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Last Updated June 22, 2005
Herb Kohl, Wisconsin's senior senator, is a Democrat first elected in 1988. He grew up in Milwaukee, where his parents immigrated 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 spent $18 million to buy the Milwaukee Bucks basketball team to keep it from moving out of town; 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. He is one of the richest members of Congress. 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. 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. 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. Kohl has supported gun control and wrote the 1990 law banning guns in schools that was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1995 (on the ground it had nothing to do with interstate commerce). Kohl and Ohio's Mike 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. In June 2003 he and DeWine held hearings on the FCC ruling allowing media companies to own larger shares of local stations. That month they urged the FCC and Justice Department to scrutinize News Corporation's proposed purchase of DirectTV and in September they said regulators should press for concessions. In April 2004 they held a hearing on gasoline prices and co-sponsored a bill to make oil-producing and -exporting cartels illegal. In October 2004, after hearings on the subject, they co-sponsored a bill to give the government power to regulate the sale of medical products to hospitals. In March 2005 they co-sponsored a bill to allow the Justice Department to seek wiretaps on antitrust violators. That month Kohl said that consumers should not be limited to Baby Bell and cable TV companies for telecom services. On the Judiciary Committee Kohl has joined other Democrats in opposing several appellate court nominees and threatening to filibuster them on the floor. As Republicans threatened to change the rules to prevent such filibusters, Kohl in March 2005 said, "The Democrats are saying there will be a price to pay for that. We're not trying to quantify in every detail, because different senators have different ideas of what this all means. But we're saying it's a serious, serious move. We've never said we're going to shut the place down, nor would I, Herb Kohl, be a part of that." He supported the class action bill in 2005 and voted against the confirmation of Alberto Gonzales as attorney general. Kohl has pursued some issues prompted by events in Wisconsin. In 1997 he called for a national health care worker registry. He sought a criminal background check for nursing home workers in the Medicare/prescription drug act of 2003, which he voted against, and in 2005 got a $2.3 million pilot program to conduct criminal background checks on nursing homes in Wisconsin communities. Wisconsin has a large Hmong community, and in March 2004 Kohl asked Secretary of State Colin Powell to look into the treatment of the Hmong in Laos. In October 2004 he and Wisconsin colleague Russ Feingold put a halt to a routine trade measure by protesting the granting of non-discriminatory trade status to Laos because of their concern about the Hmong. In June 2004 he advanced a proposal by McNally Industries and the University of Wisconsin Center for Quick Response Manufacturing to create parts for aging military equipment by reverse engineering. 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. 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 its place Kohl helped to get in 2002 the Milk Loss Income Contract program, which pays dairy farmers if market prices fall. In its first three years it provided $2 billion to dairy farmers nationally, $413 million of that in Wisconsin. In October 2004 he attacked George W. Bush for inaction when House Republicans dropped renewal of MILC from the omnibus appropriation. In 2005 he and Republican Norm Coleman pushed for renewal of MILC with a double of the payment cap, and he was encouraged when the administration budget continued the program, though with a 5% decrease. Kohl has been reelected easily. His sincere, unprepossessing demeanor has helped--and 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. Kohl said in May 2003 that he would run for reelection in 2006, and in early 2005 no prominent Republican stepped forward to run against him. In December former Governor and HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson, when asked about making the race, said, "That's entirely possible. I happen to love politics. Why would I say no? There's a Senate seat open." But Republican insiders in Wisconsin seemed sure he would not run. As Milwaukee Republican consultant Todd Robert Murphy said, "No one credible would run against Kohl because Kohl could put $10 million" into his campaign tomorrow.
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