National
Journal Group
Learn more about our publications and sign up for a free trial.
E-Mail Alerts
Get notified the moment your favorite features are updated.
Need A Reprint?
Click here for details on reprints, permissions and back issues.
Advertise With Us
Details on advertising with National Journal Group -- both online and in print -- can be found in our online media kit.
Go Wireless
Get daily political updates on your handheld computer.
|
Last Updated November 30, 2005
Update: November 30, 2005 Kent Conrad, North Dakota's senior senator, was first elected to the Senate in 1986. He grew up in North Dakota; his parents were killed in an auto accident when he was five, and he was raised by his grandparents. One grandfather owned a bi-weekly newspaper in Bismarck and had been North Dakota chairman for Progressive Robert LaFollette in 1924; another was the physician for longtime Governor and Senator William Langer: it was a family full of connections in the small world of North Dakota politics. Conrad's first political effort was to lead, in 1968, a campaign to grant voting rights to 19-year-olds. He graduated from Stanford, and then returned in 1974 to work on Byron Dorgan's unsuccessful House campaign. When Dorgan ran for Congress again in 1980, Conrad ran for tax commissioner and won; when Dorgan declined to run against Senator Mark Andrews in 1986, Conrad ran and won 50%-49%. In 1986 Conrad earnestly promised not to run again unless ''the federal deficit, the trade deficit and real interest rates will be brought under control.'' By 1992 the latter two arguably were, and he could argue that he had worked to cut the budget deficit. Early 1992 polls showed Conrad well ahead, but in April 1992, after ruminating on the issue and after his wife had been mugged and dragged down the street near their Capitol Hill home, Conrad announced he was retiring because he had not kept his pledge, and Dorgan ran for his seat. Then, in September 1992, the elderly Senator Quentin Burdick, no ally of Dorgan and Conrad, died. State law said a special election had to be held after November but before January, so Conrad ran for this seat while serving his last month in the other. He was nominated unanimously at the Democratic state convention. His Republican opponent Jack Dalrymple, now Lieutenant Governor, called for an absurdly expensive $5 per bushel wheat program, and an anti-abortion independent lambasted Conrad; Conrad had far more money and won easily, 63%-34%. For a few hours in December 1992, Conrad technically held both Senate seats: he was sworn in December 14 to fill Burdick's term, and a few hours later Dorgan was sworn in to fill his. In 1994 Conrad's new Senate seat came up again. Republican Ben Clayburgh, 70-year-old former head of the state medical association, accused Conrad of voting most of the time with Bill Clinton; Conrad responded with an ad saying he voted with Bob Dole more than 50% of the time. Dole endorsed Clayburgh, but in a Republican year Conrad won by a reduced margin of 58%-42%. Conrad became ranking minority member on the Budget Committee in January 2001 and chairman in June 2001. Throughout his career he has always called for balanced budgets and decried budget deficits, and he had the pain of watching as chairman while the surplus turned to deficit. From the 1930s to the 1970s, Republicans were the great critics of deficits; since the 1980s Democrats have increasingly taken that stand, Conrad foremost among them. One reason may be that surpluses leave more room for spending, while deficits create pressure against it; as conservative Paul Gigot wrote of Conrad in The Wall Street Journal, "Nobody is better at using the rhetoric of fiscal conservatism to disguise demands for larger government." In spring 2001 Conrad worked to get in the budget resolution $73 billion for farm programs over the next 10 years: This left room for the farm bill passed in 2002. But he also called for a continued surplus. Once chairman, he started lambasting the Bush administration and, using his trademark charts (he is known as "the chart man" on Capitol Hill), argued that the tax cut passed in May 2001 and lower than expected revenue would lead to deficits. But he did not seek to undo the tax cut. In March 2002 Conrad presented a $2.1 trillion dollar budget with a $90 billion deficit; it would pay off more of the national debt than the Bush budget. His plan passed in committee but in the 51-49 Senate there were not enough senators willing to constrain appropriators and Conrad's resolution never came to a vote. For the first time since the Budget Committees were set up in 1974, no budget resolution passed Congress. The Republicans won back a Senate majority in November 2002 and in January 2003 Conrad became ranking minority member again. As ranking member, he supported the pay-as-you-go rules for tax cuts as well as spending, which prevented agreement between the Senate and House on a budget resolution in 2004. On the Finance Committee, Conrad voted against the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 and against repeal of the estate tax. He was one of 11 Democratic senators to vote for the 2003 Medicare prescription drug bill--not perfect, in his view, but a step forward in providing help for many North Dakota seniors. He sponsored bills that in his view would improve it, one with Blanche Lincoln to allow federal negotiation of prices with pharmaceutical companies, reimportation of subsidies, removal of incentives for private Medicare insurers; another to limit to three the number of discount cards in any region. Conrad could turn out to be a pivotal vote on Social Security. He praises the system, but concedes that there are problems. The Finance Committee has jurisdiction over trade issues, which are increasingly intertwined with agriculture issues. One interest Conrad seeks to protect is North Dakota's beet sugar farmers and processors. His objections helped insure that sugar was not included in the Australia Free Trade Agreement. Even so, in June 2004, he passed an amendment in committee by 11-10 giving the House and Senate