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Steve King

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For other people named Steve King, see Stephen King (disambiguation).

Steve King
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from Iowa's 5th district
Incumbent
Assumed office
January 3, 2003
Preceded byTom Latham
Personal details
Political partyRepublican
SpouseMarilyn King

Steven Arnold "Steve" King (born May 28 1949), American politician, has been a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives since 2003. He represents the 5th District of Iowa (map).

Early life and career

Steven Arnold King was born on May 28, 1949 to Emmett Arnold King (September 12, 1921-December 31, 1991) and Mildred Lila Culler (April 21, 1920-) in Storm Lake, the seat of Buena Vista County in northwestern Iowa. He attended Northwest Missouri State University from 1967 to 1968. In 1975 he founded King Construction Company. His Iowa residence is in the Kiron community in Crawford County. He was elected to the Iowa State Senate in 1997.

U.S. House of Representatives

Elections

In 2002, after redistricting took 5th District incumbent and fellow Republican Tom Latham out of the district, King ran in a four-way Republican primary for the seat. Since the 5th is the most Republican district in Iowa and one of the most Republican in the nation, it was generally thought that the winner of the primary would have a fairly easy time winning the general election in November.

King won 30% of the vote, five points short of the 35 percent required by Iowa law to be named the outright winner, so under Iowa law, a nominating convention was required. King won on the fourth ballot. He won handily in the fall, and won re-election just as easily in 2004.

In 2006, King was endorsed by the Omaha World Herald, which covers a large part of his congressional district. But the Des Moines Register , which had endorsed King for re-election in 2004, endorsed his Democratic opponent, Joyce Schulte, saying that "King has been an embarrassment to Iowa" and "This space won't allow listing all his outrageous remarks and positions." [1] King won re-election in the 2006 general election against Democrat Schulte and Independent candidates Roy Nielsen and Cheryl Broderson with 59 percent of the vote. [2]

Political positions and actions

King has one of the most conservative voting records in Congress. He was the only Representative from Iowa to score 100 percent on the joint Family Research Council Action/Focus on the Family Action Congressional Scorecard in the second session of the 109th Congress. In the 109th United States Congress, and again in the 110th United States Congress, King chairs the Conservative Opportunity Society, an organization founded by Newt Gingrich and others that laid the groundwork for the Republicans' 1994 takeover of the House.

Agriculture Committee

From 2003 through 2005, $14.7 billion in crop subsidies went to the congressional districts of members on the House Committee on Agriculture, an analysis by the non-partisan Environmental Working Group found. That was 42.4% of the total subsidies. King is reported to have brought $1.15 billion to his District. [3]

Controversies

Post office naming debate

In September 2005, King rallied support to reject a motion in the House of Representatives to name a post office in Berkeley, California after the city's long-serving Councilwoman Maudelle Shirek. After winning the vote 190 for to 215 against, King cited Shirek's affiliation with the Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library in Berkeley as his reason to block the motion, claiming, albeit in a different interview, that her past "sets her apart from ... the most consistent of American values." When the proponent of the Post Office's name change, Barbara Lee, claimed that King's "campaign of innuendo and unsubstantiated 'concern' is better suited to the era of Joseph McCarthy than today's House of Representatives," King claimed that history showed McCarthy to be "an hero for America". [4].

Controversial Statements about Immigration

In April 2006, conservative members of Congress proposed strengthening law enforcement against illegal immigration to the United States. When asked if "the US economy simply couldn't function without" the presence of illegal immigrants, King said that he rejected that position "categorically". He said "they", referring to the 77.5 million people between the ages of sixteen and sixty-five in the United States who are not part of the workforce, "could be put to work and we could invent machines to replace the rest."[5] [citation needed]

King acknowledged that it was probably politically impractical to deport the estimated 11–12 million illegal immigrants if the new immigration legislation was passed. [citation needed] King said that "members of Congress that vote for a guest-worker plan ... will be supporting an amnesty plan and they should be branded with the scarlet letter 'A' and pay for that amnesty in the ballot box in November (when Congressional elections take place)".

