To cynics, the phrase “principled congressman” is a laughable oxymoron. Yet over the last decade, Lane Evans, Democratic U.S. representative from western Illinois, has pursued a course true to his populist beliefs.
His convictions have put him at odds with his district’s Republican history, earned him distinction for casting the most consistently anti-Reagan votes in Congress, motivated him to challenge his party over a committee chairmanship, and now lead him to frequent clashes with a Democratic president.
At the same time his hard work, effective staff service and mild-mannered, straightforward sincerity have helped convince many voters that he cares about them and the district, even if they disagree with his views.
“I was born and raised in this district,” he emphasized. “My experiences are of those living here. I know what people have gone through. My values were set by my family, neighbors, the priests and nuns at school.”
Evans, 42, was elected in 1982 from Illinois’ 17th Congressional District, whose main population center is the fading industrial region of Rock Island and Moline. This Mississippi riverside district had sent only one Democrat to Congress since the Civil War. But that man, Gale Schisler, elected in the Lyndon Johnson landslide of 1964, served only one term. Republicans were assured that Evans was a similar fluke, but he has consistently been re-elected by wide margins, and the GOP is having trouble finding anyone to challenge him next year.
Now, despite his feeling that “it’s made a world of difference to have a Democrat in the White House,” Evans continues to hew to his populist philosophy, even when it leads him to oppose President Clinton. The worst of the president’s sins in Evans’ book was his support of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which Evans saw as a threat to jobs and incomes of already-battered workers in the area.
And, unlike Clinton, Evans strongly supports a Canadian-style health plan with the government as the single health insurer. “I would like to go further than the president,” he said. Clinton’s proposal “is half a loaf, but people here would be helped by half a loaf.”
Evans has also been working with the Progressive Caucus in Congress on a job-creation bill, with higher infrastructure spending, since Clinton largely dropped his economic stimulus package.
Although the largest employer in Evans’ district is the Army’s Rock Island Arsenal, he has persistently advocated deep military cuts and opposed most U.S. military intervention overseas, including Lebanon, Central America and the Persian Gulf. But he has also worked to get more jobs at the arsenal-which is devoted to the conventional warfare capabilities that Evans wants to emphasize for strategic reasons-and to share arsenal technological expertise with local industry. An ex-Marine, he was an early supporter of full civil rights for gays in the military and felt that Clinton “poorly handled” that touchy issue.
Republicans repeatedly denounce Evans as “too liberal” and “out of touch with the district.” Yet Evans, whose Welsh and Swedish dairy farmer and carpenter forebears first settled in the area before the Civil War, maintains that he is the one who is in touch with the district.
More than a decade in Washington hasn’t changed his character much. “Unlike others who took on the talk and walk of pretentious politicians, he continued to be genuine, approachable and fun,” said Lamont Tarbox, a Chicago pension consultant who once worked for Evans.
Evans still believes in the potential for government to help people-the kind of people he grew up with in a blue-collar Rock Island neighborhood, where his father’s steady income as a firefighter made him seem affluent. His mother was a Democratic precinct committeewoman, his father an active unionist. As a 3rd grader, smarting from anti-Catholic jokes around town, he leafleted for John F. Kennedy.
Sixteen days after he graduated from high school, Evans volunteered for the Marines, following family traditions of military service. He was not sent to Vietnam because an older brother, who sent letters home that started Evans’ questioning of that war, was already there.
After the Marines, Evans went to Black Hawk Community College in Moline and then Augustana College in Rock Island before attending Georgetown University Law School on the GI Bill. In 1976 he joined Fred Harris’ short-lived populist campaign for president, shunning appointment to the prestigious advance team in favor of front-line organizing. Even then he had a plan: return to the Quad Cities, do legal aid work, then run for Congress.
When conservative Republican Kenneth McMillan defeated moderate incumbent Tom Railsback in the 1982 GOP primary, Evans energized Democrats and carried enough moderate Republicans and independents to win the general election. Evans had run unopposed in the Democratic primary.
A changing district
Evans said he has succeeded in part because the district has changed. During the last dozen years there have been widespread factory closings, tough times on the farm and severe population loss. “People here have been very much hurt by Reaganomics,” he argued. “It’s made the rest of the district more Democratic.”
Besides making Evans the top vote-getter, voters in his district picked Michael Dukakis and Clinton in the last two presidential elections and have elected Democrats to county board and other positions in record numbers, even in heavily rural counties.
Evans, who is also a director of Illinois Public Action, a statewide citizens lobby, has played a role by beefing up his party and campaigning for newcomers, as well as by serving as inspiration. “He’s made us realize we can win almost any race,” said Norm Winick, Knox County Democratic chairman.