committees a veto over waiver of limits on Australian beef imports; this was unconstitutional, said the Bush administration and the Congressional Research Service, and the FTA was approved without it. In March 2004 Special Trade Representative Robert Zoellick included limited imports from the Dominican Republican in the Caribbean Free Trade Agreement. Some sugar lobbyists were unperturbed, but Conrad spoke out strongly against any increases in sugar imports, lest they lead to more. "This is about whether we have sugar in our future. This is whether we have 30,000 jobs in the valley. This is about whether we have a strong and vibrant economy in the Red River Valley of North Dakota and Minnesota." However surprising it may be to some that North Dakota is a sugar producer, it is not in any way a cotton producer. Yet Conrad reacted sharply when the WTO in May 2004 ruled, in a case brought by Brazil, that the cotton program in the 1996 and 2002 farm bills was an illegal subsidy with effect on world markets. As he noted, that threatened the treatment of other crops, including those produced in North Dakota. Conrad called for an appeal of the ruling and said, "What's happened in the last year has confirmed that world trade is moving in the direction of scaling back programs that don't fit squarely in the [European Union's] 'green box.' " He predicted that sugar programs would have to be cut in the next farm bill and treatment of other crops changed, and called for more efforts to open markets in middle-income countries. This would represent a change in what Conrad has worked for over many years. In 2001 and 2002 he worked on putting together a farm bill which abandoned the 1996 Freedom to Farm Act's promise of getting rid of subsidies, a promise undermined by Congress when, starting in 1997, it passed disaster relief for farmers every year. With $73 billion in the budget resolution to spend over 10 years, the Senate Agriculture Committee was able to sharply increase the wheat subsidy at the price of increasing cotton and rice subsidies as well. He was one of four Senate conferees and helped insure that the bill required country of origin labeling for meat and better treatment of pulses--peas, lentils and other crops planted in rotation on wheat fields. In May 2004 he called for Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman's resignation when the Agriculture Department allowed beef imports from Canada despite the ban prompted by mad cow disease (the Department said the imports were safe); he protested when the Risk Management Agency decreased its support for the federal crop insurance program, which he said could reduce the number of companies offering crop insurance. North Dakota sits astride North America's longest river, the Missouri, and Conrad has spent much time on water issues. He worked to maintain high summer levels in Lake Sakakawea against Missouri senators who want drawdowns to keep barges afloat in their state, but received a setback in 2004 when a federal appeals court rules that the applicable 1944 law gave navigation priority over fish, wildlife and recreational considerations. He argued that the latter produced much more economic benefit, and that the Army Corps of Engineers's program of building a replacement wildlife habitat downriver was unduly expensive. To enhance security on the Canadian border, Conrad inserted into the 2004 intelligence bill an amendment authorizing a project that would put baseball-sized balls with infrared motion sensors all along the border; they would have nanoblock integrated circuits developed by North Dakota State University and would be run by a computer program developed by the University of North Dakota. Conrad has also sponsored the Lewis & Clark Legacy Trails program, to spend $1.58 million to develop trails along the Missouri River and Lake Sakakawea, so that Americans today can see pristine lands where Lewis and Clark went upriver. Conrad's penchant for spotting details was proved in November 2004, when he took to the floor to announce that a staffer had found in the omnibus appropriations bill a provision allowing the chairmen of the two Appropriations Committee to authorize staffers to look at individual income tax returns in IRS offices. It turned out to have been inserted by a House staffer concerned that the IRS was blocking all access to regional offices on the grounds that individual returns might be visible; but it was universally agreed that it must go, and the House and Senate quickly repudiated it. Conrad was reelected in 2000 against Duane Sand, an Annapolis graduate and 15-year Navy veteran who returned to North Dakota and campaigned door-to-door in every city and town with a post office. Conrad spent far more money, $2.3 million, and national Republicans didn't target this race. Conrad ran 29% ahead of Al Gore and won 62%-38%, carrying every demographic group. In early 2005, there was speculation that the Bush White House was encouraging Governor John Hoeven, just reelected by a 71%-27% margin, to run against Conrad in 2006. Whether national Republicans target this race may depend on what Conrad does on Social Security and other issues. Conrad has shown impressive strength and is a familiar figure after 20 years in the Senate. But the defeat of Tom Daschle, who had similar strengths, in South Dakota in 2004 suggests that this might be a seriously contested seat.
Committees
National Journal Group offers both print and electronic reprint services, as well as permissions for academic use, photocopying and republication. Click here to order, or call us at 877-394-7350. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
NEW FEATURE
[ Site Index | Staff | Privacy Policy | E-Mail Alerts ]
[ Reprints And Back Issues | Content Licensing ]
[ Make NationalJournal.com Your Homepage ]
[ About National Journal Group Inc. ]
[ Employment Opportunities ]
Copyright 2012 by National Journal Group Inc.
The Watergate · 600 New Hampshire Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20037
202-739-8400 · fax 202-833-8069
NationalJournal.com is an Atlantic Media publication.
