Against the Anthills

(See Cover)

Across the rolling plains of Iowa last week in a Chevrolet station wagon cruised a trim, taut, fast-moving man with a bristling crew cut and a businesslike air. His days were an 18-hour succession of Republican breakfasts, Kiwanis Club luncheons, women's teas, greetings on Main Street, conversations in corn fields and gasoline-station stops. The gas stations were important. There he would shake hands with the man at the pump, greet the mechanic, stride into the diner for a word with the fry cook and a cup of coffee with the customers. The Iowa traveler was Leo Hoegh (pronounced hoig), and he was engaged in one of the most complex processes in American politics: running for governor.

In all the 29 states that will elect governors during the national elections next month, a myriad of little grouches and grievances and impressions form an important part of the political picture. This is particularly true when an incumbent governor such as Leo Hoegh is seeking reelection. National, state and local issues intertwine and conflict and complicate one another (last week staunch Eisenhower Republican Hoegh. convinced that Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson is a local political liability, kept far away when Benson visited Iowa). At times, issues that logically should help the candidate are fatal. In some cases a whole collection of political anthills pile together to form a mountain of opposition.

In the case of Iowa's Leo Hoegh, the combination of national and local factors is as complex and complete as if some diabolical political chemist had poured together strains of virus out of every test tube in the laboratory. An honest, able governor, he has improved roads, schools and state institutions, has worked tirelessly and successfully to increase his state's industrial potential and to ease its agricultural woe. But he is in trouble.

The factors in Hoegh's situation range all the way from the ridiculous to the fundamental. Some lowans are against Hoegh because a bumptious, publicity-seeking television performer named Dagmar once bulged through his outer office, bussed the governor and then loped on up to the legislature, where she darned near kissed a quorum. Others are against him on the basic issue that he has raised taxes. Some farmers oppose him because they do not like the Eisenhower Administration's farm program; some Republicans are displeased because of his feelings toward Secretary Benson. And some of the plain, quiet, steady people of Iowa, who like their public officials plain, quiet and steady, are against him simply because he has moved so fast and has done so much. Said one Indianola house wife last week: "That 'Hoag' should stay around Iowa instead of gallivanting off every which way on this and that. I think he's stuck on himself."

As Goes the Farmer. Leo Hoegh's political problems are all bound up in the character of his state. Iowa is farming. The state's official pamphlet points out with rural pride that it has no large city (Des Moines, the largest, has a population of 185,000). Iowa produces more hogs, poultry, eggs and timothy seed than any other state, and is stung by the fact that in 1955, largely because of drought, it lost first rank as a corn producer to neighboring Illinois.

But Iowa is more than corn and hogs and hayseed. It produced Painter Grant Wood (American Gothic); it educated Negro Scientist George Washington Carver; it inspired (at Spillville, in Winneshiek County) visiting Czech Composer Antonin Dvorak. Iowa boasts the highest literacy rate (99.2%) of any state in the U.S. And in recent years the state has become more and more industrial. It has the biggest fountain-pen (Sheaffer) factory in the world; in 1955 the value of manufactured products in the state came to $3.9 billion v. $2 billion for farm receipts.

Despite the industrial boom, the state's economy is still based on the land. More than one-fourth of the factory workers in the five largest urban areas make their living by supplying the farmers; the biggest employer in the state (payroll: 9,500) is still Deere & Co. (farm equipment). When the farmer prospers, almost everyone prospers; when the farmer spends less, there are likely to be cutbacks all along the line.

Troublesome Sum. In the Great De pression, Iowa was not so hard up as some other farm states, e.g., North Dakota. And during the lush World War II years, the mortgages were paid off, the barns were painted, and the bank accounts grew fat to buy freezers and furs and college tuition and Buicks. Then came the inevitable adjustment when war demand for food ended. From 1953 to 1955, Iowa's cash farm income fell 10%. This year, the farmers are doing somewhat better. From a year ago corn is up 17-c- a bu., oats are up 18-c-, choice steers $3.60 a cwt. Hogs are about the same as last year, but are well above last spring. This year's greatest problem is drought in the western and central half of the state, which will pull the statewide corn-production average down to 47 bu. an acre (although some farms in the northern part of the state are hauling in 100 bu.). Easing the pain, particularly in the drought areas, will be checks totaling some $54 million from the Eisenhower Administration's soil bank, which were beginning to trickle into rural-route mailboxes last week.

