Vilsack: One Man Who Readily Admits His Life Has Been A Success Story
PART TWO
ROB MILLS
PERRYVILLE, MISSOURI
In Part One of our article, we found out about Tom Vilsack’s humble entry into the world, the family that brought into their circle, the challenges and the victories of his early life. In this installment, we examine his rise to the top of the world of agriculture, which began with his move to the heart of corn production in the United States.
Another father, a father-in-law to be precise, entered his life in a career-defining way. “After I graduated, Christie’s Dad wrote us a long letter and asked us to come to Iowa, and for me to practice law with him. And we said yes. So, I entered the world of small town, county seat law.” The Vilsack’s moved to a world Christie knew as home. He, having grown up on the streets of Pittsburgh and then attended school in the east coast academic world of upstate New York, would be introduced to life in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa.
There was little thought of a political career as he adjusted to life in a world that, among other things, brought into their lives two sons, Jesse & Doug. Life was good. Then the unthinkable took place in a quiet Iowa town on the night of December 10th, 1986. Mt. Pleasant was rocked to its core. And the Pennsylvania born lawyer was about to see his life placed on a trajectory that would make him perhaps Iowa’s most influential citizen over the next thirty years.
Mt. Pleasant Mayor Edd King was assassinated during a City Council meeting on that December night, shot by an angry citizen over a dispute about a sewer line. Two City Council members were shot but survived. (The assassin, Ralph O. Davis, a World War 2 veteran, died in prison) After several months passed, Vilsack received a visit one day while at his law office. It was from the late Mayor’s Father. “He told me he was unhappy with the job the interim Mayor was doing. He asked me to run for the job.” After talking it over with his wife, family and friends, Vilsack ran for Mayor and won. Not once, but twice. The third time he didn’t run. Neither did anyone else. He involuntarily won the write-in race for the job going away.
As Mayor, Vilsack took steps to deal with the underlying cause of King’s murder: a breakdown of communication between the mayor’s office and a citizen, that led to homicidal anger. He established the “Mayor’s Hour”, a weekly meeting between citizens and their chief executive. At first, the idea wasn’t a success. “No one was coming. Then it struck me that entering City Hall, where King’s murder had taken place, made people uncomfortable. So, we moved the Mayor’s Hour to the library. And there it took off,” Vilsack said.
Another way of improving the culture of the city was to remind its employees who they truly work for. “After a major snowstorm, I got a call from a resident, probably a couple day later, complaining her street had not been plowed. I called the guy in charge of the snow removal into my office and told him to get a crew over there. He looked at me and said ‘ok, you’re the boss.” As he walked away, I told him to come back for a minute. Then I said, ‘Roger I’m not the boss, she is.” Vilsack went on to add, “that’s a mistake a lot of professional politicians make, forgetting who they work for.”
Vilsack as Mayor eventually transitioned to Vilsack as State Senator. Politically it was a step up. But he didn’t like the legislature. “I like being in charge. Being in the State Senate was a matter of getting elected, re-elected and gaining seniority. When I went in there as a rookie, I had no influence whatsoever.”
He stayed for six years. Towards the end of his final term, he had decided to get out of politics. Then a fateful turn of events kept him on a career path he’d all but decided to abandon. “The family came together for my son’s high school graduation. Tom, my brother-in-law brought his family down from Wisconsin to be with us. During their visit he came up to me and talked about my plans. He told me, ‘You can’t leave politics, you need to stick with it, there are people out there who are depending on you.”
Tom Bell died the next day of a heart attack at the age of 50. “After that, I couldn’t walk away,” he said.
Instead of retiring from “the arena’, he ran for Governor. It so happened that his late brother-in-law had a close friend who had become a White House resident. At the time they worked together on the Nixon impeachment committee in 1974, Tom Bell shared a cubicle with Hilary Rodham. Eventually marrying a law school classmate who was from Arkansas, she became Hilary Rodham Clinton. She took an interest in the Iowa Governor’s race in 1998, when she found out her late colleague had a horse in the field: the Democratic nominee, his brother-in-law Tom.
“I was way behind most of the time. She took an interest in me, came out and campaigned with us. She was a big help in getting me elected,” Vilsack said. When quizzed about his take on perhaps the most controversial woman in American history, the former two term Governor described her in a way that might surprise some people. “She’s a woman with a great, self-depreciating sense of humor. Very serious about her work, someone I don’t believe the public really knows well. Her public image betrays how good a person she is.”
During his early days at his Mt. Pleasant law practice, Vilsack was introduced to a new world: agriculture. He’d first been exposed to the legal world as a child, reading his grandfather’s law practice diary. Great grandfather, Leopold Vilsack, established the family’s business legacy. He was a successful brewery owner among other things, establishing and making a fortune off the Iron City Beer brand he created in 1861 in Pittsburgh.
The world of agriculture that he was introduced to at the Bell law office had a powerful impact on Vilsack. “Over time I began to realize that the farmers I dealt with didn’t just work their farms: it was their identity.” Vilsack recollected, “at that time policy under Nixon Ag Secretary Earl Butz shifted from a Supply Management approach to a marketplace policy. The effect of that change introduced me to many farmers for the first time; it was due to the fact I was handling their bankruptcies. Bob Berglund warned before he left office as President Carter’s Agriculture Secretary in 1981, that these policy changes would wreak havoc on American farmers. He was right. They were going broke and being foreclosed on. It was a disastrous policy change, this notion of ‘get big or get out’ severely damaged U.S. agriculture,” he said.
Since 1981, over 544,000 family farms have been lost. With them, the 151 million acres of farmland no longer being used. “It was an experience that set the tone for my career. I’ve spent decades trying to keep American families on their farms and see to it that they get a fair shake,” Vilsack said emphatically.
