Tom Vilsack
Thomas James Vilsack is an American politician. He served as the 30th and 32nd United States Secretary of Agriculture from 2009 to 2017, during the Barack Obama administration, and again from 2021 to 2025 during the Joe Biden administration. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the 40th Governor of Iowa from 1999 to 2007.
On November 30, 2006, he formally launched his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination in the 2008 election, but ended his bid on February 23, 2007. President-elect Barack Obama announced Vilsack's selection to be Secretary of Agriculture on December 17, 2008. His nomination was unanimously confirmed on January 20, 2009 by the United States Senate. Until his resignation on January 13, 2017, one week prior to the end of Obama's second term as president, he had been the only member of the U.S. Cabinet who had served since the day Obama took office.
On July 19, 2016, The Washington Post reported that Vilsack was on Hillary Clinton's two-person shortlist to be her running mate for that year's presidential election. U.S. Senator Tim Kaine from Virginia was ultimately selected. On December 10, 2020, President-elect Joe Biden announced his intention to nominate Vilsack to once again serve as secretary of agriculture in the incoming Biden administration. On February 23, 2021, Vilsack was confirmed by the U.S. Senate, the vote, 92–7. Vilsack is the second longest serving Secretary of Agriculture, only surpassed by fellow Iowan James "Tama Jim" Wilson.
Early life and education
Vilsack was born on December 13, 1950, in a Catholic orphanage in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where his 23-year-old birth mother had lived since September 1950 under the pseudonym of "Gloria"; he was baptized as "Kenneth". He was adopted in 1951 by a real-estate agent and insurance salesman, Bud Vilsack, and his wife Dolly Vilsack. They re-named him Thomas James. The Vilsacks had a daughter, Alice, who died two years after a heart transplant when her body eventually rejected the organ.Vilsack attended Shady Side Academy, a preparatory high school in Pittsburgh. He received a bachelor's degree in 1972 from Hamilton College. While at Hamilton, he joined the Delta Upsilon fraternity. On August 18, 1973, he married Ann Christine "Christie" Bell. He received a Juris Doctor from Albany Law School in 1975.
Mayor of Mount Pleasant & Iowa Senate
Tom Vilsack moved to Mount Pleasant, Iowa after his marriage. Vilsack raised funds to rebuild an athletic facility for young people. In a 2016 interview, he describes himself "as the Jerry Lewis of Mount Pleasant for a couple days" when he hosted a pledge drive on the local radio station to raise the funds. This led him to involvement in the local Chamber of Commerce and United Way. He and his wife volunteered in the failed 1988 presidential campaign of then senator Joe Biden.After the mayor of Mount Pleasant was gunned down in December 1986, Vilsack led a fundraising drive to build a memorial fountain. The mayor's father asked Vilsack to run for mayor of Mount Pleasant; he was elected and began serving in 1987.
Vilsack was elected to the Iowa Senate in 1992. He began by working on legislation requiring companies that received state tax incentives to provide better pay and benefits. He helped pass a law for workers to receive health coverage when changing jobs and helped redesign Iowa's Workforce Development Department. He also wrote a bill to have the State of Iowa assume a 50% share of local county mental health costs.
Governor of Iowa (1999-2007)
In 1998, Terry Branstad chose not to seek re-election after 16 years as governor. The Iowa Republican Party nominated Jim Ross Lightfoot, a former U.S. Representative. Vilsack defeated former Iowa Supreme Court Justice Mark McCormick in the Democratic primary and chose Sally Pederson as his running mate. Lightfoot was the odds-on favorite to succeed Branstad and polls consistently showed him in the lead. However, Vilsack won the general election by 55,444 votes and became the first Democrat to serve as governor of Iowa in thirty years and only the fifth Democrat to hold the office in the 20th century.In 2000, he signed a bill helping to create the first organ donor registry in Iowa.
Vilsack remained neutral during the 2000 contest for the Democratic presidential nomination between Vice President Al Gore and former Senator Bill Bradley
In 2002, he won his second term as Governor by defeating Republican challenger attorney Doug Gross by 83,837 votes.