The sum of the economy of Iowa is that the larger urban areas (partly because of increased industrialization) are doing all right, middle-sized places are getting along fairly well, but the small towns are hurting. In a state that likes a comfortable status quo as much as Iowa, such a situation--expanding industrialization, squeezed agriculture, uneven economic conditions and higher state taxes--means political trouble far someone. Mostly, and somewhat illogically, it means trouble, not for Ike, not for G.O.P. Senatorial Incumbent Bourke Hickenlooper, but for the man in the Statehouse, Governor Leo Hoegh.

A Dime for Manure. This is really no surprise to Leo Hoegh, for he is a true son of Iowa, and he knows how the people are likely to feel. His grandfather, Nels Peder Hoegh (Hoegh is Danish for hawk), left a farm in Denmark in 1866 to make a tidy fortune in the Colorado gold boom, and then with good sense invested it in fertile Audubon County land in west central Iowa. He became a patriarch of the Danish community, a leading Republican and a county supervisor, and he gave a farm to each of his 13 children.

On the 160-acre corn-hog farm that Nels gave to his son William, Leo Hoegh was born on March 30, 1908. Brought up in a strict Danish Lutheran household, he did not learn to speak English until he was six years old. One of his first teachers remembers that she had to tell him not to work so hard in school. To earn pocket money, he set up a shoeshine stand in front of the theater in Elk Horn (present pop. 570), charged 5-c- for regular shines and 10-c- if there was manure on the shoes. At the Pottawattamie County courthouse, in nearby Council Bluffs, Leo watched entranced as lawsuits were tried, and one locally famed trial lawyer became his hero. That was when he decided what he wanted to be. "I liked what he could do for people," says Leo. "I guess that's when the lawyering bug got me." He went to the University of Iowa in the spiked-near-beer era, had his share, became a campus political manipulator, and was elected to the elite A.F.I. (All For Iowa) in recognition of all-round achievement. During the summers he fished out 30 distressed swimmers as a lifeguard at the posh Hotel Broadmoor in Colorado Springs, Colo., and got a precinct worker's view of Iowa selling aluminum kitchenware door to door. He graduated from the University of Iowa College of Law in 1932, when the racking pains of the Depression were reaching their peak.

Only the year before, his father, who was president of the Farmers Savings Bank in Elk Horn, lost everything he had. As the Depression grew worse, William Hoegh sold all his assets and poured the money into the bank, but he could not save it. Despite the elder Hoegh's great personal sacrifice, there are some voters in the area who still hold the bank's fail ure against the Hoegh family. It is one of those anthills of state politics.

Nickel Breakfast. In those lean years Leo Hoegh started practicing law, often beginning his day with a 5-c- breakfast of a glass of milk and a roll and just as often managing to spend no more than 50-c- a day for all his meals. "Were things tough then?" he says. "Oh, my God, they were tough. Most of my practice was saving farms from foreclosure, getting the mortgage cut down and taking what the farmer could pay as a fee, which wasn't much. But I think I saved quite a few farms, and made quite a few friends."

He settled in Chariton (1956 pop. 5,700), 45 miles southeast of Des Moines. Like all good lowans, he joined every organization in sight--the Gun Club, the Rotary Club, the Odd Fellows, Elks, Knights of Pythias, Chamber of Commerce and the Methodist Church (there was no Lutheran Church in Chariton), built a reputation as a civic organizer and as a Republican worker. The almost inevitable next step came in 1936, when he stumped Lucas County to win election to the state legislature. During the campaign he also wooed and won dimpled Mary Louise Foster, director of the Methodist choir. .("Leo would be up at 6 o'clock, shake hands with 600 farmers during the day, and be on my front porch by 7:30 p.m. sharp.")

Building a solid, orthodox reputation as an unrelenting penny pincher, Leo Hoegh pleased his constituents, twice won reelection. Then came the event that sent Leo Hoegh heading south into the Army and sent many an orthodoxy galley-west: World War II.

Behind Russian Lines. One day in 1942 Captain (ex-R.O.T.C.) Hoegh was leading his company in bayonet drill when the division commander spotted him. whisked him to division headquarters at G-3 (operations) and sent him off--a captain among colonels--to Command and General Staff School. He graduated in the top 10% of his class, soon went to Europe as operations officer for the 104th Infantry ("Timberwolf") Division, wrote the operations orders that carried the 104th through to the Rhine and into Germany. He won his medals--Legion of Honor, Croix de guerre with palm, Bronze Star with cluster. At war's end, when the 104th linked up with the Soviet forces in Germany, Lieut. Colonel Hoegh was in a group that flew behind the Russian lines in a Piper Cub to establish liaison with Marshal Konev's advancing army.

