Steve King


Steven Arnold King is an American former politician and businessman who served as a U.S. representative from Iowa from 2003 to 2021. A member of the Republican Party, he represented Iowa's 5th congressional district until 2013 and the state's 4th congressional district from 2013 to 2021.
Born in 1949 in Storm Lake, Iowa, King attended Northwest Missouri State University from 1967 to 1970. He founded a construction company in 1975 and worked in business and environmental study before seeking the Republican nomination for a seat in the Iowa Senate in 1996. He won the primary and the general election, and was reelected in 2000. In 2002 King was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Iowa's 5th congressional district after the incumbent, Tom Latham, was reassigned to the 4th district after redistricting. He was reelected four times before the 2010 United States census removed the 5th district and placed King in the 4th, which he represented from 2013.
King is an opponent of immigration and multiculturalism, and has a long history of racist and anti-immigrant rhetoric. In 2018 The Washington Post described King as "the Congressman most openly affiliated with white nationalism." King has been criticized for his affiliation with white supremacist ideas, made controversial statements against immigrants, and supported European right-wing populist and far-right politicians who have engaged in racism, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.
For much of King's congressional tenure, Republican politicians and officials were silent about his rhetoric, and frequently sought his endorsement and campaigned with him because of his popularity with northwest Iowa's voters. Shortly before the 2018 election, the National Republican Congressional Committee withdrew funding for King's reelection campaign and its chairman, Steve Stivers, condemned King's conduct, although Iowa's Republican senators and governor continued to endorse him. King was narrowly reelected, but after a January 2019 interview in which he questioned the negative connotations of the terms "white nationalist" and "white supremacy", he was widely condemned by both parties, the media, and public figures, and the Republican Steering Committee removed him from all House committee assignments. King ran for reelection but, campaign funding and support having declined, lost the June 2020 Republican primary to Randy Feenstra by 10 points.

Personal life, education, and business career

King was born on May 28, 1949, in Storm Lake, Iowa, the son of Mildred Lila, a homemaker, and Emmett A. King, a state police dispatcher. His father has Irish and German ancestry, and his mother has Welsh roots, as well as American ancestry going back to the colonial era. His grandmother was a German immigrant. King graduated in 1967 from Denison Community High School. In 1972, he married Marilyn Kelly, with whom he has three children. Though raised Methodist, King attends his wife's Catholic church, having converted 17 years after marrying her. His son Jeff King, a consultant, has been active in his political campaigns.
King attended Northwest Missouri State University from 1967 to 1970, where he was a member of the Alpha Kappa Lambda fraternity and majored in math and biology, but did not graduate. In 1975, King founded King Construction, an earthmoving company. In the 1980s, he founded the Kiron Business Association. King's involvement with the Iowa Land Improvement Contractors' Association led to regional and national offices in that organization and a growing interest in public policy.

Iowa State Senate (1997–2003)

In 1996, King was elected to Iowa's 6th Senate district, defeating incumbent senator Wayne Bennett in the primary 68%–31% and Democrat Eileen Heiden in the general election 64%–35%. In 2000, he won reelection to a second term, defeating Democratic nominee Dennis Ryan 70%–30%. During his tenure in the Iowa State Senate, King filed a bill requiring public schools to teach children that the U.S. "is the unchallenged greatest nation in the world and that it has derived its strength from... Christianity, free enterprise capitalism and Western civilization", and served as chief sponsor of a law making English the official language of Iowa.

U.S. House of Representatives (2003–2021)

