From the beginning, Iowa and national Democrats thought Bruce Braley was a shoo-in to win the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Democrat Tom Harkin.
He wasn’t.
He wasn’t because he isn't Tom Harkin — and smart as he is, he apparently never really studied how Harkin stayed in Congress for 40 years, ten years in the House of Representatives and then 30 years in the U.S. Senate.
In the 168-year history of the state, there have been only ten Democratic Senators, and two of those were George Jones and Augustus Dodge, the two men Iowa’s new legislature sent to the United States Senate when Iowa entered the Union. (There have been 24 Republicans.)
Harkin is the only Democratic Senator from Iowa ever to be elected by the people to serve two full terms, and he was elected five times. He was elected and re-elected for these reasons: He is an old-fashioned Upper Midwest Populist who is passionate in his beliefs. He cares about the ordinary Iowans and is comfortable with the farmer and the druggist and the teacher and the body-and-fender man (as well as with high-profile businessman Bill Knapp). He listens. He fights. And he throws body-and-soul into his campaigns. It helps, too, that he sleeps with his strategist.
Even with that passion, that drive, that wife-enforced discipline and a vast knowledge of the state, he never was known as Landslide Tom. He went to the Senate in 1985, beating incumbent Republican Roger Jepsen, a flawed candidate who had served one term. Harkin got 55% of the vote.
In the next three elections, the Republicans threw everything they had at him. In 1990, Harkin beat Congressman Tom Tauke, with 54% of the vote. In 1966, he beat Congressman Jim Ross Lightfoot, with 52%. In 2002, he beat Congressman Greg Ganske, with 54%. Finally, the Republicans more or less gave up, nominating Christopher Reed, someone few people had heard of, in 2008, when Harkin got his biggest margin, getting 63% of the vote. (In his career, he beat more sitting members of Congress than anyone else in history.)
He never got the big margins that Iowans have given Republican Chuck Grassley, whose winning percentages were 53 (in 1980, when he beat incumbent John Culver), 66 (over John Roehrick), 70 (over Jean Lloyd-Jones), 68 (over David Osterberg), 72 (over Art Small) and 66 (over Roxanne Conlin). Iowans have always felt more comfortable with Grassley than with Harkin. Grassley makes us feel comfortable about the world; Harkin makes us think about the world.
Braley is a different sort, not Harkin and not Grassley. He’s a smart man, and he’s a nice man. He grew up on a farm and became a trial lawyer. In the end, the trial lawyer won out. In the campaign he sometimes seemed arrogant — that fatal crack about farmer Grassley not being a lawyer was as snooty as it was snotty.
“Braley listens for a minute then sort of just continues back on his merry way,” a senior Democratic official told the Washington Post. “He comes across as arrogant, and I think it’s because he is.” (Of course, if he had won, senior Democratic officials would say he was forceful and determined, not arrogant.)
In public, he sometimes seemed dispassionate about issues and almost impatient with the process. His campaign had little discipline, and it ran against a candidate, Joni Ernst, who might be the most disciplined and programmed (and telegenic) candidate in the history of the state. He sometimes seemed at sea.
Yet he was anointed for the race by Harkin himself; it was understood that Braley was Harkin’s choice, and that scared off any would-be primary opponents. So Braley never even got to take the test drive of a primary, which is too bad. Primaries are great practice and testing grounds for candidates, as Senator-elect Ernst can attest.
Instead, Braley entered as the full-blown candidate, and having been anointed by Harkin he almost seemed to expect to be anointed by the rest of the state. And while the candidate himself lacked spark — he’s “a poor fit for the state [who] looks like he is more comfortable in an office building than on plowed ground,” a Republican strategist wrote in a memo quoted by the Washington Post — the organization lacked cohesion and strategy. Who was in charge? The Des Moines consultants? The folks from the Senate Democratic Campaign committee? Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer? The candidate himself? People close to the campaign say it was never clear.
In the end, it wasn’t even that close: Ernst 52, Braley 44.
It was, of course, a huge Republican year, and Braley faced a candidate who caught on like wildfire. Still, he had money, a name and experience, and he was Tom Harkin’s man. But he wasn’t Tom Harkin. While Harkin listened and fought, Braley seemed to have a sense of entitlement. While the Harkins carefully managed campaigns, Braley let others fight over control. And while Harkin was disciplined, Braley went off on his “merry way.”
And unfortunately for Democrats, that “merry way” led back to Waterloo.
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