In the first year of his second term, Vilsack used a line-item veto, later ruled unconstitutional by the Iowa Supreme Court, to create the Grow Iowa Values Fund, a $503million appropriation designed to boost the Iowa economy by offering grants to corporations and initiatives pledged to create higher-income jobs. He vetoed portions of the bill that would have cut income taxes and ease business regulations. After a special session of the Iowa General Assembly on September 7, 2004, $100million in state money was set aside to honor previously made commitments. The Grow Iowa Values Fund was reinstated at the end of the 2005 session: under the current law, $50million per year will be set aside over the next ten years.
For most of Vilsack's tenure as governor, Republicans held effective majorities in the Iowa General Assembly. Following the November 2, 2004, elections, the fifty-member Senate was evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, and Republicans held a 51–49 majority in the House of Representatives.
In July 2005, Vilsack signed an executive order allowing all felons who had served their sentences to vote. Approximately 115,000 felons regained their voting rights. He said: "When you've paid your debt to society, you need to be reconnected and re-engaged to society." Previously, convicted felons were disenfranchised, but could petition the governor to initiate a process, normally requiring six months, to restore their right to vote.
During the 2005 legislative session, Vilsack signed legislation designed to reduce methamphetamine use. It imposed greater restrictions on products containing the active ingredient pseudoephedrine, requiring them to be sold behind pharmacy counters rather than via open-access. It required purchasers to show identification and sign a logbook. It took effect on May 21, 2005.
Following the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Kelo v. City of New London in June 2005, Vilsack vetoed a bill to restrict Iowa's use of eminent domain, citing its potential for negative impact on job creation. He said: "You have an interesting balance between job growth, which everybody supports, and restricting the power of government, which a lot of people support." His veto was overridden by the legislature.
Vilsack is a former member of the National Governors Association Executive Committee. He was chair of the Democratic Governors Association in 2004. He was also chair of the Governors Biotechnology Partnership, the Governors Ethanol Coalition, and the Midwest Governors Conference, and has also been chair and vice-chair of the National Governors Association's committee on Natural Resources, where he worked to develop the NGA's farm and energy policies.
Vilsack was thought to be high on the list of potential running mates for Kerry in the 2004 presidential election. In 2005, Vilsack established Heartland PAC, a political action committee aimed at electing Democratic governors. In the first report, he raised over half a million dollars. Vilsack left office in 2007; he did not seek a third term and was succeeded by Secretary of State and fellow Democrat Chet Culver.
2008 U.S. presidential campaign
On November 30, 2006, Tom Vilsack became the second Democrat to officially announce intentions to run for the presidency in the 2008 election. In his announcement speech, he said "America's a great country, and now I have the opportunity to begin the process, the legal process of filing papers to run for President of the United States." Vilsack dropped out of the race on February 23, 2007, citing monetary constraints.Vilsack's campaign made significant use of social media by maintaining an active MySpace profile, a collection of viral video clips on YouTube, a Facebook profile, videoblog on blip.tv, and a conference call with the podcast site TalkShoe. On January 27, 2007, Vilsack called in to Kurt Hurner's Regular Guys Show for a 15‑minute interview on his hope for the Democratic nomination for 2008. Since then, Vilsack appeared again on the show, now The Kurt Hurner Show at Talk Shoe on August 12, 2008, this time as a supporter of Barack Obama for president fielding questions from callers for 30 minutes.
During the campaign, Vilsack joined fellow candidates Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden in supporting the establishment of a U.S. Public Service Academy as a civilian counterpart to the military academies.
Shortly after ending his 2008 bid for the White House, Vilsack endorsed Senator Hillary Clinton and was named the national co-chair for Clinton's presidential campaign.
Views on Iraq
Vilsack was critical of President Bush's execution of the war in Iraq, but he hesitated to call for an immediate complete pullout of U.S. forces: "I don't think we're losing in Iraq. It appears to be a draw. People are upset by the fact that their kids are over there and there doesn't seem to be any end to this whole process. It's not pacifism that makes people think this way. They're questioning the credibility and competence of the Commander-in-Chief."On December 5, Vilsack announced that he favored withdrawing most U.S. forces from Iraq and leaving a small force in the northern region for a limited period. He said U.S. forces provided the Iraqi government with "both a crutch and an excuse" for inaction. He said U.S. withdrawal "may very well require them to go through some chaotic and very difficult times", but that he believed it the only way to force the Iraqi government to take control of the country.