{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.king.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/dartmouth-alumni-magazine-profiles-king-as-man-in-the-middle", "Dartmouth Alumni Magazine Profiles King as “Man In The Middle”", "2013-12-31", "2013", "2013-12", "Independent", "House", "ME", "Angus King", "K000383", "www.king.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "Dartmouth Alumni Magazine Profiles King as \u201cMan In The Middle\u201d\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tTuesday, December 31, 2013\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\tWASHINGTON, D.C. \u2013 In case you missed it, the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine last Friday published a profile of U.S. Senator Angus King (Class of \u201966) entitled \u201cMan In The Middle\u201d in which author Matthew Mosk captures King\u2019s role in resolving the student loan crises, his thoughts on the October government shutdown, and his broader efforts at tackling partisanship in the U.S. Senate.\r\nIn addition to Senator King, Senators Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), John Hoeven (R-ND), and Rob Portman (R-OH) are also graduates of Dartmouth College.\r\nThe profile is below and can also be read by clicking here.\r\n+++\r\nMan In The Middle\u00a0\r\nIndependent Maine Sen. Angus King \u201966 went to Washington, D.C., hoping to help opposing parties find common ground. Frustration has set in.\r\nIt is the morning of September 11, 2013, and on this day, for a change, no one on Capitol Hill is talking about the looming impasse on the federal budget. Syria has been accused of using chemical weapons, and a fierce debate over the correct response is under way. On one side of Congress are the hawks who, like President Obama, say a red line has been crossed in a manner that demands a military response. On the other side, a sizable coalition that is weary of war and uneasy about the fallout of a strike in the Middle East. Then there is Sen. Angus King, an independent from Maine who finds himself in a familiar posture\u2014standing in the middle.\r\nKing arrived in Washington, D.C., last January as the newest of four U.S. senators from Dartmouth. After eight years as governor of Maine and an almost 10-year hiatus from public office, he won handily a tumultuous three-way Senate campaign with 53 percent of the vote, becoming only the second member of the chamber not affiliated with a major political party. (He caucuses with the Democrats.) King assumed the seat vacated by three-term moderate Republican Olympia Snowe, who left, she said, because Congress had become an impossible place from which to govern effectively.\r\nKing\u2019s campaign promised not just a moderate, business-friendly agenda that was left-leaning on social issues but also to do what Snowe considered impossible: provide a bridge between the increasingly factionalized parties to get things done. \u201cHe\u2019s independent and a problem solver,\u201d actor Sam Waterston of Law & Order said in a television ad for King that aired in the closing weeks of the campaign. \u201cI think they\u2019re afraid of Angus in Washington, which might be the best reason to send him there.\u201d\r\nToday King is in his office suite for a weekly open house. Tall and lean, with the ruddy, stiff-jawed look of a Maine lobsterman, King smiles warmly as a staff member snaps photographs of the senator with organic dairy producers and members of the New England Farmers Union. A Los Angeles Times reporter briefly corners King in his conference room. The Syria question was the first one keeping him up at night since he took office, King says. \u201cI am trying to learn as much as I can to understand the ramifications of this question, which are enormous,\u201d he says. \u201cIs there more risk to the national interest in doing nothing, or is there more risk to the national interest in acting?\u201d\r\nWith the help of his staff King ends the interview quickly and returns his attention to the dairy farmers. The Syria question would resolve itself before King was forced to take a firm stance, and in a matter of days focus would be back on the issue that has most stymied Washington in recent times: the budget. Across the Capitol complex in the House, the first rumblings are emerging that a government shutdown is looming. In part because of the deep divisions it would emphasize, the shutdown would present an enormous opportunity for King. It could become the first test of his desire to snuff out gridlock and dysfunction.\r\nThe Real Thing\r\nKing\u2019s childhood in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington offers few clues to his political leanings. He describes his parents as Roosevelt Democrats but says he grew up a fan of President Eisenhower. King applied to Dartmouth, sight unseen, because between his junior and senior years in high school his sister married Dartmouth alum Jim Neff\u00a0 \u201959, \u201cand I liked the guys at the wedding,\u201d he says. King\u2019s interest in politics was immediate. He recalls, in detail, the lectures of longtime Dartmouth government professor Vincent Starzinger. \u201cI remember him using the movie The African Queen to explain the two different views of natural law,\u201d King says. \u201cHumphrey Bogart wakes up in the boat to see Katharine Hepburn dumping his gin out into the river, and he\u2019s very upset. He says to Hepburn, \u2018It\u2019s only natural, ma\u2019am, that a man should want to drink every now and then.