When Rural Populists Took on Reagan

Today, it’s hard for some to remember a time when Democrats wielded power across the nation’s hinterlands. Yet in an age of resurgent conservative authoritarian politics, this history remains essential. As Haala writes, “when progressive populist candidates attacked economic inequalities from the Reagan era, they often neutralized socially conservative alternatives.”

Harkin was elected in the huge Democratic class of 1974 known as the Watergate babies. He was a champion of family farmers, clean energy and human rights. We both shared November 19 as our birthday. Weaver was the grandson of his namesake James B. Weaver, who was the nominee for president in 1892 of the Populist Party (sometimes called the People’s Party), whose platform called for a graduated income tax, public ownership of the railroads, telegraph, and telephone systems, and government-issued currency.

Al Gore of Tennessee was the lone southerner. The other members of the caucus were Berkley Bedell of Iowa, Tom Daschle of South Dakota, Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, Lane Evans of Illinois, Frank McCloskey of Indiana, Harold Volkmer of Missouri, Mike Synar of Oklahoma, Bill Richardson of New Mexico, Bob Wise of West Virginia, and Jim Oberstar, Tim Penny and Gerry Sikorski of Minnesota.

Evans, McCloskey, Penny, Sikorski and Wise all defeated Republicans as part of the 26 seats House Democrats flipped in the 1982 midterms as President Reagan’s popularity sank due to economic recession. Richardson captured a new seat created after New Mexico gained a third district after the 1980 census.

At the beginning of the CPC, Lane Evans (who always called himself a populist and never a progressive) said the group would encourage “people to run and win on populist issues” and provide a way for farmers, workers and small business to work together as allies. Democrats today seem to have strayed from that formula.

Haala’s focus is mostly on the upper Midwest region of Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin and the Dakotas. He walks us through the wonderful past of the Farmer-Labor Party in Minnesota, the Nonpartisan League in North Dakota (captured beautifully in the 1978 independent film Northern Lights) and the legacy of Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follette who served Wisconsin as congressman, governor and senator.

Haala recounts how the CPC fought the Reagan administration tooth and nail over natural gas deregulation, monetary policy and the worsening farm crisis that spread across rural America in the 1980s. And in 1984, two CPC members, Harkin and Gore would win Senate seats along with Paul Simon of Illinois. Haala cites a quote from the conservative American Enterprise Institute conceding the strategy of the victorious Democrats:

Economic populism is the Democratic party’s strength. After all, without economic populism what does the Democratic party become? It becomes a party of educated, upper-middle class liberals and of minority groups … the Democrats stop being a populist party and they become a liberal party.

Much of the book is a nostalgic walk through some election cycles of yore. In 1986, for instance, two years after Reagan’s reelection, Haala documents how Democrats took back the U.S. Senate with the election of CPC member Tom Daschle in South Dakota and Kent Conrad in North Dakota, while the party expanded its majorities in the state legislatures of Minnesota and Wisconsin. In his campaign, Daschle spoke of his state’s “populist streak” and the need for “an extraordinary appreciation for family farmers and the rural community.”

Haala also explores the tensions between Midwest populists, and their kindred spirits in the Jesse Jackson campaign, with the more moderate wing of the party as represented by the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). The populists were more aligned with organized labor, such as with miners and those in manufacturing as well as unions that represented the big meatpackers. They also focused on issues like plant closing notification bills, which became relevant during the time period of Haala’s book because of the increased number of factories that were moving offshore to China, Mexico and other nations. Meanwhile, the DLC crowd was quick to appease big business. In the area of defense and foreign policy, the populists took a dim view of American adventurism in places like El Salvador and Nicaragua. Hewing to their pacifist roots, the populists were hesitant to write blank checks for the Pentagon, whereas the DLC faction was for more defense spending. The first time I visited Iowa, in 1987, I saw barns bearing signs that said: “Silos are for Grain not Missiles—Ban the Bomb.”

There is a nice chapter devoted to Paul Wellstone and Russ Feingold who would capture Senate seats in 1990 and 1992 respectively in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Wellstone, who I had the pleasure of meeting in January 1991 at his swearing-in party at the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C. (where his iconic green and white campaign school bus was parked outside), ran a statewide grassroots effort to beat Republican Sen. Rudy Boschwitz. A disheveled college professor, Wellstone built a large canvassing and phone-banking operation and told a student newspaper how he had “dug in with rural people all across the state around the economic struggles of their lives.” Also in 1990, Harkin’s re-election made him the first Democrat from Iowa to win two consecutive full Senate terms.

Feingold, a Wisconsin state senator, cribbed from the Wellstone playbook in his race against incumbent Republican Sen. Bob Kasten. Haala notes how he took on then-Gov. Tony Earl over “an interstate banking bill allowing out-of-state corporations into Wisconsin” and then “reemerged in the 1991 bovine growth hormone fight as a critic of corporate agriculture, blaming Monsanto’s harmful, even devastating, economic impact … on dairy farmers.” The 1992 election also saw Byron Dorgan ride his opposition to the proposed North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to a Senate seat in North Dakota with a comfy 20-point win. In writing about how candidates like Wellstone had to win over mostly white working-class voters, such as farmers and miners, Haala quotes Iron Range historian Pam Brunfelt who told of how Wellstone transcended “region” in Minnesota, becoming tuteshi—Finnish for “one of us”—to Iron Rangers.

But despite these electoral victories in the Midwest, congressional populists could not seem to get around the southern Boll Weevils and the eastern liberals when it came to trying to fix unfair trade policies. They could not gain support for expanding the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors by adding a family farmer and small businessperson and auditing the central bank on a regular basis. The populists were really the only opposition to the 1989 bailout of the savings and loan industry. And at Democratic national conventions, the populists could not muster enough muscle to impact the party platform as the wished.

We all know how this book ends. Due to death (Wellstone), retirement (Dorgan, Harkin and Sen. Tim Johnson of South Dakota) and defeat, (Daschle and Feingold), along with a score of House members, the Republicans eventually conquered the rural Midwest. NAFTA and other free trade agreements hastened a hollowing out of manufacturing jobs while the “Freedom to Farm” bill that President Clinton signed in 1996 got rid of supply management provisions in the farm bill that sped up the movement of the region’s voters to the GOP.

Still, Haala’s work is a fine portrait of a rich history that is worth reading by those who want to learn how Democrats can rebuild on their long way back to power.

Matt L. BarronMore by this author →

Matt L. Barron is a political consultant and rural strategist based in Chesterfield, Massachusetts where he runs MLB Research Associates.