For a country lawyer from Iowa, directing the operations of a 17,000-man infantry division was big and exciting. It gave direct, driving Leo Hoegh a broader horizon, a new sense of confidence in his own administrative ability, an urge to get things done fast. But back in Iowa, these new-found qualities were not necessarily pure assets. Says Virgil Meyer, Hoegh's law partner: "It took Leo about five years to settle down. He was all Army. He wanted to talk right at the point, and you can't always do that in the law. The only thing I could do was let him go over to the courthouse and get beat."

Hoegh plunged back into civic and political activity with the same fast pace, was elected the first World War II com mander of the American Legion post, became chairman of the Chariton Development Co. to woo new industry, president of the Chamber of Commerce and the Rotary Club, a leader in the National Guard. In 1948 he stumped for liberal Harold Stassen, in 1950 ran in the primary against entrenched Republican Congressman Karl LeCompte. "For the Republican Party," said eager Campaigner Hoegh, "do-nothing and me-too are out. The party should draw its inspiration from the people and free itself from the shackles of the Old Guard." Old Guardsman Le Compte beat him 2-1.

A Swing to Ike. By 1951 unorthodox Leo Heogh was pushing for Eisenhower for President in a state where the Republican leaders were strong for Ohio's Senator Robert Taft. He had seen General Eisenhower in Europe during the war. "I was impressed by Ike because he asked questions," says Hoegh. "He wanted to find out what was on people's minds. And he had an open mind of his own." Hoegh was a key tactician in a group of younger Republicans who swung a majority of Iowa's delegates to Eisenhower on the first ballot at the Republican National Convention in 1952.

Hoegh's maneuverings brought him to the attention of Ike-minded Governor William Beardsley, who appointed Hoegh Iowa's attorney general in February 1953. Methodist Teetotaler Hoegh soon created a fuss by insisting on strict enforcement of Iowa's widely ignored law against sale of liquor by the drink. With the help of the state's well-organized dry forces, he won the Republican nomination for governor in 1954 and beat Des Moines Democrat Clyde Herring, namesake of the late Democratic U.S. Senator (1937-43), by a cornhusk-thin margin of 25,000 votes in a total of 850,000. Anxious to get going, he moved into the governor's mansion before inauguration day, thereby set tongues chucking.

"High-Tax Hoegh." When the new governor delivered his first message to the legislature, the Old Guard and the old-timers who remembered his prewar days as an economizer were shocked right off their seats. He proposed a wide-ranging program which raised state aid to public schools to 25% of the cost of operating schools, increased appropriations for state colleges and institutions. He outlined a new highway safety program, including speed limits (there had been none previously). He urged recognition of the union shop, legislative reapportionment to 'reduce the control of rural areas over the cities, funds to promote industrial expansion, and a reduction in the voting age from 21 to 18. Said a dazed legislator: "No Iowa governor in history has presented so ambitious a program. He can't hope to get it all enacted in one session."

While the legislature was still reeling from the first message, Hoegh hit it again by asking for an increase of more than $31 million a year in revenue to finance the biggest annual budget in Iowa history, $146 million. His requests included almost $19 million for aid to education, $1,700,000 more for state institutions, $2,700,000 for increased salaries and services. To pay the cost, he proposed increases in the taxes on beer, cigarettes and gasoline, a capital-gains tax and extension of the sales tax to include services. By that time the legislature was aghast, and the Republican floor leaders of the house and senate handed out a cold statement: "This legislature will not be anxious to levy new taxes."

But after in days of pulling and hauling, including some cajoling and table-pounding by Hoegh, the legislature gave him a great deal of what he had asked for. It increased revenue $22 million, accepted in major part his programs for education, highways, state services and institutions. It increased taxes on cigarettes, corporations, beer and gasoline, and adopted a capital-gains tax. Then, just before the session ended, it tossed on Hoegh's desk a politically sizzling tax increase that he had opposed: a raise in the state sales tax from 2% to 2 1/2%. He signed it. Says he: "I was saddled with the thing the legislature had passed. But I had to sign it or we'd go back to deficit spending."