\u2019 That\u2019s one view of natural law. Hepburn said, \u2018Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are here to rise above.\u2019 That\u2019s the other view of natural law. It has been 50 years and I remember every word of that lecture.\u201d\r\nLarry K. Smith, a former Dartmouth history professor now retired after a career in Washington, remembers \u201cGus\u201d in \u201cHistory 56,\u201d the political history of the United States since 1864. The class, which was a study in power and how it\u2019s used politically, Smith says, attracted ambitious students. When political discussions would get going, \u201cyou could feel the heat in the room,\u201d he recalls. King stood out: \u201cFor all of his prestige on campus, you never got the sense that he was a politician of any sort. And yet he was clearly recognized to be the class of his class. He carried himself with such ease and grace.\u201d\r\nDespite his clear interest in politics, King\u2019s involvement was largely as an observer. He worked at WDCR and traveled in 1964 to New York City to broadcast results from the Goldwater-Johnson election. \u201cWe were part of a national college radio election-night program, and it was like our own NBC,\u201d King says. \u201cWe got results. I was a commentator, talking about who was winning and who was losing and what it meant.\u201d A year earlier, Dartmouth students had learned of the Kennedy assassination listening to WDCR. They heard the news from King, who broke into a music program to report as the day\u2019s events came over a teletype machine. (King says he carried the printout announcing Kennedy\u2019s death in his wallet for decades until it finally crumbled into pieces.)\r\nThe radio job helped prepare King for the career he forged after law school and a brief stint on Capitol Hill with Maine\u2019s Democratic Sen. William Hathaway\u2014as a television interviewer and commentator on the public broadcast affiliate in Maine. He moved from there into the alternative energy industry. It was from this business perch that King followed a path into politics as an independent. Throughout his tenure as governor King\u2019s approval numbers in statewide polls never dipped below 50 percent. Still, competing views formed about him. One Maine Republican\u2014a Dartmouth alum who previously worked in government\u2014agreed to provide his view of King in a series of emails on the condition he not be identified. He says, \u201cKing seems the ultimate \u2018hail fellow well met\u2019 with the balm of an aphorism for every situation, even if he has never seen it before\u2026and really knows little about it.\u201d The GOP critic says he considers King \u201ca faux independent,\u201d a Democrat who does not want to admit his leanings.\r\nOthers, including his early mentor Smith, say the politician\u2019s independence comes from deep within. \u201cPeople will use the rhetoric of being a moderate and it\u2019s crap,\u201d says Smith. \u201cWith Gus it\u2019s a real thing. There are phony moderates or phony independents who are often unwilling to take positions. Gus takes positions and does so as a matter of conviction. It just happens that his convictions don\u2019t fit neatly into either party. Fortunately for him, he comes from a state that enables him to run as that person.\u201d\r\nKing says that when he arrived in Washington he knew there would be doubts about him on both sides of the aisle. When he first approached Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) to talk about his ideas on regulatory reform, King says he expected skepticism. At that point he was known only as the man the National Republican Senatorial Committee spent $1.2 million trying to defeat in 2012. \u201cI\u2019m sitting with Roy telling him my views on regulatory reform,\u201d King says, \u201cand I could see his expression change, like, \u2018This isn\u2019t the guy I thought he was. Why did we spend a million dollars to kill this guy?\u2019 \u201d\r\nAn Issue That Resonates\r\nKing\u2019s first real foray into the murky political waters of the U.S. Senate came almost by accident. It was May of 2013 and a member of his staff had flagged one of the Senate\u2019s many looming deadlines: Without congressional action the interest rate on federally subsidized Stafford student loans was poised to double on July 1 from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent. \u201cIt seemed to fit philosophically with some of the things that the senator has taken issue with down here, these sort of artificial deadlines, lurching from year to year, without really coming up with long-term, sustainable solutions,\u201d one King staffer explains.