Northwest Iowa — Early next month the new U.S. Congress will convene, which will mark the end of an 18-year career in the House of Representatives for 4th District Congressman Steve King. King lost his bid for reelection in a five-way Republican primary race this past June.
As he approaches the end of his final term in Congress, King talked with KIWA and reflected upon some of his memories of the past eighteen years. He told us about how the first bill he introduced as a freshman congressman passed into law…..eventually.
(As above) “The very first bill I introduced as a freshman member of congress became law. It was in the Energy Users Act. It took about two years for it to thread its way through and be incorporated into another bill. But it laid the foundation for small ethanol producers and for biodiesel.”
Congressman King two of his top priorities for Iowa during his tenure in Congress were the dredging of Storm Lake and the completion of a four-lane Highway 20 across Iowa. He talks about the ribbon cutting for the completed Highway 20 project.
(As above) “On October 19th of 2018 I had the privilege and the honor of cutting that ribbon. I had a big old pair of wooden, ceremonial scissors with steel blades built into the wood. And I was so exuberant that I broke those ceremonial scissors when I cut the ribbon on four-lane Highway 20.”
King says there are many more memories that pop up from his years in congress.
(As above) “That’s some of the highlights along the way, there are many, many of them and there are thousands and thousands of memories that…you can’t just sit down and dredge them up on the spot, but they pop up to me when I interact with certain people (and) when certain events happen. There’s many, many rich memories along the way.”
He talked about the amount of time that his wife, Marilyn, spent alone during his congressional years.
(As above) “I did an expensive survey…an expensive government survey of how I used my time in congress….I say that to get people’s attention. And what I did was, in this survey, I ran out of deodorant, so I went out and bought three packages of deodorant…identical packages. One for my home here in Kiron, or outside Kiron, one for my place in Washington, D.C. and another one for my travelling kit and they all ran out the same week. So you can conclude, definitively, that I spent a third of my time here in the district, a third of my time in Washington and a third of my time in transit, or someplace else and that’s the kind of life that I’ve lived. And she’s lived those big chunks of it without me and held the family together, become the matriarch of this family of three sons, three wonderful, wonderful daughters-in-law, eight grandchildren, and we’re all within ten miles of each other right now.”
Congressman King’s representative here in our area is Andrea Easter. The Congressman related Easter’s answer to a question he had asked her a few years ago.
(As above) “I think she gave the best answer to a question I asked her about four years ago, or so. We were going down the road and I asked her, ‘Andrea, what would happen…what would it mean…if we lost an election?’ She drove about another half mile while she thought about it and then she said, ‘Well, it would mean we wouldn’t get to help people anymore, sir.’ Which I thought was the perfect answer. That’s the business we’ve been in for eighteen-plus years and we’ve been able to help a lot of people. We’ve saved some lives, we’ll never know how many. We’ve improved quite a good number of lives, we’ll never know how many. And we’ve built relationships with people that are true, deep and lasting friendships all over the district, the state and the country.”
After his departure from Congress next month, King says he plans to spend time promoting his book, “Walking Through the Fire,” a book he wrote about his time in congress. And he says he and his wife, Marilyn, are looking forward to doing some travelling together.