Governor Hoegh came out of the session with praise from educators, good-roads enthusiasts and the progressive wing of his party, but with a label that his Democratic opponents are, in 1956, splattering all over his record: "High-Tax Hoegh."

"Into Everything." Hoegh's administration produced results that nearly every lowan can see and feel as he drives the highways and country roads, picks up his youngsters at the newly consolidated schools, or profits from the paychecks of new industry. But nonetheless many an lowan is irked because he sees and hears too much of the governor who, as one Statehouse staffer put it, has been "into everything."

Some protest that Hoegh's calling out of the National Guard to enforce a highway safety program was a "grandstand" play. Others believe that Hoegh's flying over the state to survey drought areas in a National Guard plane was a waste of public funds (though they were federal funds). There was an uproar when the state purchasing agent made a special trade-in deal, avoiding the $2,000 limit on the prices for a state auto, to get the governor an air-conditioned Oldsmobile sedan. Another outcry came when he flew to a former lowans' picnic in Long Beach, Calif, in a National Guard plane, and went from there to the Republican National Convention at his own expense. The Des Moines Ministerial Association was apoplectic when he accepted as a gift to the state the grand champion calf of the 1955 State Fair, only to discover later that the bearer of the gift was Omaha's Storz Brewing Co.

Next to these anthills are bigger mounds of grievance. Hoegh lost the active support of the leaders of the Iowa Manufacturers Association when he maintained his stand for the union shop. Said one I.M.A. leader: "Hoegh is too unreliable, too liberal for the I.M.A. These small factory owners in the small towns--the nurserymen and the guys with 100-worker factories--are scared to death of unions. Most of them don't even want new industry in town because it might bring in labor unions." On the other side of the coin, Hoegh's stand has not been enough to win the support of organized labor. Says he ruefully: "The I.M.A. has dried up on me, and labor is supporting my opponent, and I'm left holding the bag."

Because he has opposed Secretary Benson, Hoegh has lost the active support of the pro-Benson Iowa Farm Bureau Federation, but has not won the backing of anti-Benson farm organizations. He does not object to Benson's policy (he has urged "flexible supports or some other means to get the farmer full parity in the marketplace") as much as he does to Benson's attitude, which he considers anything but flexible.

"Democrats Have Did." Playing all the factors against Hoegh is the Democratic candidate for governor, 45-year-old Herschel C. Loveless, former mayor of Ottumwa (pop. 33,000). A onetime railroad-bridge-building foreman whose education was limited to high school, Loveless speaks to the voters in shop English ("Hoegh has went"; "Democrats have did"), but he speaks a language that opens the ears. "The cost of state government when income is on the decline is the No. 1 problem in Iowa," he tells his campaign audiences. "Do you want 'High-Tax Hoegh' back in the State Capitol?"

Running behind, Hoegh is running hard. He is running on his own record, not anyone's coattails, and pushing one central point: "We have achieved progress for better schools, better roads and better mental health." Then he drops in a request that the people go to the polls and "vote for Eisenhower, vote for Hickenlooper, and while you're in there, you might also remember to vote for Leo."

Down the Drain? Going into the 1956 elections, Republicans hold every top political position in Iowa, and Leo Hoegh does not aim to be the one who is knocked out. Of the 32 governors since Iowa became a state, only five have been Democrats. When reporters point this out to Governor Hoegh and ask him about the polls that show him running behind, he replies with a characteristic, "Haw!" and then asks: "What are you boys trying to do, ruin my morale?"

As a result of hard campaigning and growing support from the whole Republican organization, Hoegh seems to be gaining. Some of his supporters have been pressuring him to take two steps that they think might sew up the election: 1) reverse his position on the union shop to thaw out the Iowa Manufacturers Association, and 2s) promise that he will reduce taxes in his next administration to please everyone. Much like a man named Benson, whose adamant attitude he does not like, Leo Hoegh has refused to turn his coat. Says he: "I'd rather go down the drain with my program than try to weasel out now. And I don't think I'm going down any drains."

Actually there is no dramatic solution to the troubles that beset Leo Hoegh. His principal problem is that he has caught the spirit of an era that is beginning to recognize the need for a resurgence of good local and state government--and. in doing so. he has perhaps stirred his quiet state too much. But if he has gone too far too fast, he can take a governor's small comfort from the conviction that one year--if not this year--his state will forget the anthills and look with satisfaction on the considerable movements of home-grown progressive government.

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