Sen. Tom Harkin can break from a long list of Midwestern populists with whom he has served in Congress: Sen. Tom Daschle of South Dakota, Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, Sen. Tom Eagleton of Missouri. Rep. Jim Oberstar of Minnesota, Rep. Jim Symington of Missouri;
Of course, he is the only one left in office.
“I guess I'm pretty lonely now that you think about it,” the Iowa Democrat said in a recent interview.
In 2015, Harkin will also be gone, after retiring from the Senate. The future of Iowa's progressive populist tradition appears to lie with Rep. Bruce Braley, running for Harkin's seat and founder of the House Populist Caucus. Although the Republican nominee has yet to be chosen, the Iowa Senate race is guaranteed to be a marquee contest in 2014 as the national GOP tries to win control of the Senate in part by taking Harkin's seat. The question is whether Midwest voters there are still looking for a populist to vote for – or even know what one is.
Populism is not “a bashing of the rich or a bashing of the successful. It's a sense that together we can use the powers of government to make sure the economy works for everyone,” Harkin said. Conservative politics, he said, emphasizes “do it yourself. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. What if you don't have your boots? That's where we broke up. Government must be used to ensure that people have their boots on.'
“Populism” is not a campaign term. “I don't think people are going to sit there expecting me to come out and say, 'Hey, I'm Bruce Braley, I'm a populist,'” said Braley, who is in his fifth term in the House. “But most Iowans would say they want someone like him to fight for them.”
“The version of populism I've always promoted is to focus on economic policies that will strengthen and expand the middle class,” Braley said, “looking out for their economic interests.”
And not all populists are Democrats. Just ask Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassley.
“I don't use the word when I answer my constituents' questions. I don't brag about being a populist, I just think I am,” Grassley said. He cites his support for ethanol despite opposition from oil companies, limiting farm subsidies to corporate farming and opposition to offshore tax havens.
As a result, he says, prairie populism won't go away with Harkin.
“As long as I'm around, he won't be the last one to go,” Grassley said.
Things were different 30 years ago, when Harkin helped found the original House Populist Caucus, 10 of its 14 members were from the Midwest. Braley's version of the same group, founded in 2009, has 25 members – five from the Midwest and 13 from the East and West Coasts. In the Senate, Dassle was defeated, Dorgan retired, and Max Baucus of Montana and Tim Johnson of South Dakota are also retiring.
“2013 is not a particularly favorable environment on so many fronts for prairie populists,” says Steffen Schmidt, a political scientist at the University of Iowa. “The meadow has changed.”
Just 2 percent of Iowans live on family farms, the stomping grounds of the populist movement when it began in the 19th century. Corporate farms, Schmidt said, support policies “that are not the same as the needs of small-acre family farms.” Iowa's growing business and technology sectors may produce Democrats, but not of the same caliber.
“The extent to which populism became so closely tied to agriculture, the answer is yes, that weakened it,” Grassley said. “We're two or three generations off the land, and that makes you less populist.”
The nation has also shifted. Braley points out that in 1900, when populism flourished, Iowa had 11 House seats and Florida had two. Now Florida has 27 seats and only four House members represent Iowa.
But Grassley – who is a conservative – said populism today has changed rather than diminished. “In the 1890s it might have been people who expected the government to take over the economic axis … now I would describe prairie populism (as) people who distrust the government,” he said.
In this light, the biggest populist movement in recent years has been the Tea Party – which is flourishing in Iowa.
Political parties have also changed: they focus on voter-rich suburban areas, where more persuasive voters live. The weight of the Democratic Party has shifted to the coasts and urban areas, said Joel Kotkin, an expert on political and geographic trends. “A party whose base is universities, tech companies and Hollywood probably doesn't qualify as a highly populist movement.”
But Iowa Democrats say populism lives on. “That's an identifier that people still associate with,” said Troy Price, executive director of the state Democratic Party who served as Obama's political director. “That's what Obama won.” With or without the label, populist issues like jobs and entitlement programs “are what Democrats are fighting for,” he said.