His work in shaping ag policy in the Iowa Senate, and then as Iowa Governor gained him a reputation as being bipartisan. Within the Democratic Party, he was viewed by some as a guy who had the ability to move up. When Barack Obama was elected President in November 2008, Vilsack was teaching at Harvard. While at Cambridge he received a call.
Vilsack remembered, “Eric Kessler from Arabella Advisors called me. His firm evaluates potential Cabinet nominees. He said to me that he liked me as a potential Secretary of Agriculture. I laughed. I advised him that having run against the President-elect in the primaries, and then having been a campaign co-chair for Hillary Clinton, I felt that wasn’t going to happen. That’s not the way these things work.”
But then Kessler called back. He asked if Vilsack knew anyone on Obama’s transition team. He did. David Axelrod, who’s become an integral part of Obama’s team, had been his press secretary when he ran for Governor. Kessler advised him to call Axelrod and explore the USDA head job.
“I called David, and he said he’d check into it. When he got back to me, it wasn’t good. He told me ‘This isn’t going to happen.’ He asked if I’d be interested in being an ambassador, and I mentioned one job I’d possibly like. He said he’d get back to me.”
Vilsack did get another call, but from someone other than Axelrod. “I had planned to go on a trip related to my law firm, but Mike Froman, (who eventually became U.S. Trade Representative under Obama) called me and said the President-elect wanted to talk to me about becoming Agriculture Secretary. So, the next day I flew to Chicago to talk to the incoming President.” After a 15-minute conversation, Barack Obama slapped his knees and told the Roselia alumnus that “you’re my guy!” Then he added, “but don’t tell anyone. I’ve got some politics to take care of.” Then he humorously relented and said Vilsack could tell Christie. Thus began his eight-year tenure as U.S. Secretary of Agriculture. His first tour of duty in the job.
Secretary Vilsack dealt with issues such as food safety, drought relief, the quality of school meals (with Michelle Obama), improving the resources federal firefighters needed and civil rights issues in the ag world. Vilsack ordered compensation for past discrimination practices against African American farmers and other groups, such as women and Native Americans, a policy President Obama weighed in on and approved of.
The Obama Administration implemented one Farm Bil and passed their own in 2014. When Congress ok’d the 2018 Farm Bill, no one could foresee the gridlock that would emerge in following years surrounding the cornerstone of American ag legislation. When asked about the inability of Congress to agree on a new five-year plan, having passed a second one-year bill extension last fall, Vilsack said bluntly, “they are really stuck. For one, they don’t have the money to pay for it. Secondly, how do you get the votes? The Republicans want to gut SNAP, and the Democrats will have nothing to do with that. It’s a bi-partisan bill. Getting that passed? Who knows?”
During the Obama and then Biden Administrations, U.S. agriculture experienced several years of record level farm income. Vilsack worked to implement policy that would in his words, “make the farm work harder, not the farmer, establish profitable local & regional food systems for producers and distribute income in a fair way.”
Renewable energy development under both Presidents was a priority. According to Vilsack, President Biden’s commitment to rural broadband development, funded by the American Rescue Plan, was historic. The work done to repair and rebuild the nation’s roads and bridges was overdue. The rural population grew for the first time in years.
When working for President Obama, Vilsack dealt with a dynamic boss who was surrounded by a circle of loyal advisers. In reflecting Vilsack said, “I didn’t know Obama at first. It took a while to fit in.”
His relationship with Joe Biden guy was very close. They’d known each other since 1986. They inherited a tough time. There was COVID. The morale he inherited within his USDA workforce had to be improved. Vilsack said Biden trusted him, and that he ran the USDA “with his blessing.”
When asked, Vilsack addressed the furor that still follows the 46th President. “With all the talk that surrounds him, you’ve got to realize something. This guy has already seen his worst day. He’s been through the most horrible thing a parent can face twice. His young wife and one year old daughter were killed, his sons almost died in a terrible car accident in 1972. Then his son Beau died of brain cancer in 2015.”
He went on to say, “when Joe used to talk about a Biden in the White House, he meant Beau, not himself. He’d been Delaware’s Attorney General and had been penciled in to be a U.S. Senator from there. It just about did him in when Beau died.” He went on to say “let me tell you something about Joe Biden: he’s a compassionate man, a genuine guy. We went through the loss of my five-year-old granddaughter, it is very, very hard to deal with the loss of a child. All this stuff is going on around him, let me tell you again, he’s already seen his worst day, believe me.”
And we left it at that.
So, what’s next for a man whose been Governor, Secretary of Agriculture, considered for the Vice Presidency twice and ran for the Democratic nomination for President in 2008?
At age 74 do you hang it up? Not quite.
Vilsack left the Department of Agriculture on January 20th. He returned to Des Moines and became head of the World Food Foundation. “I have a non-partisan job, and I like it. But I will say this: going back to my time at the law practice, to this day, I will continue to advocate that the family farmer gets a fair shake in our system, the ability to make a living and stay on the farm,” he said.
Vilsack added, “Why do I keep at it? We have a system that pays 85 percent of agriculture income to the top ten percent of the farmers out there, the ones that make $350,000 a year or more. The other ninety percent of producers get ten percent of that income. It’s unfair, and I’m going to continue to work to change that” he concluded.
More than once, the last words spoken to Vilsack by those closest to him were to keep going, whether it was the road to law school, or eventually the nation’s capital. Happily married for 52 years, his intent is to enjoy the sunset years of his life quietly.
The veteran of national, state and local politics can tell a story or two about his career. But when it comes to giving advice, Vilsack would say sometimes doing everything right yields to one important factor. “Timing is everything,” he would advise. ∆
ROB MILLS: MAFG Staff