\r\nIn many ways the student loan issue presented an ideal political opportunity for King. On one side were liberal Democrats led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who believed the government should support a subsidized loan program that would greatly relieve the financial burden facing college students, even if it came with a hefty price tag. On the other side were Republicans whose proposal, very similar to Obama\u2019s, was for a market-based loan program that operated much like traditional loans, giving students competitive borrowing rates while possibly turning a profit. King and a small coalition of senators including Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) decided they would try to create a revenue-neutral program that fell somewhere between the rival versions.\r\nIn June, when senators were presented with votes on the Democratic and Republican versions of the student loan bill, King and Manchin broke ranks and voted against both of them. King released a statement to the press saying he believed \u201cthat we can bridge the differences between the competing proposals to reach a compromise solution that can acquire wide support. We just need to set the politics aside and do the work.\u201d\r\nThe rogue group of senators drafted its proposal and introduced it in late June, just days before the loan rates would double. At first their attempts to bring more senators on board met with resistance. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), the powerful committee chairman who oversaw education issues, was not happy with their proposal. A number of Republicans were also skeptical that rates could be brought down without costing the federal government. As the deadline passed, a second attempt was made to bring the Democratic plan to the floor for a vote, but it again fell short. Once that failed, the president got involved.\r\nKing, along with Manchin and Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) were summoned to the White House, where they found Harkin and Burr waiting with Obama. The goal was to broker a compromise bill. \u201cThe president wanted this off his plate,\u201d King\u2019s staffer explains. After the meeting the number of senators willing to vote for the King-Manchin bill started to rise. During the course of several weeks King tried to keep an accurate count of his bill\u2019s support, but it was tough. Every time he would shave off a section to bring more Democrats on board, he risked losing support from Republicans.\r\nWhen the date for the vote finally came, King\u2019s staff had calculated they had just barely enough support for the measure to pass. When the vote got under way, Durbin, whose job as Senate majority whip is to muster and keep count of votes, walked up to King on the floor and handed him a small scrap of paper. It had a number on it: \u201c74\u201d\u2014a projected tally of \u201caye\u201d votes. The bill, King realized then, was going to pass.\r\nKing was near the center of a group of Republicans and Democrats hovering over Obama on August 9 as the president prepared to sign the bill into law. The president praised the \u201cextraordinary coalition\u201d that had led to the passage of the compromise bill, then noted wryly, \u201cIt feels good signing bills. I haven\u2019t done this in a while. Hint, hint. Hint, hint.\u201d\r\nShutdown\r\nThe government shutdown has been under way for two days and back in a plush Senate conference room King is speaking to representatives from a group of Maine credit unions who stopped in to visit him that day. He is offering his take on the Tea Party\u2019s budget maneuvers: \u201cI remember in college we heard a great way to make money. Do you know the story about how to make money with a cocker spaniel and a gun? You put a picture up that says, send $10 or I shoot the dog,\u201d King smiles. \u201cI didn\u2019t say that, did I?\u201d\r\nBack in his office King explains that he has given deep thought to this impasse and its causes. Because of the way congressional districts have been drawn, members of Congress for the most part occupy safe seats\u2014until they are threatened by primary opponents from the most orthodox wings of their parties. \u201cWe can have broad national consensus that this shutdown is a bad idea, and it\u2019s not going to affect an individual member as he or she looks to their district in Louisiana or Tennessee or Idaho or wherever it is. If that Republican electorate is fired up and wants to kill Obamacare or shut down the government, there\u2019s no political incentive for that person to sit down and talk,\u201d King says. \u201cThat\u2019s dangerous.\u201d\r\nMore than that, King has fixed his concern on what he sees as a new and dangerous approach to legislating that he believes Tea Party Republicans are employing. He pulls out a paper that he says contains a list of demands House Republicans have made in order to get them to pass a budget and reopen the government. He rattles them off, growing increasingly incredulous with each alleged demand.