Steve King
Encyclopedia
Steven Arnold "Steve" King (born May 28, 1949) is the U.S. Representative
for , serving since 2003. He is a member of the Republican Party
.
The district is located in the western part of the state and includes Sioux City and Council Bluffs.
. The son of a state police dispatcher and a homemaker, King graduated from Denison Community High School in 1967. He attended Northwest Missouri State University
from 1967 to 1970, taking courses toward becoming a wildlife officer. He does not have a college degree. In 1975, he founded King Construction, an earth moving company. King founded the Kiron Business Association in the 1980s. His involvement with the Iowa Land Improvement Contractors' Association led to regional and national offices in that organization and a growing interest in public policy.
During the 110th Congress
, King voted with the majority of the Republican Party 90.9% of the time. King has continuously voted for Iraq War legislation, and has supported surge efforts and opposed a time table for troop withdrawals.
The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America gave King a 'B' grade, based on the key veterans' legislation that came to a vote during the 110th Congress. King was the only US Representative from Iowa who did not receive an 'A' or 'A+' from IAVA. For reference, former POW John McCain received a D in the same report.
He was the only Representative from Iowa to score 100 percent on the joint Family Research Council Action/Focus on the Family Action Congressional Scorecard in the second session of the 109th Congress. In the 109th United States Congress
, and again in the 110th Congress, King chairs the Conservative Opportunity Society, an organization founded by Newt Gingrich
and others consisting of Republican members of Congress committed to representing the conservative agenda in the House of Representatives.
In November 2010 King endorsed Michele Bachmann
for House Republican Conference Chair.
Steve King said on the floor of the House on June 14, 2010 that racial profiling is an important component of law enforcement: "Profiling has always been an important component of legitimate law enforcement. If you can’t profile someone, you can’t use those common sense indicators that are before your very eyes." As an example of profiling, King described an instance when a taxi driver would stop for him before he had to hail a cab, just because he was in a business suit.
King gained prominence by being one of 11 in Congress to vote against the $52 billion Katrina Aid package citing fiscal responsibility and the government needing a comprehensive plan for spending aid money. The Sioux City Journal wrote the following about King's vote:
In April 2006, conservative members of Congress proposed strengthening law enforcement against illegal immigration to the United States
. When asked if "the US economy simply couldn't function without" the presence of illegal immigrants, King said that he rejected that position "categorically". He said "they", referring to the 77.5 million people between the ages of sixteen and sixty-five in the United States who are not part of the workforce
, "could be put to work and we could invent machines to replace the rest."
King said that "members of Congress that vote for a guest-worker plan ... will be supporting an amnesty plan and they should be branded with the scarlet letter 'A' and pay for that amnesty in the ballot box in November [elections]".
took 5th District
incumbent
and fellow Republican Tom Latham
out of the district, King ran in a four-way Republican primary
for the seat. His most prominent opponents were fellow state senator John Redwine and State House
Speaker Brent Siegrest. The 5th, then as now, was so heavily Republican that it was generally thought whoever won the Republican primary was all but assured of victory in November.
King won the primary election with 30% of the vote, short of the 35 percent required by Iowa law to be named the outright winner. Subsequently, a nominating convention was held which King won on the third ballot. King easily won election in November over Council Bluffs city councilman Paul Shomshor
, and he was reelected almost as handily in 2004.
In 2006, King won re-election in the 2006 general election against Democrat Schulte and Independent candidates Roy Nielsen and Cheryl Broderson with 59 percent of the vote.
's Senate seat, but on March 7, he announced that he would run for a fourth House term. King was opposed by Democratic nominee Rob Hubler and Independent candidate Victor Vara. King won with 60 percent of the vote and for the first time won all 32 counties in his district.
and won with his highest percentage yet of 66 percent. King also won all 32 counties in the 5th District for the second election cycle in a row.
and Ames
in the process. This placed King and his predecessor, Latham, in the same district. Latham opted to move to the reconfigured 3rd District and challenge Democratic incumbent Leonard Boswell
. While the new district closely resembles the area Latham represented for his first four terms, it is much more competitive than King's old district. The old 5th had a Cook Partisan Voting Index
of R+9; the new 4th has a PVI of R+4.
Soon afterward, former Iowa First Lady Christie Vilsack
, the wife of former Governor and current Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack
, announced she was moving to the new 4th to challenge King.
and his middle name, saying:
Then on March 10, King defended his comments to The Associated Press, saying "(Obama will) certainly be viewed as a savior for them.... That's why you will see them supporting him, encouraging him."
