Emmetsburg's Kibbie will lead Iowa Senate
By Todd Dorman Journal Des Moines Bureau | Posted: Tuesday, January 02, 2007
Editor's note: This is first in a three part series of profiles on the lawmakers who will lead the upcoming Iowa legislative session.
EMMETSBURG, Iowa -- In 1965, Jack Kibbie left his family's Palo Alto County farm and took his seat in a Statehouse controlled from top to bottom by Democrats for the first time in decades.
Next week, Kibbie will be back in the Senate as its president. And for the first time since '65, Democrats will be back in command of the governor's office and both chambers of the Legislature.
It's uncharted territory for every lawmaker, except Kibbie, D-Emmetsburg.
Some things haven't changed much in 42 years. Kibbie, 77, will be representing the rolling farmlands and sturdy towns of the Northwest Iowa region where he grew up and raised a family. His family still grows crops on some of the land homesteaded by his Irish immigrant forebears. The one-room school he attended still stands a few gravel-road turns from his boyhood home.
Kibbie also sports the same close-cropped, old-school haircut he's worn since commanding an Army tank on the front lines during the Korean War.
But the differences are many.
Back in 1965, lawmakers met only on odd-numbered years. They were paid $40 per day for expenses, but no salary. The only mileage payment they got was for one trip to Des Moines and one trip back home.
And while the current crop of 2007 Democrats insists they'll carefully consider a measured, "mainstream" legislative agenda, 'caution' was not in Democrats' vocabulary in 1965.
"Those were interesting times," said Kibbie, sitting at the kitchen table in his home on the shores of Five Island Lake in Emmetsburg. "This was our chance. We hadn't had a chance in a long time."
If the 2006 Democratic sweep is considered a sharp change in the political wind, then the 1964 election can be described as a hurricane.
Court-ordered redistricting in 1964 -- coupled with landslide wins for Democratic President Lyndon Johnson and Democratic Gov. Harold Hughes -- spelled disaster for Iowa Republicans accustomed to dominating Statehouse politics for decades.
Democrats, who held just 29 Iowa House seats in 1963, captured 101 seats in the 124-seat House in 1964. Democrats also grabbed a 34-25 Senate majority.
When the dust settled, 100 new members were elected to the Legislature. Many didn't know what they were getting into.
"There were a lot of candidates who got elected in '64 that only signed an affidavit and got their name on the ballot. They never knocked on one door. They never raised one dollar," Kibbie said. "Hell, there was a couple who even thought they got elected to go to Washington."
U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, was a young House member who managed to hang on to his seat in the Democratic wave.
"We were outnumbered," Grassley said. "It was just kind of like we were a non-entity."
The landslide election was followed by a landmark, 145-day session in 1965.
Lawmakers swiftly opened previously secret legislative committee meetings and kicked lobbyists out of the House and Senate chambers where they had been allowed to congregate during debate. They also voted to bar the Senate from going into closed executive session to discuss gubernatorial appointments.
They repealed Iowa's death penalty, dramatically reorganized the state's school districts, created a penny gasoline tax to pay for road improvements, approved the use of daylight savings time, commissioned a state college scholarship fund and created the Iowa Civil Rights Commission.
Lawmakers approved rules governing highway billboards, created driver's education, required the installation of seatbelts in all vehicles after 1966, banned drag racing and required the use of headlights from sunset to sunrise.
Nine constitutional amendments were debated, including measures lowering the voting age, extending the governor's term to four years and changing the way Iowa selected its judges.
The Legislature passed 489 bills and increased state spending to record levels.
"No Iowa Legislature in this century has had the courage to tackle such a broad range of important and difficult public interest problems as you have undertaken," Hughes said in a letter to lawmakers as they adjourned on June 4, 1965.
Kibbie shepherded one of the session's biggest lasting achievements -- legislation carving Iowa's modern-day community college system from a patchwork of junior colleges. Take a driving tour of Emmetsburg with Kibbie today and he'll point out the John P. Kibbie building on the campus of Iowa Lakes Community College.
"Jack, he was just there when you needed him," said Robert Fulton of Waterloo, who was lieutenant governor in 1965 and presided over the Senate. "This guy from northern rural Iowa was one of the leaders who helped bring the state of Iowa up to the 20th Century."
But not everything went the Democrats' way. Grassley remembers a coalition of Republicans and conservative Democrats in the Senate who blocked efforts to repeal Iowa's right to work law. The debate over that law and workers' rights is expected to spill into the 2007 session.
And in 1966, voters jolted by the notion of paying higher taxes for new high schools, community colleges and other projects gave the Iowa House back to Republicans.
"The public just wasn't ready for that much change," Kibbie said.
Even Kibbie was the political victim of his own education reform work when he lost his Senate seat in 1968.
Caught in a local fight over the new community college campus and accused of favoring forced school consolidation, Kibbie lost by a couple hundred votes.
"I told people then and I've told people since that it was the biggest favor I've ever had done for me," said Kibbie, who had a farm and growing young family back home. "I had no business being down there then."
Kibbie stayed out of Statehouse politics until 1988, when he ran again for the Senate after the death of his first wife, Alice. His second act is now approaching 20 years, but the 145 days he spent in Des Moines in 1965 still stands out.
"In my opinion, it was the most important session," Kibbie said.
