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Last Updated June 22, 2005
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 and then held the seat with solid 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 earlier 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 normal trade relations with China in 2000. But he and Charles Grassley sought to stop the importation of Brazilian ethanol tariff-free through El Salvador. 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. His top goals were to increase conservation programs, come up with a formula for countercyclical aid and fight concentration in agribusiness. 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). The bill was defeated in December 2001, but revived and passed in February 2002, with increased but limited subsidies for grain and cotton and a doubling of conservation money in an expanded Conservation Security Program. The total cost was estimated at $73.5 billion over 10 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. Harkin continues to follow farm issues closely. He put a hold on the nomination of an Iowa farmer to an Agriculture undersecretary post, saying the man cheated the federal Farm Service Agency. He pointed to security shortcomings in the department's Plum Island animal disease research laboratory. He complained that the administration ignored the usual income and payment limitations in Florida disaster relief in October 2004. For much of 2003 and 2004 he criticized Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman's Conservation Security Program regulations as tardy and narrow. In October 2004 he held up the corporate tax bill to protest an appropriation that paid for $2.8 billion in drought aid by deferring conservation spending and the dropping of FDA regulation of tobacco; he got a non-binding resolution to restore the conservation money. After the 2004 election, he said the administration had made some progress on conservation. 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. 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 first Bush administration. At a 2003 hearing he pressed the cause of the disabled on Secretary of State Colin Powell; the result was $2.5 million in grants for disability rights in developing countries, a Disability Advisor at State and a requirement that AID grantees provide access for the disabled. 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 also sponsored a national institute on alternative medicine. "We need a new paradigm in American health care, a prevention paradigm," he said in 2004, and sponsored a multi-part bill to encourage better nutrition and fitness. Provisions passed include requiring schools to set nutritional standards for food available during the school day, making Harkin Fresh Fruit and Vegetable grants to schools permanent. Another Harkin crusade has been opposition to the Bush administration's overtime regulations. Several times he persuaded a majority of senators to vote to block the regulations, but the House disagreed and the regulations took effect in August 2004. 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 George H.W. Bush to prevent him the use of 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, and in October 2002, when George W. Bush did. But as the violence continued in Iraq, he said in December 2003, it "may not be Vietnam, but, boy, it sure smells like it." In May 2004 he said the Abu Ghraib prison abuses reminded him of the tiger cages in Vietnam, and "I believe it's time to fire the secretary of defense." On the campaign trail, he responded in August 2004 to Dick Cheney's attacks on John Kerry by saying, "When I hear this coming from Dick Cheney, who was a coward, who would not serve during the Vietnam war, it makes my blood boil. He'll be tough, but he'll be tough with someone else's kid's blood." And in September he said, "If, God forbid, another attack happens here, I see the president using that as a linchpin to reinstate the draft." Harkin has been a force in Iowa politics. 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. He has never won by a large margin but in his career he has beaten no less than five members of Congress--according to his office, more than anyone else in history--while never winning more than 55% of the vote in his Senate campaigns. He ran for president in 1992. In angry phrases, with a Trumanesque zest, Harkin preached that George H.W. 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, and quit the race. In Iowa Harkin has built a strong political organization that helped him win reelection in 1990--the first time Iowa has elected a Democratic senator to a second full term--1996 and 2002. In 2000 he endorsed Al Gore in the Iowa precinct caucuses and appeared with him all over the state--an important factor in Gore's smashing victory. 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. Ganske won the June 2002 primary, but by an unimpressive 59%-41% margin over a more conservative candidate. 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 and 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 and former Harkin staffer, who 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." 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 the candidates' next debate angry words flowed. Many observers speculated that in squeaky-clean Iowa this caper would cost Harkin votes. Perhaps it did, but not very many. Harkin's 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. Harkin seemed likely to be a key figure in the 2004 Iowa presidential precinct caucuses. As he noted, "Every candidate I have supported in Iowa has gone on to be the nominee of our party." In May 2003 he organized the first of 10 Hear It From the Heartland meetings, each featuring a different presidential candidate. Most attended his September 2003 Harkin Steak Fry. For months he did not endorse. He seemed cool toward his Senate colleague John Kerry, more friendly to Dick Gephardt who won the Iowa caucuses in 1988 (when Harkin was neutral), displeased that Wesley Clark decided not to campaign in Iowa and impressed by Howard Dean's campaign. On January 9, just ten days before the caucuses, he endorsed Dean. It proved not a big help: Dean's standing in the polls started declining a few days later. He finished third and on election night Harkin awkwardly cheered on stage as he watched Dean deliver "the scream" speech.
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