Obama said he did not take the comments too seriously, describing King as an individual who thrives on making controversial statements to get media coverage. He said, "I would hope Senator McCain would want to distance himself from that kind of inflammatory and offensive remarks." The McCain campaign disavowed King's comments, saying "John McCain rejects the type of politics that degrades our civics…and obviously that extends to Congressman King's statement."
In mid-January 2009, King acknowledged that terrorists were not dancing in the streets, and in fact "They have made statements against Obama." He also said that he found Obama’s decision to use his middle name, "Hussein", when he is sworn in as the 44th President of the United States on January 20, 2009, to be "bizarre" and “a double-standard."
Steve King said on a radio show on June 14, 2010 that President Obama's policies favor black people. On G. Gordon Liddy's radio show, King said, "The president has demonstrated that he has a default mechanism in him that breaks down the side of race - on the side that favors the black person."
United States House of Representatives
The United States House of Representatives is one of the two Houses of the United States Congress, the bicameral legislature which also includes the Senate.The composition and powers of the House are established in Article One of the Constitution...
for , serving since 2003. He is a member of the Republican Party
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
.
The district is located in the western part of the state and includes Sioux City and Council Bluffs.
Early life, education and career
King was born on May 28, 1949 in Storm Lake, IowaStorm Lake, Iowa
Storm Lake is a city in Buena Vista County, Iowa, United States. The population was 10,600 in the 2010 census, an increase from 10,076 in the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Buena Vista County. Storm Lake is home to Buena Vista University, originally Buena Vista College...
. The son of a state police dispatcher and a homemaker, King graduated from Denison Community High School in 1967. He attended Northwest Missouri State University
Northwest Missouri State University
Northwest Missouri State University is a state university in Maryville, Missouri. Founded in 1905 as a teachers college, it offers both undergraduate and graduate programs. The campus, based on the design for Forest Park at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, is the official Missouri State Arboretum....
from 1967 to 1970, taking courses toward becoming a wildlife officer. He does not have a college degree. In 1975, he founded King Construction, an earth moving company. King founded the Kiron Business Association in the 1980s. His involvement with the Iowa Land Improvement Contractors' Association led to regional and national offices in that organization and a growing interest in public policy.
Iowa Senate
From 1996 to 2002, King served as an Iowa State Senator, representing the 6th district. King worked as the Chairman of the State Government Committee and Vice Chairman of the Oversight Budget Committee. He was a part of the Appropriations Committee, Judiciary Committee, Business and Labor Committee, and the Commerce Committee. He assisted in eliminating the inheritance tax, enforcing workplace drug testing, strengthening parental rights, passing tax cuts for working residents of Iowa, and passing a law that made English the official language in Iowa.Committee assignments
- Committee on AgricultureUnited States House Committee on AgricultureThe U.S. House Committee on Agriculture, or Agriculture Committee is a standing committee of the United States House of Representatives. The House Committee on Agriculture has general jurisdiction over federal agriculture policy and oversight of some federal agencies, and it can recommend funding...
- Subcommittee on Department Operations, Oversight, Nutrition, and Forestry
- Subcommittee on General Farm Commodities and Risk ManagementUnited States House Agriculture Subcommittee on General Farm Commodities and Risk ManagementThe House Subcommittee on General Farm Commodities and Risk Management is a subcommittee within the House Agriculture Committee. The subcommittee oversees program and markets for major commercial crops, such as cotton, cottonseed, wheat, feed grains , soybeans, oilseeds, rice, dry beans, peas, and...
- Subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy, and PoultryUnited States House Agriculture Subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy, and PoultryThe House Subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy, and Poultry is a subcommittee within the House Agriculture Committee. It oversees all issues relating to livestock, dairy, poultry, meat, seafood and seafood products including federal inspection, marketing, and promotion of these commodities...
- Subcommittee on Nutrition and Horticulture
- Committee on the JudiciaryUnited States House Committee on the JudiciaryThe U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary, also called the House Judiciary Committee, is a standing committee of the United States House of Representatives. It is charged with overseeing the administration of justice within the federal courts, administrative agencies and Federal law enforcement...
- Subcommittee on the Constitution
- Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law (Vice Chairman)
- Committee on Small BusinessUnited States House Committee on Small BusinessThe United States House Committee on Small Business is a standing committee of the United States House of Representatives.-History:On December 4, 1941, the U. S...