Todd Dorman can be reached at (515) 243-0138 or at todd.dorman@lee.net
Wednesday: Mike Gronstal of Council Bluffs will serve as Senate majority leader.
EMMETSBURG, Iowa -- In 1965, Jack Kibbie left his family's Palo Alto County farm and took his seat in a Statehouse controlled from top to bottom by Democrats for the first time in decades.
Next week, Kibbie will be back in the Senate as its president. And for the first time since '65, Democrats will be back in command of the governor's office and both chambers of the Legislature.
It's uncharted territory for every lawmaker, except Kibbie, D-Emmetsburg.
Some things haven't changed much in 42 years. Kibbie, 77, will be representing the rolling farmlands and sturdy towns of the Northwest Iowa region where he grew up and raised a family. His family still grows crops on some of the land homesteaded by his Irish immigrant forebears. The one-room school he attended still stands a few gravel-road turns from his boyhood home.
Kibbie also sports the same close-cropped, old-school haircut he's worn since commanding an Army tank on the front lines during the Korean War.
But the differences are many.
Back in 1965, lawmakers met only on odd-numbered years. They were paid $40 per day for expenses, but no salary. The only mileage payment they got was for one trip to Des Moines and one trip back home.
And while the current crop of 2007 Democrats insists they'll carefully consider a measured, "mainstream" legislative agenda, 'caution' was not in Democrats' vocabulary in 1965.
"Those were interesting times," said Kibbie, sitting at the kitchen table in his home on the shores of Five Island Lake in Emmetsburg. "This was our chance. We hadn't had a chance in a long time."
If the 2006 Democratic sweep is considered a sharp change in the political wind, then the 1964 election can be described as a hurricane.
Court-ordered redistricting in 1964 -- coupled with landslide wins for Democratic President Lyndon Johnson and Democratic Gov. Harold Hughes -- spelled disaster for Iowa Republicans accustomed to dominating Statehouse politics for decades.
Democrats, who held just 29 Iowa House seats in 1963, captured 101 seats in the 124-seat House in 1964. Democrats also grabbed a 34-25 Senate majority.
When the dust settled, 100 new members were elected to the Legislature. Many didn't know what they were getting into.
"There were a lot of candidates who got elected in '64 that only signed an affidavit and got their name on the ballot. They never knocked on one door. They never raised one dollar," Kibbie said. "Hell, there was a couple who even thought they got elected to go to Washington."
U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, was a young House member who managed to hang on to his seat in the Democratic wave.
"We were outnumbered," Grassley said. "It was just kind of like we were a non-entity."
The landslide election was followed by a landmark, 145-day session in 1965.
Lawmakers swiftly opened previously secret legislative committee meetings and kicked lobbyists out of the House and Senate chambers where they had been allowed to congregate during debate. They also voted to bar the Senate from going into closed executive session to discuss gubernatorial appointments.
They repealed Iowa's death penalty, dramatically reorganized the state's school districts, created a penny gasoline tax to pay for road improvements, approved the use of daylight savings time, commissioned a state college scholarship fund and created the Iowa Civil Rights Commission.
Lawmakers approved rules governing highway billboards, created driver's education, required the installation of seatbelts in all vehicles after 1966, banned drag racing and required the use of headlights from sunset to sunrise.
Nine constitutional amendments were debated, including measures lowering the voting age, extending the governor's term to four years and changing the way Iowa selected its judges.
The Legislature passed 489 bills and increased state spending to record levels.
"No Iowa Legislature in this century has had the courage to tackle such a broad range of important and difficult public interest problems as you have undertaken," Hughes said in a letter to lawmakers as they adjourned on June 4, 1965.
Kibbie shepherded one of the session's biggest lasting achievements -- legislation carving Iowa's modern-day community college system from a patchwork of junior colleges. Take a driving tour of Emmetsburg with Kibbie today and he'll point out the John P. Kibbie building on the campus of Iowa Lakes Community College.
"Jack, he was just there when you needed him," said Robert Fulton of Waterloo, who was lieutenant governor in 1965 and presided over the Senate. "This guy from northern rural Iowa was one of the leaders who helped bring the state of Iowa up to the 20th Century."
But not everything went the Democrats' way. Grassley remembers a coalition of Republicans and conservative Democrats in the Senate who blocked efforts to repeal Iowa's right to work law. The debate over that law and workers' rights is expected to spill into the 2007 session.
And in 1966, voters jolted by the notion of paying higher taxes for new high schools, community colleges and other projects gave the Iowa House back to Republicans.
"The public just wasn't ready for that much change," Kibbie said.
Even Kibbie was the political victim of his own education reform work when he lost his Senate seat in 1968.
Caught in a local fight over the new community college campus and accused of favoring forced school consolidation, Kibbie lost by a couple hundred votes.
"I told people then and I've told people since that it was the biggest favor I've ever had done for me," said Kibbie, who had a farm and growing young family back home. "I had no business being down there then."
Kibbie stayed out of Statehouse politics until 1988, when he ran again for the Senate after the death of his first wife, Alice. His second act is now approaching 20 years, but the 145 days he spent in Des Moines in 1965 still stands out.
"In my opinion, it was the most important session," Kibbie said.
Todd Dorman can be reached at (515) 243-0138 or at todd.dorman@lee.net
Wednesday: Mike Gronstal of Council Bluffs will serve as Senate majority leader.
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Nick wrote on Jan 2, 2007 6:47 PM: