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Tom Harkin

Tom Harkin, a Democrat, is a U.S. senator from Iowa now in his fourth term. Previously, he was a five-term U.S. representative and a legal-aid attorney. Harkin was a candidate for the 1992 Democratic presidential nomination.

Nick Kotz and Josh Israel interviewed Harkin on August 1, 2007.

Senator, you have been in Congress since 1975, more than 30 years, and in the Senate since ’85. And we would like to ask you, Is the Senate a different place today because of the demands of continuously raising larger and larger sums of money? I am told, for instance, that a number of senators have not run for reelection in recent years and attributed their departure to the money demands and what that has done to their lives and the Senate as a functioning institution. Would you reflect and give us your thoughts about this?

Well, I think it’s obvious to anyone around here who’s either worked here or been close to anybody around here that it’s had a profound effect on how we operate. I mean, it has changed everything.

The money chase is just neverending. We spend hours every week going over across the street to Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, getting on the phone, and calling people up for money. Then we travel like hell all over the country. I last weekend went to Las Vegas and then Atlanta to do fundraisers. A couple of weekends ago there was one long weekend. It was Denver, San Francisco, Boston, and then back here. I mean, it just never ends.

How do you think that it has changed your life and the lives of other senators? How do you think it’s affected the functioning of the Congress in terms of doing the public business?

Well, so much of legislation and the other part of our duties, which is oversight, is built on personal relationships, trust, familiarity. You don’t establish those kinds of bonds in a hearing or on the floor. This has to be the times when you would have, in between, [gone] to a senator’s office, for example, to sit down and talk about things. You get three or four people together and maybe you might have your chiefs of staff and nobody else. You just sort of roll things around and talk about where you want to go and [exchange] ideas. And we used to do that a lot.

But there is no time for that now. See, between the demands of your committee duties, being here for votes, and seeing the normal constituents and people who come to see you, then you put in the fundraising. The fundraising, phone calling, and the fundraising trips chew up all of that time that you used to have for maybe going to a senator’s house for dinner or getting together on a weekend or Friday night or something like that, which we used to do. But that just doesn’t happen anymore.

Well, has this contributed to a loss of collegiality and to greater polarization?

No doubt. No doubt in my mind that it has. And there is something else I wanted to say. I was thinking about it when I was saying that. Even in the old days, even when I first got here, there were always a couple of senators or congressmen who were the outliers, the bomb-throwers, that kind of thing. Every Congress, you always had those. But in the past, the middle held. And Republicans and Democrats worked together. You let them have their say, but after a while that was enough; we moved on.

I find now that some of the outliers control things, this intense partisanship that’s come about. Now, I have to say this, because I think a lot about it. People say, “Well, how did this all start and everything?” Well, I still say it started with Newt Gingrich. In 1981, when I was a congressman, [Ronald] Reagan won the White House, and the Senate went Republican in 1981. The House was still Democratic. Newt was there. I used to have dealings with him. I mean, we were always arguing. He was kind of backbencher, bomb-thrower, one of those like [Republican Representative] Bob Bauman [of Maryland]. I don’t know if you remember Bob Bauman, [Republican Representative] John Rousselot [of California], people like that. He was interviewed. And he was asked, because he was kind of outrageous at that time, he was asked: “The Senate has gone Republican. You have won the White House. Do you think the Republicans will ever take the House?”

And he said, “Well, yes.” He said, “We could.” But he said, “The only way we are going to take it is if we tear it down first.” And this began Newt Gingrich’s 15-year campaign of tearing down the House of Representatives, just tearing it down. And now I won’t say that there weren’t some people on our side who didn’t do some bad things and stuff, but through that all, it was just this constant tearing-down of the structure.

And then, in ’95, when the Senate and House both went Republican, they went off on this tangent of impeaching the president. You might say you didn’t like [Bill] Clinton’s sexual proclivities, things like that. I understand all that. But obviously, it never raised itself to an impeachable offense. In the vast majority of people’s minds, it was never an impeachable offense. That really poisoned the well a lot at that time. And so I take those kind of two benchmarks — the Gingrich statement in ’81 and what the House and Senate did on the impeachment thing in the late ’90s — [as having] really caused a rift in the fabric of Congress. The fabric still has not been repaired.

And you connect this, in some way, with the way campaigns are financed and what that does to people?