Elections

;2002
In 2002, after redistricting, King ran for the open seat in Iowa's 5th congressional district. The incumbent, fellow Republican Tom Latham, had his home drawn into the reconfigured 4th district. King finished first in the four-way Republican primary with 31% of the vote, less than the 35% voting threshold needed to win; subsequently, a nominating convention was held, at which he was nominated, defeating state house speaker Brent Siegrist 51%–47%. King won the general election, defeating Council Bluffs city councilman Paul Shomshor 62%–38%. He won all the counties in the predominantly Republican district except Pottawattamie.
;2004
King won reelection to a second term, defeating Democratic candidate Joyce Schulte, 63%–37%. He won all the counties in the district except Clarke.
;2006
In 2006, King won reelection to a third term, defeating Schulte again, 59%–36%. He won all the counties in the district except Clarke and Union.
;2008
King won reelection to a fourth term, defeating Democratic candidate Rob Hubler, 60%–37%. For the first time in his career he won all 32 counties in his district.
;2010
King won reelection to a fifth term, defeating Matt Campbell, 66%–32%. That was his highest percentage yet. King also won all 32 counties again.
;2012
Iowa lost a district as a result of the 2010 census. King's district was renumbered the 4th, and pushed well to the east, absorbing Mason City and Ames. This placed King and his predecessor, Latham, in the same district. Latham opted to move to the reconfigured 3rd District to challenge Democratic incumbent Leonard Boswell. The reconfigured district was, at least on paper, much more competitive than King's old district. The old 5th had a Cook Partisan Voting Index of R+9, while the new 4th had a PVI of R+4. The new 4th was also mostly new to King; he retained only 45% of his former territory. It closely resembled the territory that Latham had represented from 1995 to 2003.
Soon afterward, former Iowa first lady Christie Vilsack, the wife of former governor and then current U.S. agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack, announced she was moving to the new 4th to challenge King. King received the endorsement of Mitt Romney, who said, "I'm looking here at Steve King because this man needs to be your congressman again. I want him as my partner in Washington, D.C." King won reelection to a sixth term, defeating Vilsack 53%–45%. King won all but seven counties, none of which he had previously represented: Webster, Boone, Story, Chickasaw, Floyd, Cerro Gordo, and Winnebago. King later said of his 2012 victory, "I faced $7 million, the best of everything Democrats can throw at me, their dream candidate and everything that can come from the Obama machine, and prevailed through all of that with 55 percent of my district that was new."
;2014
On May 3, 2013, King announced that he would not run for the U.S. Senate in 2014.
King won reelection with 61.6% of the vote, defeating Democratic candidate Jim Mowrer.
;2016
King won reelection, receiving 61.2% of the vote to Democratic nominee Kim Weaver's 38.6%.
;2018
King faced his closest race to date in 2018, receiving 50.4% of the vote to 47% for Democratic nominee J. D. Scholten; Libertarian candidate Charles Aldrich received 2%. King likely prevailed due to Governor Kim Reynolds carrying the district with almost 61 percent of the vote in her bid for a full term. Turnout was down from the 2016 election; 370,259 voted in 2016, compared to 313,251 in 2018.
It was the closest a Democrat has come to winning what is now the 4th since Berkley Bedell left office in what was then the 6th District in 1986. That year, Republican Fred Grandy won with only 50.1 percent of the vote. Since then, the only other time a Republican has not won election by double digits in this district was King's 2012 race against Vilsack, which King won by less than 8 percentage points.
;2020
In the wake of being stripped of his committee seats, King faced a credible primary challenger in State Senator Randy Feenstra, who represented much of the district's northwest portion. Feenstra outraised King by a significant margin. Ultimately, King lost to Feenstra, taking 36.7 percent of the vote to Feenstra's 45.7 percent.

Tenure

King is considered an outspoken fiscal and social conservative. After winning the 2002 Republican nomination, he said that he intended to use his seat in Congress to "move the political center of gravity in Congress to the right." During the 110th Congress, King voted with the majority of the Republican Party 90.9% of the time. He has continuously voted for Iraq War legislation, supported surge efforts and opposed a time table for troop withdrawals. During the 112th United States Congress King was one of 40 "staunch" members of the Republican Study Committee who frequently voted against Republican party leadership and vocally expressed displeasure with House bills. In August 2015, King was named the least effective member of Congress by InsideGov due to his persistent failures to get legislation out of committee. On December 18, 2019, King voted against both articles of impeachment against Trump, as did all 195 Republicans who voted.

Committee assignments

King served on the Judiciary, Agriculture, and Small Business Committees until January 14, 2019, when he was removed from all committee assignments after bipartisan condemnation of his remarks on white supremacy.
Caucus memberships
  • Republican Study Committee
  • Tea Party Caucus
  • Congressional Constitution Caucus
  • Congressional Western Caucus