Governor of Iowa
Hughes served as Governor from 1962 to 1968. During this time, he continued to reach out, as a Christian and as an alcoholic in recovery, to people still suffering. He established a treatment program in the state and was an effective spokesman for a more enlightened view of the role of alcohol in society. The new treatment program was viewed as an alternative to the state mental hospitals. Hughes wrote that the goal was to reach alcoholics "before they reach rock bottom."
His political career also continued to gain strength. He made a speech seconding the nomination of Lyndon Johnson at the 1964 Democratic convention (a decision he came to regret later) and gained national recognition as a liberal governor as well as a promising national figure in the Democratic Party. Trade missions abroad, and a tour of Vietnam with other governors, provided him with foreign policy experience.
In his 1964 bid for re-election as governor, the issue of a relapse in 1954 was raised by his opponent, Evan Hultman. In a debate, Hultman charged that Hughes’s failure to acknowledge the relapse publicly showed that Hughes lacked integrity. Hughes responded: "I am an alcoholic and will be until the day I die... But with God’s help I’ll never touch a drop of alcohol again. Now, can we talk about the issues of this campaign?" According to the Des Moines Register, "The reaction of the crowd was immediate and nearly unanimous." Later, the Register editorialized: "In our opinion, any man or woman who wins that battle and successfully puts the pieces of his or her life back together again deserves commendation, not censure." Hughes won by a landslide.
In 1966, Iowa, like other states, suffered Democratic losses, but Hughes survived. It was at that time that his friendship with Robert Kennedy started, and it was Kennedy who persuaded him to run for a Senate seat. The next years were difficult ones, in the wake of the assassinations of Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, racial unrest in Iowa, and his growing disenchantment with American policy in Vietnam and the leadership of the Johnson administration.
Read more about this topic: Harold Hughes
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