On April 27, 2006, the Des Moines Register published an op-ed piece by King regarding the planned May 1 "Day Without an Immigrant" rallies.[6] The op-ed read in part:

"What would that May 1st look like without illegal immigration? There would be no one to smuggle across our southern border the heroin, marijuana, cocaine, and methamphetamines that plague the United States, reducing the U.S. supply of meth that day by 80%. The lives of 12 U.S. citizens would be saved who otherwise die a violent death at the hands of murderous illegal aliens each day. Another 13 Americans would survive who are otherwise killed each day by uninsured drunk driving illegals. Our hospital emergency rooms would not be flooded with everything from gunshot wounds, to anchor babies, to imported diseases to hangnails, giving American citizens the day off from standing in line behind illegals. Eight American children would not suffer the horror as a victim of a sex crime."

The editorial received strong reactions (both for and against) in Iowa and across the country.[7]

King has cited an April 2005 GAO report [8] as the source of the statistics in his editorial, but close examination of the numbers in that report do not support King's statements. King's supposed daily totals are based on the false premise that 28% of all inmates at each level of the US prison system (federal, state, and local) were illegal aliens. In fact, the GAO report said only that 27% of federal prisoners were "criminal aliens," a category including both legal and illegal aliens. The GAO report has no illegal alien percentage figures for state prisons and local jails, which together have 92 percent of US prisoners. It does, however, discuss State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP) inmate compensation numbers, which (when compared with total prisoner censuses in other government reports) show that only about four percent of state prisoners and 3.5 percent of local prisoners were illegal aliens. Those figures demonstrate that the supposed daily totals from King's editorial exaggerate the real numbers by seven times or more.

A September 2006 Wall Street Journal article reported that King was regularly claiming that illegal immigrants are perpetrating sex crimes against "eight little girls" each day as part of a "slow-motion terrorist attack."[9]

Controversial Statements about Abu Ghraib

In May 2004, King said the events of the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse "amounts to hazing."[10] King continues to receive questions about his hazing comment, and has stuck by his original statement.[citation needed]

Controversial Statements about War in Iraq

In June 2006, King stated, "My wife lives here with me, and I can tell you… she’s at far greater risk being a civilian in Washington, D.C., than an average civilian in Iraq." King said that there were 45 violent deaths per 100,000 in Washington, D.C., in 2003 while he calculated that there were 27.51 per 100,000 in Iraq as a whole. [11]

It is unclear why King used the 2003 figure for Washington D.C., when the 2004 figure (36 deaths per 100,000) was available, and more current.[12] (The 2005 figure, 35 per 100,000, was not available until September 2006.)[13] It is also unclear where the 27.51 figure for Iraq came from. For a population of roughly 27 million people, that would be roughly 7,500 violent deaths per year. For the year 2006, there were 24,500 civilian deaths reported in English-language media alone, and the United Nations reported more than 34,000 deaths from violence in that year based on data from morgues, hospitals, and municipal authorities. In November 2006 the Iraq Minister of Health estimated the annual death toll from violence at 100,000 to 150,000. (For details, see Casualties of the conflict in Iraq since 2003.)

Jokes about terrorist and White House reporter

In June 2006, following the death of Al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, King made a satirical reference to the famous myth that claims Islam teaches that virgins in heaven await all martyrs. King joked, "There probably are not seventy-two virgins in the hell he's at, and if there are, they probably all look like [liberal journalist] Helen Thomas." The comment was made at the 2006 Iowa Republican State Convention, and was received with raucous laughter on the part of the several hundred delegates in attendance.

