendment to require child safety locks on guns was rejected 61-39 in July 1998. But after the Littleton, Colorado, murders a version requiring that safety locks be sold with, but separate from, guns passed 78-20 in May 1999. Since 2000 he has sponsored bills to provide for national use of ballistic fingerprinting. On the bankruptcy bill Kohl persuaded the Senate in March 2001 to limit state homestead exemptions to $125,000. In 2002 he used the Enron scandal to press the issue in conference committee; Texas has an unlimited homestead exemption and Enron executives forced into bankruptcy could keep their multimillion-dollar houses. The conference approved a $125,000 limit for convicted felons, or those owing debts under federal or state securities laws and those who have not lived in the state for five years. He and DeWine have run the Antitrust Subcommittee on a bipartisan basis in both the Clinton and Bush years. In 1997 a joint letter to FCC Chairman Reed Hundt prompted him to kill the proposed AT&T-SBC merger; subcommittee hearings in 1998 helped prevent the proposed American Airlines-British Airways merger. In 2001 they helped prevent the USAirways-United Airlines merger. As the only sports team owner in the Senate, he has recused himself on the issue of Major League Baseball's antitrust exemption. With DeWine, he pushed through a law making it a felony to cross state lines to avoid paying child support in cases after one year or more than $5,000 in arrears. He and Judd Gregg sponsored a bill to make permanent the ban on Internet sales taxes; Kohl cited the plight of small Wisconsin cheese sellers. With Orrin Hatch and Charles Grassley he has sponsored a bill to allow class action suits with damages over $2 million and plaintiffs from other states to be removable to federal courts. He and Hatch sponsored a Safe Explosives Act to require permits, background checks and fingerprinting to buy explosives. He has opposed the judicial nominations of Charles Pickering, Priscilla Owen and Miguel Estrada. Noting that there is no security screening of the chartered flights he takes to get around Wisconsin, he pressed the Bush administration for screening of passengers on chartered planes large enough to do great damage if taken over by terrorists. Four days after September 11 he was wary of military action. "We would take a tragic situation and make it infinitely worse if we just lash out." But in October 2002 he voted for the Iraq war resolution saying, "I believe Saddam Hussein's acquisition of weapons of mass destruction is a great threat." But he added, "If Saddam Hussein no longer rules as a result of our actions, then I say fine. But for us to take action with the primary purpose of overthrowing the Iraqi government would be wrong." Kohl has fought with uncharacteristic fierceness to change what he considers the unfair treatment of Wisconsin dairy farmers. Since 1937, the Agriculture Department has fixed milk prices by a formula that allows higher prices the farther a farmer is from Eau Claire, Wisconsin. This increases prices to consumers, creates an oversupply of milk and reduces dairy prices in the Upper Midwest. Further aggravating the problem is the Northeast Dairy Compact set up in the 1980s, which allows the New England states to set even higher prices; other Northeastern states have sought to join. In debate on the 1996 Freedom to Farm Act, Kohl got the Senate to vote 50-46 to end the Northeast Dairy Compact, but in conference it was extended to 1999 and the Agriculture Secretary was ordered to set new milk marketing rules by then. In October 1999 New England senators inserted into an appropriations bill a two-year extension of the Northeast Dairy Compact and a rejection of Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman's new rules; this was in part an effort to help then-Republican Jim Jeffords of Vermont, who was up for reelection in 2000. Kohl was outraged, and threatened to filibuster the bill and obstruct all business of the Senate. "This is very much unlike me," he told a reporter. "I hate it. I don't like to be a pain. I've never been an obstructionist before. But if this is what it takes, this is what I'll do." On November 18 and 19 he held the floor and filibustered. He was forced to desist, but got verbal support on the issue from party leaders Trent Lott and Tom Daschle and Agriculture Chairman Richard Lugar who promised the issue would be revisited. In 2001 he got 41 senators to sign a letter opposing the Northeast Dairy Compact, enough to threaten a filibuster if the issue was brought up, and on September 30 the Compact expired. In February 2003 he helped get $15.9 million to battle Chronic Wasting Disease, which affected deer in woods west of Madison. Kohl has been reelected easily. His sincere, unprepossessing demeanor has helped--so has his money. He spent $6.5 million of his own money in 1994 (far more per voter, incidentally, than the much-ridiculed Michael Huffington was spending in California) and $5 million of his own money in 2000. His ability to self-finance has deterred many well-known Republicans from running against him. In 1994, against legislator Robert Welch, he won 58%-41%. In 2000 he beat John Gillespie, founder of the Rawhide Boys Ranch for troubled teens, 62%-37%. Kohl said in May 2003 that he would run for reelection in 2006.
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