Well, I don’t know about that. I just say this is part of it. And one of the reasons it’s probably hard to repair that fabric — or maybe why they were successful in ripping it — was because of this intense money change. And that, when you break down those old friendships, that kind of camaraderie, that kind of sense that we can reach agreements as we move ahead — I mean no one was more partisan and a more vocal liberal than Hubert Humphrey. But I can remember when I was in the House and Humphrey was in the Senate. I mean, he had friends who were conservatives. And they would work together. And yeah, they would have their debates and stuff, but they respected boundaries. And they would work things out.

I mean it’s just like, for example, in all of my races for reelection, Bob Dole had to come out in his campaign for every opponent who has run against me. He campaigned for [Senator Roger] Jepsen, but I beat him, then for [Representative Tom] Tauke in ’90 and [Representative Jim] Lightfoot in ’96, and [Representative Greg] Ganske in ’02. Not once, not once, in all of those times he came out, did he ever say one bad thing about me. They asked questions about Harkin, and Dole would say: “I am not out here about Senator Harkin. He is a colleague of mine, a friend of mine. I am here to support Tom Tauke. I am here to support the Republican team.”

Now to me, that’s kind of broken down. And then you get the thing of never, never until [Republican Senator] Bill Frist went out to South Dakota to campaign against [Democratic Senator] Tom Daschle, did a majority leader ever campaign against a minority leader or vice versa. It never happened before. Now once you start doing those things, you just start breaking down that kind of collegiality.

Take the subject of the money demands to the presidency, with these growing money demands election cycle after election cycle. What are the effects on the presidency in terms of who runs, how they get elected, who gets elected, and how they act once they are in office?

Well, I think you see now that every quarter they look to see how much money you have. And they judge whether or not you are a player, whether or not you are really a serious presidential candidate, by how much money you have. If you don’t have the requisite amount of money, you must not be serious. And that’s the way it’s [decided].

All of this stuff about Fred Thompson. Well, there is a lot of stuff going around about Fred Thompson, but it always comes down to, “He just raised $3 million.” Well, that’s it. That shows he’s a viable candidate, because it’s all based on money and how much money you raise. Of course, there may be some silver lining in this, I don’t know, and that is the amount of money being raised on the Internet now in smaller amounts. That’s why I find the [Barack] Obama campaign very interesting. And he’s raising all of this money, but it’s not from big bundlers. It’s not from the usual kind of big players who you go to New York, and they call up all of their friends, and they raise you a couple hundred thousand dollars. I am not saying Obama hasn’t done any of that. I don’t know. I am not involved in his campaign at all. But it looks as though that the vast majority of his money is coming through the Internet. Now this represents some kind of change. I am not certain I can put my finger on it. But this represents a new dimension in fundraising, no doubt about it.

Senator, when you ran in ’92 for president, you raised, I think, more than $6 million, including matching funds.

How much did I raise?

I think something more than $6 million.

Wow. That couldn’t even run my damn Senate race now. Wow.

What did you do to raise that money? And did you feel money was a factor in your ability to be competitive?

I can’t remember where I raised the money. I don’t know. I mean, we did some direct mail. I know that. And I assume I went around and had fundraisers at different places. I would get ahold of my campaign manager at that time and see what kind of records he’s got. I was talking to Jen Mullin, my press secretary, about this before I called you. I said “I can’t remember half of all of this stuff.” There may be some questions, if you want me to really get you some answers, I may have to get ahold of somebody and get back to you. But I can’t remember where I raised the money. I guess fundraisers, direct mail.

Did you feel like you had enough money to run the campaign you wanted to run?

Oh, yeah. I had plenty of money. That did not defeat me. I was not defeated by money.

Aside from the magnitude, how, in your experience, does running for president financially differ from running for Senate? Or is it just sort of the same thing?

Well, look, you have got to remember, I ran in ’92. In ’91–’92, I raised $6 million, with the matching funds. So I would like to go out and see what I spent in my ’90 Senate campaign. But I’ll bet I probably didn’t spend [as much]. Did I spend a million dollars in 1990? Maybe. A million and a half? I don’t know. I’d have to go back and look. But I mean, my God, now, my last campaign, I spent pretty close to $10 million, in my Senate campaign in Iowa. Now I am working for the same thing again this time. It will probably be around about the same amount.

So for me, going from one million, let’s say, in ’90, to six million in ’91–’92 was a big leap. And so I suppose it might be the same. If I raised $8 [million], $9 [million], $10 million for my Senate campaign, if I ran for president, if I raised six times as much — $60 million — yeah, I suppose so. So the same ratio may have held at that time. And I am just thinking out loud here.