- Congressional Cuba Democracy CaucusCongressional Cuba Democracy CaucusThe Cuba Democracy Caucus is a bicameral and bi-partisan congressional group that was created in 2004 with the stated purpose of "promoting discussion and proactive policies designed to hasten Cuba's transition towards a free and democratic society."...
- Republican Study CommitteeRepublican Study CommitteeThe Republican Study Committee [RSC] is a caucus of over 170 conservative members of the Republican Party in the United States House of Representatives...
- Tea Party CaucusTea Party CaucusThe Tea Party Caucus is a caucus of the United States House of Representatives and Senate launched and chaired by Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann on July 16, 2010. The caucus is dedicated to promoting what it considers fiscal responsibility, adherence to the movement's interpretation of...
Political positions
King is considered an outspoken fiscal and social conservative. After winning the 2002 Republican nomination, he said that he intended to use his seat in Congress to "move the political center of gravity in Congress to the right."During the 110th Congress
110th United States Congress
The One Hundred Tenth United States Congress was the meeting of the legislative branch of the United States federal government, between January 3, 2007, and January 3, 2009, during the last two years of the second term of President George W. Bush. It was composed of the Senate and the House of...
, King voted with the majority of the Republican Party 90.9% of the time. King has continuously voted for Iraq War legislation, and has supported surge efforts and opposed a time table for troop withdrawals.
The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America gave King a 'B' grade, based on the key veterans' legislation that came to a vote during the 110th Congress. King was the only US Representative from Iowa who did not receive an 'A' or 'A+' from IAVA. For reference, former POW John McCain received a D in the same report.
He was the only Representative from Iowa to score 100 percent on the joint Family Research Council Action/Focus on the Family Action Congressional Scorecard in the second session of the 109th Congress. In the 109th United States Congress
109th United States Congress
The One Hundred Ninth United States Congress was the legislative branch of the United States, composed of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives, from January 3, 2005 to January 3, 2007, during the fifth and sixth years of George W. Bush's presidency. House members...
, and again in the 110th Congress, King chairs the Conservative Opportunity Society, an organization founded by Newt Gingrich
Newt Gingrich
Newton Leroy "Newt" Gingrich is a U.S. Republican Party politician who served as the House Minority Whip from 1989 to 1995 and as the 58th Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999....
and others consisting of Republican members of Congress committed to representing the conservative agenda in the House of Representatives.
In November 2010 King endorsed Michele Bachmann
Michele Bachmann
Michele Marie Bachmann is a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives, representing , a post she has held since 2007. The district includes several of the northern suburbs of the Twin Cities, such as Woodbury, and Blaine as well as Stillwater and St. Cloud.She is currently a...
for House Republican Conference Chair.
Race and gender
King opposes race based quotas and affirmative action. King has stated: “There’s been legislation that’s been brought through this House that sets aside benefits for women and minorities. The only people that it excludes are white men...Pretty soon, white men are going to notice they are the ones being excluded.”Steve King said on the floor of the House on June 14, 2010 that racial profiling is an important component of law enforcement: "Profiling has always been an important component of legitimate law enforcement. If you can’t profile someone, you can’t use those common sense indicators that are before your very eyes." As an example of profiling, King described an instance when a taxi driver would stop for him before he had to hail a cab, just because he was in a business suit.
Same sex marriage
On April 3, 2009, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that a state ban on same-sex marriage violated the Iowa constitution. King soon commented that the judges "should resign from their position" and the state legislature "must also enact marriage license residency requirements so that Iowa does not become the gay marriage Mecca." King, along with others, mounted a campaign against the retention of all three Iowa Supreme Court judges who ruled on the gay marriage case. King bought $80,000 of radio across the state calling for Iowans to vote "no" on the judges. Subsequently, all three judges were not retained.Federal spending
King fought against Medicare and Medicaid paying for a number of medications such as Viagra, which he described as "recreational drugs". King also has voted against each stimulus bill in the U.S. House of Representatives, saying, “Our economy will not recover because government spends more. It will recover because people produce more.”King gained prominence by being one of 11 in Congress to vote against the $52 billion Katrina Aid package citing fiscal responsibility and the government needing a comprehensive plan for spending aid money. The Sioux City Journal wrote the following about King's vote:
"In September, we took our congressman, Steve King, to task for voting against a $52 billion aid package for victims of Hurricane Katrina.
