New book paints Feingold as voice of progressive movement
(Published Monday, July 23, 2007 10:43:06 AM CST)
A d v e r t i s e m e n t
By Frederic J. Frommer Associated Press
WASHINGTON - An admiring new biography on Russ Feingold portrays the Democratic Wisconsin senator as a leading voice of the progressive movement, highlighting his uphill political victories and his willingness to take unpopular votes.
"Feingold: A New Democratic Party," by Sanford D. Horwitt (Simon & Schuster), chronicles Feingold's immersion into politics from his earliest days as a child in a politically involved family.
In 1952, the year before Feingold was born, his family was involved in the "Joe Must Go" movement to dump Sen. Joe McCarthy, the red-baiting Wisconsin Republican. Feingold's father, Leon, would regale his young son with stories about that effort, Horwitt writes.
As a child, Feingold says in the book, "I was running around telling people I wanted to be president, that I wanted to be the first Jewish president." Feingold weighed a 2008 presidential but decided against it last year.
Horwitt, a Milwaukee native who now lives in Arlington, Va., spent about six years on the book, interviewing Feingold 14 times from 2001 through early this year. He also attended more than 50 listening sessions in Wisconsin, where he had several more informal conversations with the senator.
"Feingold caught my attention in his 1998 re-election campaign," Horwitt said in a telephone interview. "That was a pretty extraordinary election, when he risked his political career by rejecting soft money and placing spending limits on his campaign. I went to Wisconsin, went to his listening sessions and got increasingly intrigued, because I found him to be an unusually distinct political figure."
In a statement, Feingold said of the book, "I appreciate this portrayal, which shows what good fortune I have had in my life, with so many great people to point me in the right direction."
Horwitt called Feingold "the leading, most authentic progressive voice on the national stage." He traced that back to Feingold's childhood, especially his father's influence.
"Feingold, at a very early age, absorbed this true progressive tradition, in the way that some young kids absorb being baseball fans," Horwitt said. "It is deep in his bones and soul."
Feingold was especially shaped by Robert F. Kennedy, whom he supported in the 1968 presidential race, Horwitt writes.
"I just loved the guy ... he seemed too shy to be in politics," Feingold says in the book.
When Kennedy was assassinated, "Feingold was barely awake when his mother delivered the horrifying news in his bedroom, and his immediate, agonized scream carried through the house. Now two of his heroes had been gunned down within two months," following the assassination of Martin Luther King.
That day, Feingold vowed that he wouldn't let the assassinations stop their work, telling himself, "I'm going to be the guy who goes out and tries to continue their work in some way. I had no idea it would ever be this."
Feingold graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, became a Rhodes Scholar and earned a law degree from Harvard University. After working for a few years as a lawyer, he decided to make a run for the state Legislature.
Feingold, still not yet 30, knocked off an 83-year-old veteran state senator, Cy Bidwell, by just 31 votes, one in a series of improbable political victories. Ten years later, in 1992, he mounted a run for U.S. Senate. Mired at just 10 percent in the polls in a three-way Democratic primary, Feingold's news conferences would often fail to draw a single reporter, Horwitt writes.
But Feingold pulled off an upset victory, and went on to win a Senate seat over two-term incumbent Sen. Bob Kasten in the general election. Feingold won re-election in 1998 and 2004.
In the Senate, Feingold's career has been marked by a willingness to take unpopular votes, such as casting the sole vote against the USA Patriot Act in 2001. Although a liberal Democrat, he's also on occasion bucked his own party, such as when he was the only Democrat to vote against a Senate motion in 1999 to dismiss all impeachment charges against President Clinton (he later voted to acquit the president).
In the book, Feingold concedes that both of those votes were difficult for him. The vote against dismissing the impeachment charges "was something that really upset people," Feingold says. "I had just been through a very tough re-election where people felt they had worked hard to carry me across the finish line, which they had."
Feingold agonized whether to follow what he thought was the right course, or "was I going to say, 'Look, I can't do this to my supporters.' So it was tough and some people have never forgiven me for that vote."
On the Patriot Act, Feingold says, "I didn't want to be voting against the anti-terrorism act any more than I wanted to vote against the Afghanistan resolution. I (wasn't) looking for trouble, as my mother might say."