You took matching funds, and it was sort of the norm at that point. And it seems to be less and less the norm now. Do you think the matching-fund system and the public financing for the general elections is dead, and can it be revived?

Oh, I think it’s the only thing that’s going to save us. I mean I am a big proponent of public financing. And I think it’s got to be revived. I think it’s got to be regenerated. I think that this whole idea of opting out by presidential candidates has got to looked at. And we have got to provide more support for people who do take matching funds and agree to limits. And that can be things that we might have some jurisdiction over, like airtime, that type of thing. You can’t stop people from spending money because of the case . . .

Buckley v. Valeo.

Yeah, Buckley v. Valeo. That’s right. We can’t do anything about that unless we have a constitutional amendment. But we could sweeten the pot for those who do take matching funds.

Your fellow Iowan, Governor [Tom] Vilsack, withdrew fairly early from the 2008 race and cited money as one of the main reasons. Why do you think someone who comes from the sort of background that he comes from has trouble being able to compete?

Well, I want you to know, that it was against my best advice. He ignored my advice in two things. I say this friendly. I love Tom Vilsack. He’s a great friend of mine. But first of all, I told him to run for governor again. He could have sailed in there as governor. He said he’d made this commitment that he was only going to serve only two terms, to which I challenged him. I said: “Point to me one person who lost their election because they made a commitment and broke it. I know of no one. Ah, people just dismiss that.” So I really wanted Vilsack to run for governor again. He would have been a shoo-in.

And then I said to him: “You can run for president as a governor. Keep in mind, governors get elected president; senators don’t.” But he said, no, he wouldn’t, he was going to run his presidential. Fine. Then he decided to drop out. I quizzed him more. I said, “Why?” because I had been supporting him. I thought we were doing fairly well. And he said, “Well, I don’t have money.” I said: “Wait a second. How much money do you need? I mean, you are a private citizen. You have got a lot of time on your hands. You don’t need a lot of money. I mean you can be doing things like John Edwards is doing. You just spend a lot of time in these states.” It’s not that John Edwards has been spending a lot of money in Iowa, but by God, he’s lived there the last four years.

And Tom Vilsack could have just lived in New Hampshire, South Carolina, Michigan, picked up some of those states up there. I thought Tom Vilsack had a lot going for him. He’s very likable, smart, and has a good persona about him. And I thought he just gave up way too soon. I think as time would wear on, that there are a lot of Democrats out there who don’t know where they are going to go. And he could have been a very viable alternative later on. Who knows who is going to stumble, who is going to trip up, that kind of thing?

Well, anyway, I didn’t mean to get into that. He might have said money was determinative, but I question how much money a candidate like that really needs if you have the time. Now a senator or a sitting governor may not have the time, so they need a lot of money.

The Iowa caucuses are, I think, 170 days away right now. And it looks like the New Hampshire primary will be shortly after that and just about every other primary within a couple of weeks from there. With that kind of a compressed schedule, does it leave upstart candidates with any real chance to build up momentum, or is this pretty much going to be whoever wins Iowa and New Hampshire gets the nomination?

I think it’s the latter. I’m telling stories out of school here, but that’s what I told John Kerry the last election. I said whoever wins Iowa and New Hampshire is going to win. He disagreed with me. He said that’s not right.

He was probably glad that you proved correct after he won Iowa and New Hampshire.

That’s what I told him after. I supported [Howard] Dean at the end, there. I told him later, “I was right, I just had the wrong candidate.” I was absolutely right, because he had a game plan. In late December, we had this long discussion. I remember sitting at the Des Moines Flying Service, and he was really trying to persuade me to get on board. And I told him, “You have to think who wins Iowa; if someone wins Iowa and New Hampshire, they are going to be [the candidate].” He said, “No, no.” And he didn’t think he was going to win Iowa, particularly. That’s why he wanted me on board; that might give him more of a chance.

Well, his theory was this: Dean could win Iowa. That knocks [Richard] Gephardt out, and Gephardt’s got nowhere to go. Then they go to New Hampshire. And even if Dean wins New Hampshire, then that knocks Edwards out. And then that leaves Kerry and Dean head-to-head. And then Kerry was going to be able to whip him in all of these other states, once it’s one-on-one. And I said, “John, you are just wrong.” I said, “If someone wins Iowa and New Hampshire, it’s over with.” Well, probably the two most surprised people on Iowa caucus night were John Kerry and Howard Dean. And then, of course, Kerry went on to win New Hampshire, and it was over with. That was the end of it.

