Hughes, Harold Everett

(b. 10 February 1922 near Ida Grove, Iowa; d. 24 October 1996 in Glendale, Arizona), trucking executive, three-term governor of Iowa, and U.S. senator.

Hughes was one of two sons of Lewis C. Hughes, a farmer and bridge construction foreman, and Etta E. Kelly. His parents later operated a greenhouse and florist business. He graduated in 1940 from Ida Grove High School, where he was district singing champion as a bass-baritone, finished runner-up in a statewide tuba competition, won the 1938 state discus championship, and made right guard on the 1939 all-state football team.

Hughes attended the University of Iowa for one academic year (1940–1941) but dropped out to marry Eva Mae Mercer on 23 August 1941. They eventually had three daughters. Hughes worked with the Des Moines Parks Department until joining the U.S. Army in December 1942. During World War II, he fought as a combat rifleman in North Africa and Italy until contracting malaria. He received a medical discharge in July 1945.

Hughes found it hard to reconcile his combat experience with his religious beliefs, and he also suffered recurrent malarial attacks. After drinking heavily from 1946 to 1952 and nearly committing suicide, he joined Alcoholics Anonymous in 1954 and became a lay leader in the Methodist Church. Hughes drove a semitrailer for Hinrich’s Truck Line of Ida Grove and managed its trucking line from 1950 to 1953. He then served as a field representative for the Iowa Motor Truck Association from 1953 to 1955.

Hughes founded the Iowa Better Trucking Bureau in 1955. He complained in 1957 to the Iowa State Commerce Commission about meager enforcement of state trucking laws, but the Republican-controlled group refused to investigate his complaints. Hughes switched his party affiliation from Republican to Democrat and was elected to the Iowa State Commerce Commission in 1958. He served from 1959 through 1962, making the commission appointive.

In 1962 Hughes upset the incumbent Republican, Norman Erbe, for the Iowa governor’s seat by 40,000 votes. Strong Democratic organization, growing Republican dissatisfaction with Erbe, and the desire of Iowa voters to see the liquor laws revised brought Hughes victory. The only Democrat to win a state office in the traditionally Republican state that year, Hughes advocated permitting the sale of liquor by the drink in bars and restaurants rather than exclusively by the bottle in state-owned stores. In July 1963 the state legalized the sale of liquor by the drink.

Standing six feet, three inches tall, the rugged Hughes, who served as governor from 1963 through 1968, possessed a powerful evangelical speaking style. He built a bipartisan coalition, securing social legislation that urban lawmakers of both parties long had promoted. Hughes brought legislative breakthroughs in taxation formulas, reapportionment, public utility regulation, fair employment practices, and workmen’s compensation increases.

Hughes was reelected governor in 1964 by 420,000 votes, the largest margin ever in Iowa, over Evan Hultman of Waterloo. This gave the Democrats control of both houses of the state legislature for the first time in three decades. Under Hughes’s leadership, the General Assembly in 1965 and 1966 accomplished more than any legislature since 1846. It reorganized state government, reapportioned the legislature, directed that the legislature meet annually, and combined the governor and lieutenant governor on party tickets. It enacted legislation that the rural-dominated assemblies had blocked, abolishing capital punishment, creating a civil rights commission and a civil service system for state employees, giving more power to cities and counties, allowing county supervisors to establish public defenders, initiating prison reforms, founding an alcoholic treatment center, and establishing a state law enforcement academy. The General Assembly created a state withholding tax system, increased agricultural land tax credits to help relieve property taxes, and provided tax relief for the elderly. The legislature increased appropriations for schools, revamped secondary education guidelines, initiated four area community colleges, established educational radio and television programs, and inaugurated state scholarship programs for colleges and universities. It increased workmen’s compensation and employment security benefits and controlled billboard advertising along state highways. Legislators increased taxes on income, cigarettes, gasoline, inheritances, and hotel and motel rooms.

In 1966 Hughes defeated William Murray of Ames to become the first Democratic governor in Iowa history to be elected to three terms. He launched the state into a new phase of social activism and convinced the divided legislature to reorganize the tax structure along more progressive lines. Hughes chaired the Democratic Governor’s Conference from 1966 to 1968 and opposed President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Vietnam policies by 1968. In 1968 he nominated Eugene McCarthy for president at the tumultuous Democratic National Convention in Chicago and helped reform the delegate-selection process, leading to the creation of the early Iowa presidential caucuses.

In 1968 Hughes ran for the U.S. Senate and defeated David Stanley by 4,200 votes. He served as assistant majority whip and on the Armed Services, Labor and Public Welfare, and Veterans’ Affairs Committees. Hughes chaired the first congressional subcommittee on alcoholism and narcotics and secured funding for an alcoholism program in the Office of Economic Opportunity. He authored the federal Comprehensive Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism Prevention, Treatment, and Rehabilitation Act of 1970, legislation that came to be known as the Hughes Act and that established the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. As chair of the Armed Services Subcommittee on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse, he persuaded the Department of Defense to recognize alcohol and drug abuse and provide treatment throughout the armed services. Hughes also served on the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse and sponsored legislation to prevent job discrimination against recovered alcoholics and drug patients. He added a provision for approval in the first Strategic Arms Limitations Talks (SALT I) that the United States should not develop a nuclear first-strike capacity and exposed the unauthorized bombing of North Vietnam and the secret bombing of Cambodia. He also authored an amendment forbidding covert Central Intelligence Agency operations in foreign countries without informing Congress, and secured reduction of military aid to South Vietnam.

Hughes did not seek reelection in 1974 and instead founded a religious retreat in Maryland. He served on the board of directors of the National Council on Alcoholism and chaired the National Commission on Alcoholism and Alcohol-Related Problems. Upon returning to Iowa in 1981, he started the Hughes Foundation and opened the Harold Hughes Center for Alcoholism and Drug Treatment in Des Moines. He considered running for governor in 1982 but withdrew when the press revealed that he had voted as a Maryland resident.

Hughes divorced his first wife in January 1987 and married Julianne Hol, his former secretary, six weeks later in Arizona. He died at home of complications from emphysema, and his remains were cremated.

Hughes, who overcame a battle with alcoholism to become a three-term Iowa governor, helped make the Democratic Party a competitive force in a state that had historically been dominated by Republicans and modernized and reformed state government. As a senator, he helped focus national attention on alcohol and drug abuse. The charismatic Hughes, noted for impressive oratory skills, quit politics at the height of his popularity to devote himself to lay religious work and open the Harold Hughes Center for Alcoholism Treatment.

The Harold E. Hughes papers are located at the University of Iowa Library in Iowa City. Harold E. Hughes with Dick Schneider, Harold E. Hughes: The Man from Ida Grove (1979), recounts his roles as governor and senator and his battle with alcoholism. Current Biography 1963 describes his earlier career. James C. Larew, A Party Reborn: The Democrats of Iowa 1950–1974 (1980), and “A Party Reborn: Harold Hughes and the Iowa Democrats,” Palimpsest 59 (Sept.-Oct. 1978): 148–161, illuminate how Hughes revitalized the Iowa Democratic party. Other profiles of Hughes include Fletcher Knebel, “One Man’s Triumph,” Look (6 Oct. 1964); V. Bourjally, “Governor from Ida Grove,” New York Times Magazine (26 Feb. 1957); L. L. King, “Evangelist from the Prairies,” Harper’s (Mar. 1969); and George Douth’s serial publication Leaders in Profile: The United States Senate (1972): 130–134, and (1975): 114–122. Obituaries are in the New York Times and the Des Moines Register (both 25 Oct. 1996).

David L. Porter