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Rupert Vance Hartke (May 31, 1919July 27, 2003) was an American politician who served as a Democratic United States Senator from Indiana from 1959 until 1977. Hartke was elected to the Senate after serving as the mayor of Evansville, Indiana. In the Senate, he supported the Great Society and became a prominent opponent of the Vietnam War. Hartke ran for president in the 1972 Democratic primaries but withdrew after the first set of primaries. He left the Senate after losing his 1976 reelection campaign to Richard Lugar.
Hartke was elected to the Senate in 1958 at age 39, defeating Republican Indiana Governor Harold Handley. He became known as a hard-working, liberal Democrat with a strong relationship with Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson. In his first term, Hartke was a member of the Finance and Commerce committees, lobbied for programs like Medicare and Medicaid, and supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Hartke was reelected over Indiana Senate Russell Bontrager in 1964, becoming only the third Indiana Democrat, after Benjamin Franklin Shively in 1914 and Frederick Van Nuys in 1938, to be popularly elected to a second Senate term. He helped create student loan programs and new veterans' benefits during his second term. He helped to establish Amtrak as chair of the Subcommittee on Surface Transportation.
After his sister, Ruth E. Hartke, was killed in a head-on crash in Ohio in 1964 while working his campaign, Hartke used his chairmanship of Commerce Transportation Subcommittee to require that automakers equip cars with seat belts and other safety equipment. He also was instrumental in creating the International Executive Service Corps, an organization modeled after the Peace Corps that sent retired U.S. businessmen to poor countries to help turn small businesses into larger ones.
Hartke was credited with important roles in passing measures that created or supported student loan programs, veterans' benefits, and the Head Start Program. He introduced a bill to create the George Washington Peace Academy and a Department of Peace. The concept became known as the first cornerstone for the campaign that led to the creation of the U.S. Institute of Peace.
Hartke was praised for winning passage of a measure making kidney dialysis more widely available. A statement entered into the Congressional Record in honor of his 80th birthday credited the measure with saving 500,000 lives.
His opposition to the Vietnam War was not popular in Indiana. In 1970, after a very bitter and tight race against Republican Congressman Richard L. Roudebush and a ballot recount, Hartke won a third term by 4,283 votes. In 1972, he was an unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination against Senators Edmund Muskie and George McGovern. In 1976, after narrowly surviving a primary challenge by freshman Eighth District Congressman Philip Hayes, Hartke lost the general Senate election to Indianapolis Mayor Richard Lugar in a landslide. Until Joe Donnelly was elected in 2012, Hartke was the most recent Indiana Democrat, aside from a member of the Bayh family, to be elected to and serve in the Senate.
In 1994, Hartke pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor election fraud charge in southeastern Indiana's Dearborn County. Deaths Elsewhere, Baltimore Sun, July 29, 2003. Retrieved January 22, 2014. During the previous November's general election, a Kentucky-based casino firm had employed him as a consultant to support it during a casino-legalization referendum. Ex-Senator Indicted in Polling Place Incidents, New York Times, September 9, 1994. Retrieved January 22, 2014.
Hartke wrote three books— The American Crisis in Vietnam, You and Your Senator, and Inside the New Frontier, the last co-authored with John M. Redding.
Hartke died at a hospital in Fairfax, Virginia on July 27, 2003, aged 84.
Posthumous award
In 2009, Hartke received the JFK Club of Vanderburgh County's John F. Kennedy Profiles in Courage Posthumous Award, "to carry forward the legacy and principles of President John F. Kennedy by supporting legislation and government officials or candidates that promote social justice and equality, in order to build a better community and society for all."
Electoral history
External links
Categories: 1919 Births, 2003 Deaths, 20th-century American Lawyers, 20th-century American Male Writers, 20th-century American Non-fiction Writers, 20th-century Mayors Of Places In Indiana, 21st-century American Lawyers, Lutherans From Indiana, American Male Non-fiction Writers, American People Of German Descent, American Political Writers, Burials At Arlington National Cemetery, Candidates In The 1972 United States Presidential Election, Democratic Party United States Senators From Indiana, Indiana University Maurer School Of Law Alumni, Indiana Lawyers, Mayors Of Evansville, Indiana, Military Personnel From Indiana, People From Pike County, Indiana, Politicians From Falls Church, Virginia, United States Coast Guard Officers, United States Coast Guard Personnel Of World War Ii, United States Navy Personnel Of World War Ii, United States Navy Sailors, University Of Evansville Alumni, Writers From Evansville, Indiana, 20th-century United States Senators, Chairs Of The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee
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