I think the same thing is true now. I think because of the press, just everything that’s happening, people undecided out there, the people who win Iowa, win New Hampshire, it’s just that momentum. The money starts coming in. And you are on a roll. And because they are so compressed, it’s hard for anyone to overcome that now. It’s harder now than it even was four years ago with this compressed schedule.

I am really fearful that we might be heading toward regional types of primaries — again, which means you have to be someone with notoriety, celebrity status, deep pockets, whatever, because of the kind of money to be able to play in that game. And I know I am sounding parochial here, but one of the things I have always liked about Iowa and New Hampshire was that it gave people without a lot of money the opportunity to make their case.

Keep in mind, as of December of 1991, I had raised more money and had more commitments and qualified in more states than any other candidate, than even Bill Clinton. So New Hampshire, obviously, gave Bill Clinton his opportunity. And he took it. Well, [Paul] Tsongas, too; Tsongas won. We knew Tsongas wouldn’t last that long [as a contender]. But I don’t know if that can happen again today.

What kind of job do you think the media does of covering presidential campaigns?

Oh God, I don’t know how to answer that, what kind of job the media does . . .

Do you feel they gave you a fair shake?

Oh, yeah, I think so. I think I got a fair shake. And I have no regrets about that at all. I thought the press gave me a fair [shake]; well, except for one thing. I will say this, now that you prod my memory banks. Bob Kerrey and I, boy, I tell you, we were steamed. This was in January. Let’s see, the Iowa caucuses were late January. But right before the Iowa caucuses, maybe it was late December, a few weeks before the Iowa caucuses, Time magazine puts Bill Clinton on the cover. As Kerrey and I both said, “By God, they have rigged this game.” I had raised more money, I had qualified in more states, had more commitments from Democratic stalwarts, than Bill Clinton. Bob Kerrey had raised more money. He was a senator, former governor, Medal of Honor winner. What the hell? But Clinton gets on the cover of Time. And why was it? The [Gennifer] Flowers thing hadn’t happened yet. But I remember the cover was “Is He for Real?”

And then, I can remember when I first knew that I was doomed. It was the night of the Super Bowl. And that’s when all of this Gennifer Flowers stuff had come out. And I remember, my wife and I watched Hillary and Bill [Clinton] with — who was it with? Was it Mike Wallace?

No, it’s another guy, [Steve Kroft] from 60 Minutes.

Anyway, we watched that. The fireplace, the holding of the hands, and then I said, “I am afraid we ain’t got a chance.” But again, it was interesting that notoriety and this whole clash got him so much print and, in a strange way, moved him up in New Hampshire. A very strange way that it happened. And Kerrey and I have talked about it ever since. It was just a very strange thing. But then Clinton played his cards right. He absolutely played his cards right on that. But anyway, I digress. You asked about the press. I thought the press was fair. I had no problems with press. I just wish they hadn’t quoted me so accurately.

Well, the business of how much money you have, is it the press that has made this an issue, or is it just kind of the reality of running today?

Well, obviously, the press has made a big deal about how much money you have and how much money you are raising. And it sort of becomes the bellwether that becomes the standard. So the press does play it up a lot. But it’s also a reality, too. I mean, if you have the money, you can hire an army of people. You can send mailing after mailing. You can do phone calls after phone calls. I mean, let’s face it, money talks in elections. And in the presidential election, it talks real big.

So it’s both a reality, but also the press, I think, plays it up, too. So maybe they kind of feed off of each other. I don’t know. But I get back to where I started: I mean, it has become an incessant demand and drain on our time here. And no one likes it. We all gripe about it. But if you are going to run, and you want to win, you have got to do it. And after a while, it just gets to you. Go here to raise money, go there to raise money. And it’s just a constant, every day of the week. Every week, every month it is just a constant. And it is not good. It is just not good. That’s why we need a better system of public financing in this country, not only for presidential campaigns, but for Senate and congressional campaigns, too.

What do you think it would take for that to happen?

Boy, I don’t know. I have been involved in debates on this since the Obey [Democratic Representative David Obey of Wisconsin] measure back, I think, ’78 or ’77–’78, Dave Obey’s first provision on public financing. What would it take? I am not certain what it would take. I don’t know. It would take a Congress willing to say that it’s OK for the public to give money to my opponent to try to defeat me. And nobody likes to do that. I don’t mind it. I’d rather have a situation where I knew that my opponent would have public financing. If I had it, then I wouldn’t have to spend all of my time out there raising money. And neither would my opponent.

