Vance Hartke

Rupert Vance Hartke (May 31, 1919 – July 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.

Early life, education, military service Hartke was born on May 31, 1919, in Stendal, Indiana, the son of Ida Mary (Egbert), an organist, and Hugo Leonard Hartke, a teacher. His paternal grandparents were German, as were all of his maternal great-grandparents. He attended public schools in Stendal. He graduated from Evansville College (now the University of Evansville) in 1940, and served in the United States Navy and United States Coast Guard from 1942 to 1946, rising from seaman to lieutenant. Hartke graduated from the Indiana University Maurer School of Law in 1948.

Legal and political career After joining the Indiana State Bar in 1948, Hartke began practicing law in Evansville. He also worked as deputy prosecuting attorney of Vanderburgh County (1950–1951) and mayor of Evansville (1956–1958), integrating the city swimming pools, before being elected to the United States Senate in 1958 and reelected in 1964 and 1970.

Senate service and later life

In the U.S. Senate, Hartke was best known for his opposition to the Vietnam War and his chairmanship of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee. He fell out with President Lyndon B. Johnson when he became one of the Vietnam War's first opponents.

Hartke was elected to the Senate in 1958 at age 39, defeating Republican 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 state Senator 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 also 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 U.S. Senate.

In 1994, Hartke pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor election fraud charge in southeastern Indiana's Dearborn County. 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.

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.

Personal life and death Hartke and his wife, Martha, had seven children.