King - who was just one of 11 members of Congress who voted against the package which passed both houses and was signed by President Bush - based his vote on the need for "fiscal responsibility." He said the federal government needed to develop a comprehensive plan for spending aid dollars, including input from members of Congress, before more money was appropriated. He earlier had voted for a $10.5 billion emergency aid package.
Well, after reading an Associated Press story about a report that details how perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars in Katrina disaster aid have been misspent, it appears we were wrong and King was right about his vote on the $52 billion."
Illegal immigration
King is against illegal immigration. . He is considered a likely candidate to chair the House Immigration subcommittee in the Republican-majority House of Representatives.In April 2006, conservative members of Congress proposed strengthening law enforcement against illegal immigration to the United States
Illegal immigration to the United States
An illegal immigrant in the United States is an alien who has entered the United States without government permission or stayed beyond the termination date of a visa....
. When asked if "the US economy simply couldn't function without" the presence of illegal immigrants, King said that he rejected that position "categorically". He said "they", referring to the 77.5 million people between the ages of sixteen and sixty-five in the United States who are not part of the workforce
Workforce
The workforce is the labour pool in employment. It is generally used to describe those working for a single company or industry, but can also apply to a geographic region like a city, country, state, etc. The term generally excludes the employers or management, and implies those involved in...
, "could be put to work and we could invent machines to replace the rest."
King said that "members of Congress that vote for a guest-worker plan ... will be supporting an amnesty plan and they should be branded with the scarlet letter 'A' and pay for that amnesty in the ballot box in November [elections]".
Political lobbying
On February 26, 2010, King went to the House floor to protest the Democrats' handling of health care reform and said: "Lobbyists do a very effective and useful job on this Hill ...There's a credibility there in that arena that I think somebody needs to stand up for the lobby, and it is a matter of providing a lot of valuable information."Political campaigns
In 2002, after redistrictingRedistricting
Redistricting is the process of drawing United States electoral district boundaries, often in response to population changes determined by the results of the decennial census. In 36 states, the state legislature has primary responsibility for creating a redistricting plan, in many cases subject to...
took 5th District
Iowa's 5th congressional district
Iowa's 5th congressional district is a congressional district in the U.S. state of Iowa that covers most of Western Iowa and includes the cities of Council Bluffs and Sioux City...
incumbent
Incumbent
The incumbent, in politics, is the existing holder of a political office. This term is usually used in reference to elections, in which races can often be defined as being between an incumbent and non-incumbent. For example, in the 2004 United States presidential election, George W...
and fellow Republican Tom Latham
Tom Latham
Thomas "Tom" Latham is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1995. He is a member of the Republican Party.-Early life, education and career:...
out of the district, King ran in a four-way Republican primary
Primary election
A primary election is an election in which party members or voters select candidates for a subsequent election. Primary elections are one means by which a political party nominates candidates for the next general election....
for the seat. His most prominent opponents were fellow state senator John Redwine and State House
Iowa House of Representatives
The Iowa House of Representatives is the lower house of the Iowa General Assembly. There are 100 members of the House of Representatives, representing 100 single-member districts across the state with populations of approximately 29,750 for each constituency...
Speaker Brent Siegrest. The 5th, then as now, was so heavily Republican that it was generally thought whoever won the Republican primary was all but assured of victory in November.
King won the primary election with 30% of the vote, short of the 35 percent required by Iowa law to be named the outright winner. Subsequently, a nominating convention was held which King won on the third ballot. King easily won election in November over Council Bluffs city councilman Paul Shomshor
Paul Shomshor
Paul C. Shomshor, Jr. is a former Iowa State Representative from the 100th District. He served in the Iowa House of Representatives from 2003, when he was elected in a special election, until 2011...
, and he was reelected almost as handily in 2004.
In 2006, King won re-election in the 2006 general election against Democrat Schulte and Independent candidates Roy Nielsen and Cheryl Broderson with 59 percent of the vote.
2008
In 2008, King had been seen as a possible challenger for Tom HarkinTom Harkin
Thomas Richard "Tom" Harkin is the junior United States Senator from Iowa and a member of the Democratic Party. He previously served in the United States House of Representatives ....
's Senate seat, but on March 7, he announced that he would run for a fourth House term. King was opposed by Democratic nominee Rob Hubler and Independent candidate Victor Vara. King won with 60 percent of the vote and for the first time won all 32 counties in his district.