But I think because of the Supreme Court case, money is free speech. And whoever has the most money speaks the loudest. Isn’t that true? I mean, money is speech. And whoever has the most money has the most speech. And I think [Ernest] “Fritz” Hollings probably always had the right idea. Fritz was always saying, more than anything else, we need a constitutional amendment. I mean that’s what it will take, a constitutional amendment that Fritz Hollings kept pushing for years and years. I don’t know how he drafted it, but I can get it for you. But it was basically a very simple amendment just basically saying that — I don’t know how he phrased it. I’d have to go back and get it for you. But it was very simple and maybe you can look it up. Fritz Hollings, for years, had this proposal for a constitutional amendment.

And it would have undone Buckley v. Valeo?

Yes, exactly. I just forget how he worded it now.

The perception is that [raising money] not only takes up a lot of the time and drains elected officials like you, but that it also is a corrupting influence. And I am curious, in your experience has that been the case? Do you think quid pro quos in political fundraising are frequent? Or is it more a corrupting factor in more insidious ways, or isn’t it corrupting?

Well, any member of Congress who tells you that [money has] no influence at all in how they legislate or what they pay attention to is telling you a lie. Of course they do. Of course the people who raise the money for us have input here. Of course they do. I mean, to say that they don’t is just one of the biggest lies ever told around here.

I don’t know if I’d say it’s corrupting or not. But what it does tend to do is it tends to maybe get senators and congressmen focusing or doing legislation that maybe is not their biggest interest. Maybe they’d like to spend their time doing something else. But they feel they have got to spend their time doing this other stuff or else they won’t be able to raise the money. I don’t know if it’s corrupting or not. I don’t know that it’s trying to pass bad things or something.

But obviously a lot of it is special-interest stuff. I mean, people raise money and want something done here or something there. And, of course, they have influence here. They have access. Money is access here. The more money you have, the more access you have. The more money you raise for a candidate, the more access you have. And access means who you listen to, who gets to staff, and that kind of stuff, of course.

Is that true with the White House as well?

Oh, absolutely so, absolutely. Probably in many ways more true at the White House, I think. Sure. It’s just singular. It’s so singular and so powerful that the people that raised the big bucks for the White House or the president, they have the most influence. At least in the Senate, you have 100 here. In the House, you have 435. So no one group of four or five get [that kind of power]. If they have input, if they have access, then there may be a lot of people they don’t have access to.

Once you have a group of people that have raised millions of dollars for a presidential campaign, there is only one president. All you have got to do is get to that president or his staff or his political people and, boy, you can get a lot done. So I think it’s more corrupting. I don’t want to use the word “corrupting”; more influential in the presidential situation than it is in Congress. 

Senator, has anyone with offers of money fairly directly sought a quid pro quo? Is that an experience that you have had?

In saying that, because they gave me money, they want me to do this or that.

No, I mean where it’s pretty clear that there is a quid pro quo. Not stated as a bribe, but stated as “you can get a lot of money for your campaign if you get on board [with] something or other,” some special interest.

I don’t think so. I think it’s more subtle. Well, I can tell you cases of people that maybe I haven’t agreed with saying: “We want to have a fundraiser for you. We just want you to hear us out. We want to be able to make our case.” All right, fine. So you go and maybe you haven’t supported what they want, but they want to kind of make their case. Well, fine, make their case. But that is not a quid pro quo. I think they just want what I call access. And they say: “Well, we’ll have a fundraiser for you. We know you are not with us on this. But we’d just like to have you hear us out.” Fine, I’ll hear you out. I’ll hear all sides. I don’t think that’s corrupting at all.

And I have had many cases in the past where I have had fundraisers from different candidates or different groups, and I simply have not agreed with them. I just simply don’t. Now, I may not raise any more money from them in the future. But it’s not where “We’ll raise you money if you do this.” I can’t think of anything like that at all.

And maybe it’s my own peculiar circumstance. I am not on the Finance Committee, so I don’t weigh in on tax bills and stuff like that. My committee jurisdictions and what I work on is basically health and education and human services and disability rights and things like that. So I find, a lot of times, people who have supported me with money are people who basically want to do those kinds of things. They want to see the government involved in more funds for education. It may not go to them. But it’s sort of what they believe in kind of thing. There is a lot of that kind of fundraising going on. I don’t see anything wrong with that at all. But it is access. I mean money gives you access. And at the presidential [level], it gives you the ultimate access.