\r\n\u201cThis small group in the House is trying to create a new way of legislating that\u2019s not in the Constitution,\u201d King protests. \u201cYou legislate by passing a bill through the House, passing it through the Senate and sending it to the president. They\u2019re saying, \u2018We don\u2019t have the votes to do that, therefore we\u2019re going to grab the entire U.S. government or the credit of the entire U.S. government and say we won\u2019t do anything unless you legislate what we want\u2014unless you agree to what we want.\u2019 That\u2019s not the way the system was designed.\u201d\r\nKing insists he is not ready to give up. He has, for instance, joined a group of moderate House and Senate members who began meeting in hopes of cobbling together a budget document both sides could live with. He has also joined a group of 14 senators formed by his Maine colleague, Republican Sen. Susan Collins, to try to piece together a deal.\r\n\u201cRight now is a moment of maximum frustration,\u201d he says. \u201cMy whole deal is trying to find common ground and find solutions. What\u2019s holding me up is that I don\u2019t know if you want to find common ground in a situation where you\u2019re being held hostage. If you do, this will be the routine way we\u2019ll do business around here.\r\n\u201cIt goes against my basic orientation of trying to find solutions,\u201d he says. It is inescapable, King realizes now, that the nation\u2019s capital is different than it was 40 years ago, when he first came to town as a Senate staffer. In 1973, he says, there were probably 20 senators who overlapped ideologically\u2014moderate Republicans who were arguably more liberal than conservative Democrats. \u201cNow there are literally none,\u201d King says.\r\nThe 2013 federal government shutdown lasts for 16 days and, according to the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, it is expected to have cost the U.S. economy between $2 and $6 billion in economic output. It is resolved not by diplomacy from moderate politicians looking to broker an agreement, but by wrenching public pressure and a short-term fix of the sort King has publicly protested.\r\nA month has passed when King, brimming with good cheer, arrives in the sleek television studio that is hidden away in the basement of the Capitol Visitor Center. Bright theater lights hang from the ceiling and a variety of sets include a fireplace, a Christmas tree with wrapped presents and a modern-looking TV news desk. King takes a seat in front of what appear to be French doors and an American flag. He is about to hold a 45-minute Skype conversation with social studies students at Mt. Ararat High School back home in Maine. The father of five is jovial and at ease. Such talks, which he calls \u201cCapitol Class with Angus,\u201d are a staple of King\u2019s tenure.\r\nHe explains to the students that, as a member of a committee tasked with finding solutions to the problems that led to the shutdown, he sits at the center of negotiations to develop a budget. \u201cWe had our first meeting last week,\u201d he says. \u201cThere are a lot of behind-the-scenes negotiations going on now as we try to arrive at an agreement that will make everyone equally unhappy, I guess is the best way to put it.\u201d\r\nStudents then rotate into a seat in front of the camera to ask how he juggles his work and personal life, whether he plans to seek reelection and what he considers his greatest challenges. A student named Emma takes the seat and asks King what it means for him to be an independent in Washington.\r\n\u201cIt gives me the opportunity to work across the aisle and try to find solutions,\u201d he continues. \u201cIt was amazing when I first got here and I went around meeting senators. A number of them said, sort of almost under their breath, \u2018Boy, you\u2019re in just the right place.\u2019 They really liked the idea that I could try to build bridges, and in fact that\u2019s what we\u2019ve tried to do.\u201d\r\nKing tempered that sunny view from the center shortly after the Skype conversation ended and he headed back to business. \u201cI\u2019m very optimistic that the partisanship can be overcome when the challenge is a small- or intermediate-sized issue,\u201d he says, hearkening back to his experience with the student loan legislation. \u201cBut on the big issues\u2026,\u201d he pauses. \u201cI\u2019ll be honest with you, on the big issues I\u2019m just not so optimistic.\u201d\r\nMatthew Mosk, an Emmy-winning investigative reporter for ABC News in Washington, D.C., lives in Annapolis, Maryland.\r\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.king.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/dartmouth-alumni-magazine-profiles-king-as-man-in-the-middle"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 2.2781318984925747, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}