2010
King ran against Democratic nominee Matt CampbellMatt Campbell (Politician)
Matthew Sean Campbell is the 2010 Democratic nominee for the United States Congress in Iowa's 5th congressional district, challenging incumbent Republican Representative Steve King.-Early life and education:...
and won with his highest percentage yet of 66 percent. King also won all 32 counties in the 5th District for the second election cycle in a row.
2012
Iowa lost a district as a result of the 2010 Census. King's district was renumbered as the 4th District, and pushed well to the east, absorbing Mason CityMason City
Mason City is the name of several places in the United States of America:*Mason City, Illinois*Mason City, Iowa*Mason City, NebraskaSee also: Mason...
and Ames
Ames, Iowa
Ames is a city located in the central part of the U.S. state of Iowa in Story County, and approximately north of Des Moines. The U.S. Census Bureau designates that Ames, Iowa metropolitan statistical area as encompassing all of Story County, and which, when combined with the Boone, Iowa...
in the process. This placed King and his predecessor, Latham, in the same district. Latham opted to move to the reconfigured 3rd District and challenge Democratic incumbent Leonard Boswell
Leonard Boswell
Leonard L. Boswell is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1997. He is a member of the Democratic Party.The district is based in Des Moines.-Early life, education and career:...
. While the new district closely resembles the area Latham represented for his first four terms, it is much more competitive than King's old district. The old 5th had a Cook Partisan Voting Index
Cook Partisan Voting Index
The Cook Partisan Voting Index , sometimes referred to as simply the Partisan Voting Index , is a measurement of how strongly an American congressional district or state leans toward one political party compared to the nation as a whole...
of R+9; the new 4th has a PVI of R+4.
Soon afterward, former Iowa First Lady Christie Vilsack
Christie Vilsack
Christie Vilsack is an American literacy advocate and politician. Vilsack is married to former Iowa Governor and current United States Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, serving as the First Lady of Iowa from 1999 until 2007. She is a 2012 Democratic candidate for U.S...
, the wife of former Governor and current Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack
Tom Vilsack
Thomas James "Tom" Vilsack is an American politician, a member of the Democratic Party, and presently the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture. He served as the 40th Governor of the state of Iowa. He was first elected in 1998 and re-elected to a second four-year term in 2002...
, announced she was moving to the new 4th to challenge King.
Remarks about Barack Obama
On March 7, 2008, during his press engagements to announce his reelection campaign, King made remarks about Senator and Democratic Presidential candidate Barack ObamaBarack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
and his middle name, saying:
"I don't want to disparage anyone because of their race, their ethnicity, their name - whatever their religion their father might have been," I'll just say this: When you think about the optics of a Barack Obama potentially getting elected President of the United States -- I mean, what does this look like to the rest of the world? What does it look like to the world of Islam? I will tell you that, if he is elected president, then the radical Islamists, the al-Qaida, the radical Islamists and their supporters, will be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on September 11 because they will declare victory in this War on Terror. Additionally, his middle name (Hussein) does matter. It matters because they read a meaning into that in the rest of the world...If he were strong on national defense and said 'I'm going to go over there and we're going to fight and we're going to win, we'll come home with a victory,' that's different. But that's not what he said. They will be dancing in the streets if he's elected president. That has a chilling aspect on how difficult it will be to ever win this Global War on Terror."
Then on March 10, King defended his comments to The Associated Press, saying "(Obama will) certainly be viewed as a savior for them.... That's why you will see them supporting him, encouraging him."
Obama said he did not take the comments too seriously, describing King as an individual who thrives on making controversial statements to get media coverage. He said, "I would hope Senator McCain would want to distance himself from that kind of inflammatory and offensive remarks." The McCain campaign disavowed King's comments, saying "John McCain rejects the type of politics that degrades our civics…and obviously that extends to Congressman King's statement."
In mid-January 2009, King acknowledged that terrorists were not dancing in the streets, and in fact "They have made statements against Obama." He also said that he found Obama’s decision to use his middle name, "Hussein", when he is sworn in as the 44th President of the United States on January 20, 2009, to be "bizarre" and “a double-standard."
Steve King said on a radio show on June 14, 2010 that President Obama's policies favor black people. On G. Gordon Liddy's radio show, King said, "The president has demonstrated that he has a default mechanism in him that breaks down the side of race - on the side that favors the black person."
External links
- U.S. Congressman Steve King official U.S. House site
- Steve King for U.S. Congress official campaign site