Who Harks to Harkin?

Harkin, you see, had made lots of noise about how he would be the Democratic kingmaker in next month’s Iowa caucuses. Last May, Harkin organized the first of 10 “Hear it from the Heartland” forums, in which he introduced the various Democratic presidential candidates to Iowa caucus-goers. In September, he held his 26th annual “Harkin Steak Fry,” renowned as the largest state-wide gathering of Iowa Democrats, in which he . . . well, reintroduced the candidates to Iowa caucus-goers. It was expected that, after all the introductions, Harkin would finally endorse the candidate he liked best, and back that candidate with his considerable political organization come January. That hasn’t happened. Yet.

Would a Harkin endorsement even matter at this point? Peverill Squire, a political scientist at the University of Iowa, thinks so. “Harkin would be a major player if he decided to throw around his weight,” he says, noting that the senator, who has been involved in Iowa politics for over 30 years, has contacts in each of Iowa’s 99 counties, as well as strong ties to Iowa’s powerful labor unions.

Those contacts have helped candidates before. One former Gore operative says Harkin’s endorsement was central to the vice president’s victory over Bill Bradley in the 2000 caucuses. (Gore thanked Harkin effusively in his Iowa victory speech.) And David Yepsen, the Des Moines Register’s chief political writer, says that Tom Vilsack, Iowa’s governor since 1998 and the state’s most popular Democrat, “owes the governorship to Harkin.”

The senator’s political and campaign operations, writes Michael Barone in the latest “Almanac of American Politics,” are second to none. Barone notes that during the 2002 Senate race, for example, Harkin “ran an effective, high-tech voter registration and turnout operation,” which helped him win votes not only in his traditional urban base, but also in rural districts. “There’s no other Democrat similarly positioned” to influence the caucuses, says Dennis Goldford, a professor at Drake University in Des Moines. “He’s the only game in town statewide.”

Harkin thinks so, too: “I’m now the nine-hundred-pound gorilla,” he told political writer Walter Shapiro in February. “I have the best organization. I have the best [voter] list.”

The presidential candidates seem to agree. Each participated eagerly in Harkin’s candidate forums. Each courted the senator in different ways. Mainly, they showered him with compliments. “I have seen Tom on the floor of the U.S. Senate with a backbone of steel,” John Edwards told one crowd of Iowa Democrats, “when it’s just him and nobody else–no matter who he’s fighting against.” In September, at a “Hear it from the Heartland” forum, an audience member asked Joe Lieberman about his farm policy. “My farm policy begins right over there,” Lieberman said, pointing to a beaming Harkin. (Harkin was an architect of the 2002 farm bill.)

When you watch the “Hear it from the Heartland” forums, it’s easy to think that Harkin, not the featured candidate, is the one running for president. Take the Lieberman forum, for example, which you can find on C-SPAN’s website. Harkin enters the meeting hall with Lieberman, accompanied by rock music. He shakes as many hands as the candidate. His name–not the candidate’s–is plastered throughout the room in bold, blue letters. Eventually, he makes it to the stage, whereupon he says that he’s here because, “I wanted to establish a series of forums and find out what’s important to you.”

But, instead, you find out what’s important to Tom Harkin. Like the economy: “We now have the lowest numbers of manufacturing jobs in the United States since 1958, when I graduated from high school.” And health care, a lack of which, Harkin tells the crowd, forced one woman he knows to “take out her tooth with a hammer and a screwdriver.” You get the idea. Or maybe you don’t, in which case Harkin is happy to sum up: President Bush and congressional Republicans “are gambling with your lives.”

If the stakes are so high, why isn’t Harkin running himself? He’s done it before. In 1992, Harkin ran for the Democratic nomination as an unreconstructed liberal. His supporters wore T-shirts emblazoned with the logo “Give ’em hell Harkin.” One observer of Iowa politics remembers that, in stump speeches, Harkin would say he was the only candidate who wouldn’t put up with any “bulls–t” in Washington.

In 1992, Harkin dominated the Iowa caucuses, earning 76.5 percent of the vote. It wasn’t much of a surprise. The other Democratic candidates figured that Harkin’s “favorite son” status all but guaranteed his victory, and so most skipped Iowa that year. What’s more, the other candidates further figured, Harkin’s victory would be a Pyrrhic one. They were right. His candidacy lost steam and money soon after his Iowa triumph, and he eventually vanished from the polls, and then from the race. Since then, he has been reelected to the Senate twice, though never with more than 56 percent of the vote.

While in the Senate, he’s spoken his mind on the issues, usually returning to his earthy obsessions: The first Gulf War, Harkin has said, “was like teenage sex. We got in too soon and out too soon”; the case for Bill Clinton’s impeachment, he’s argued, was “a pile of dung”; and the second Gulf War, which Harkin voted to authorize, “may not be Vietnam, but boy, it sure smells like it.”

But, above all, Harkin prides himself on his power-brokering. “Every candidate that I have supported in Iowa,” Harkin told Fox News last May, “has gone on to be the nominee of our party.” It’s true. In 1976, Harkin, then a first-term congressman, supported Jimmy Carter. In 1984, Harkin endorsed Mondale. (In 1988, Harkin declined to endorse a candidate.) And in 2000, Harkin chose Gore.

Who will he choose in 2004? “They’re all good,” he has said of the field. “I like them all. It’s like anything else–there’s not one of them I agree with 100 percent of the time, but there’s none of them I disagree with 100 percent of the time.”

Well, maybe. Harkin won’t be endorsing Lieberman, though, nor, for that matter, retired General Wesley Clark, both of whom decided last fall to skip the caucuses. Harkin was peeved. “Quite frankly, they aren’t going to win the nomination,” he said shortly after the two candidates announced their decisions. “I’ll make that blunt statement right now.”

That leaves Dean, Dick Gephardt, and the two Johns, Kerry and Edwards–the four candidates that Harkin has said he thinks have a reasonable shot at the nomination. But in “One-Car Caravan,” his behind-the-scenes look at the first days of the 2004 campaign, Walter Shapiro reports that, talking with Harkin, “it was hard to detect much enthusiasm for Kerry or any sign that Edwards’s efforts to ingratiate himself were bearing fruit.”

Which leaves Dean and Gephardt. Gephardt, of course, won the caucuses in 1988, without Harkin’s endorsement. But this year Gephardt has been plagued by his support for the Iraq war, a position unpopular with Iowa Democrats. Harkin, meanwhile, has repudiated his vote on Iraq, saying that he was “lied to” by the president. He’s now in the Dean camp on the war issue.

There are other hints that Harkin has moved towards the Dean camp. He has said that Dean is a “formidable, formidable candidate.” He tells reporters the real question of the campaign is, “Will Gephardt’s supporters work as hard as Dean’s people?” The two politicians’ styles–rabble-rousing, grassroots populism–are also similar. It’s not surprising, then, that one source close to Harkin told CNN.com last week that a Gore endorsement of Dean made it likely a Harkin endorsement would follow.

When will Harkin endorse a candidate? No one is sure. Harkin’s aides say that while the senator doesn’t plan to endorse at the moment, he hasn’t ruled it out, either. Harkin could decide to stay neutral, of course, as he did in 1988. Longtime Harkin-watchers, however, think that’s unlikely. When you’re a 900-pound gorilla, after all, it’s hard not to throw your weight around.

Matthew Continetti is an editorial assistant at The Weekly Standard.