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Thomas Richard (Tom) Harkin was a Senator and a Representative from Iowa. Born in Cumming, Iowa on November 19, 1939, he attended public schools before graduating from Iowa State University in Ames in 1962. He earned his JD from the Catholic University of America Law School in Washington, D.C. in 1972. Admitted to the Iowa bar in 1972, he commenced practice in Des Moines before serving in United States Navy from 1962-1967 and the Naval reserve from 1968-1974. He was an attorney for the Polk County, Iowa, Legal Aid Society in 1973 and a member of the board of directors of the Iowa Consumers League before being elected in 1974 as a Democrat to the Ninety-fourth Congress. He was reelected to the four succeeding Congresses (January 3, 1975-January 3, 1985), but was not a candidate for reelection in 1984 to the House as he ran for the Senate. Elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate in 1984, he was reelected in 1990, 1996, 2002, and again in 2008, and served from January 3, 1985, to January 3, 2015 as chair of the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry (One Hundred Seventh Congress [January 3-20, 2001; June 6, 2001-January 3, 2003], One Hundred Tenth Congress, and One Hundred Eleventh Congress [January 3, 2009-September 9, 2009]), and the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (One Hundred Eleventh [September 9, 2009-January 3, 2011] to One Hundred Thirteenth Congresses). He was not a candidate for reelection to the Senate in 2014.