Republicans and Democrats agree that one key to Evans’ political success is his-and his staff’s-devotion to helping his constituents in their dealings with the federal government. “He has excellent constituent services,” said Steve Watts, Knox County Republican chairman. “It seems almost a week or two doesn’t go by but someone says: `I haven’t got any action on this problem. I’m taking it to Lane Evans’ office.’ “
Voters are willing to accept his consistent Left-populist record, Winick said, “because they think he’s voting his conscience and has their best interest at heart, even though they disagree with him. He has made up for that with constituent services, and they like him personally.”
Evans makes the rounds of small-town meetings and parades throughout the district, but he is especially welcome in its union halls, the source of much of his personal and financial support.
His affability combined with rock-solid principle has gradually made him a more influential legislator as well. “What makes him effective is the respect he has around here,” said his friend, Rep. Tom Andrews (D-Maine), in a phone interview from Washington. “He has consistency and principle, and people understand that. People who can smile for the camera and talk in sound bites are a dime a dozen. What we need are thoughtful people who do their homework and work hard on issues, and that’s Lane Evans.”
The veterans’ cause
Some of his liberal supporters wish he would become more of an outspoken conscience of the Congress.
“When I see what (Minnesota Sen. Paul) Wellstone has accomplished, I wish Lane would have done more,” lamented pension consultant Tarbox. Evans has not become well-known as a liberal leader in part because he has chosen to become an expert on veterans’ issues, which are not politically sexy.
Veterans “are the most neglected constituency in the country,” Evans said in defense of his choice. “Conservatives are all for them in the armed forces, but when they’re discharged, they forget them. Liberals sometimes have a cultural problem in dealing with them. I’m sorry if it disappoints my friends, but I feel a real obligation, particularly since very few others are standing up for the veterans of my country.”
After fighting for eight years, Evans eventually won health benefits for veterans suffering the effects of Agent Orange, the dioxin-containing herbicide sprayed in Vietnam. He has been a leading advocate for help for female veterans, homeless veterans, victims of post-traumatic stress disorder and Persian Gulf war veterans.
A narrow loss
Last year, Evans said, he became “sick and tired of being sick and tired” in his battles with Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman G.V. “Sonny” Montgomery, a conservative Democrat from Mississippi who dominates the committee with Republican support. In a highly unusual move, Evans challenged Montgomery for the chairmanship, losing by only four votes. Evans wins high praise as an effective leader from the American Legion, which backed Montgomery, and from Vietnam Veterans of America, which supported his challenge.
Evans works with a sympathetic chairman, liberal Ron Dellums (D-Calif.), on his other major assignment, the Armed Services Committee. There he successfully pushed legislation that bans U.S. export of land mines, which primarily maim and kill civilians in Third World wars. Now he hopes it can be expanded into an international ban. Evans also serves on a highly classified-and thus not well-publicized-task force on cleaning up the nation’s nuclear bomb factories, a job that he warns could dwarf the cost of the savings-and-loan bailout.
Evans’ own military credentials have strengthened his hand in Congress and the district in arguing for his positions, from military cuts to gay rights and gun control. Yet what works most effectively is his talent for putting a personal spin on broad political issues and bringing them home to his district. For example, by describing the moral anguish of women considering abortion that he knew through his legal aid work, he was able to make a case for giving women that final choice.
A close family
As a 42-year-old bachelor, even one with a long-term relationship with a woman now studying at Yale Divinity School, Evans has had to endure the whispering campaigns of opponents in the district that he is gay. The suggestions made from the far Right that he is anti-family are ironic, given the close ties he maintains with his own family, including a brother and a niece who share his apartment in Washington.
Evans, whose mop of hair, sometimes parted in the middle, is vaguely reminiscent of early Beatles style, still sees himself as an aging “rock ‘n’ roll congressman.” He vividly remembers the Beatles concert on Aug. 20, 1965, in the old Comiskey Park as “one of the best days of my life.”
Evans considered challenging Sen. Alan Dixon in the Democratic primary last year but decided he couldn’t raise the necessary money. If Paul Simon or Carol Moseley-Braun chose not to run for re-election to the Senate, Evans would be a likely candidate. Although he lost an important Chicago connection when his friend and former House colleague Harold Washington died, Evans could duplicate Simon’s success in appealing to city and Downstate voters.
`This power thing’
Despite his ability to change policy and help people, Evans still feels ill at ease with the idea that he has power.
“I never got a handle on what this power thing is,” he said. “I feel I can get things done, but this alluring, almost demonizing thing called power, I’ve never been able to put my finger on it.” He still thinks he’s an outsider, even as he gains seniority.
Whatever his disagreements with Clinton, he feels enthusiastic about what can be done with a Democrat in the White House. He wants the U.S. to become “the moral leader of a newly emerging world . . . to represent the best of American values.” Force, he believes, should be used only when the national security is threatened and there is a full commitment of support for the troops.
At home, “we need to rechannel the resources of society to the people who need it,” he said. “We’ve channeled it with Reagan to the wealthy. Clinton has begun to turn it around, even if just symbolically. We’ve got to give the ordinary person a stake in this economy. As Robert Kennedy used to say, `The best social program is a jobs program.’ “