Because the comment received so much attention and comment, a representative for King said he has apologized to the 85-year-old veteran White House reporter.[1]

Controversial attempt at restricting the travel of Speaker Nancy Pelosi

On June 21, 2007, King introduced an amendment to the $34 billion State and Foreign Operations bill to prohibit funds from being used to travel to Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan or Syria.[14] According to a King spokesman, "The measure only applies to one position — the Speaker of the House," and the amendment was introduced specifically to restrict Speaker Nancy Pelosi's travels. When asked why the measure did not apply to Republican House members who had also made trips to the countries in question, such as Eric Cantor, David Hobson, Darrell Issa, and Frank Wolf, King's spokesman replied that he was unsure whether that had been considered, or why it might not have been.[15]

Controversial remarks about Barack Obama

On March 7, 2008 during his press engagements to announce his reelection campaign, King made the following remarks about Barack Obama and his middle name. Speaking of Barack Obama King said, "I will tell you that, if he is elected president, then the radical Islamists, the al-Qaida, the radical Islamists and their supporters, will be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on September 11 because they will declare victory in this War on Terror."[16]

He also argued that his middle name should matter in the presidential election, "Additionally, his middle name (Hussein) does matter," King said. "It matters because they read a meaning into that in the rest of the world. That has a special meaning to them. They will be dancing in the streets because of his middle name. They will be dancing in the streets because of who his father was..."

To repudiate these comments several bloggers recommended giving to the campaign of his competitor (Rob Hubler) in the 2008 congressional election.

References

  1. ^ Des Moines Register election endorsements, October 2006
  2. ^ "Iowa Statewide Election Summary" (pdf), November 9, 2006, retrieved November 15, 2006
  3. ^ Dilanian, Ken, " Billions go to House panel members' districts", USA Today. July 26, 2007.
  4. ^ Jane Norman, "McCarthy Comment by Steve King Stirs Debate", Des Moines Register, September 29, 2005, retrieved January 19, 2006
  5. ^ Robin Lustig, interviewing King on the BBC's programme 'The World Tonight' on BBC Radio 4
  6. ^ "Biting the Hand That Feeds You", op-ed by Representative Steve King, Des Moines Register, April 27, 2006, archived on King's House.gov website.
  7. ^ Jane Norman, "King rips on 'illegal invader' event: The National Day Without Immigrants is a farce and an insult, says the Iowa congressman", Des Moines Register, April 27, 2006
  8. ^ "Information on Criminal Aliens Incarcerated in Federal and State Prisons and Local Jails" (pdf), April 7, 2005
  9. ^ June Kronholz, "Immigration Stalemate: Congress's Failure to Resolve Issue Feeds Ire of Activists on Both Sides" Wall Street Journal, September 6, 2006
  10. ^ "Abu Ghraib, Heidi Fleiss, and Political Cannibals", statement by Steve King on prisoner abuse, May 13,2004
  11. ^ Jane Norman, "Civilians are safer in Iraq than in D.C., King says", Des Moines Register, July 3, 2006, retrieved Jul 14 2006
  12. ^ Crime in the United States 2004, Section II, Offenses Reported (pdf), Federal Bureau of Investigation
  13. ^ Crime in the United States 2005, table 5, Federal Bureau of Investigation
  14. ^ Jackie Kucinich, "House Republican wants to restrict Pelosi’s travel", The Hill, June 21, 2007
  15. ^ Greg Sargent, "GOP Congressman Introduces Legislation To Restrict Pelosi Trips To Enemy Countries", TPM Cafe, June 21, 2007
  16. ^ http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/03/08/politics/main3919500.shtml
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Steve King.
  • U.S. Congressman Steve King official House site
  • United States Congress. "Steve King (id: k000362)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
  • Federal Election Commission — Steven A Kingham campaign finance reports and data
  • On the Issues — Steve King issue positions and quotes
  • OpenSecrets.org — Steven A. King campaign contributions
  • Project Vote Smart — Representative Steve A. King (IA) profile
  • SourceWatch Congresspedia — Steve King profile
  • Washington Post — Congress Votes Database: Steve King voting record
  • KingWatch — Keeping an Eye on Steve King Independent Watchdog
  • King for Congress official campaign site
  • [2]
Political offices
Preceded by Member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from Iowa's 5th congressional district
2003–Present 		Succeeded by
Incumbent
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Steve_King&oldid=196901225"