Steve King facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Steve King
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| Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Iowa |
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| In office January 3, 2003 – January 3, 2021 |
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| Preceded by | Greg Ganske |
| Succeeded by | Randy Feenstra |
| Constituency | 5th district (2003–2013) 4th district (2013–2021) |
| Member of the Iowa Senate from the 6th district |
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| In office January 13, 1997 – January 2, 2003 |
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| Preceded by | Wayne Bennett |
| Succeeded by | Thurman Gaskill |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
Steven Arnold King
May 28, 1949 Storm Lake, Iowa, U.S. |
| Political party | Republican |
| Spouse |
Marilyn King
(m. 1972) |
| Children | 3 |
| Education | Northwest Missouri State University |
Steven Arnold King (born May 28, 1949) is an American far-right former politician and businessman who served as a U.S. representative from Iowa from 2003 to 2021. A member of the Republican Party, he represented Iowa's 5th congressional district until 2013 and the state's 4th congressional district from 2013 to 2021.
Born in 1949 in Storm Lake, Iowa, King attended Northwest Missouri State University from 1967 to 1970. He founded a construction company in 1975 and worked in business and environmental study before seeking the Republican nomination for a seat in the Iowa Senate in 1996. He won the primary and the general election, and was reelected in 2000. In 2002 King was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Iowa's 5th congressional district after the incumbent, Tom Latham, was reassigned to the 4th district after redistricting. He was reelected four times before the 2010 United States Census removed the 5th district and placed King in the 4th, which he represented from 2013.
King is an opponent of immigration and multiculturalism, and has a long history of racist and anti-immigrant rhetoric and white nationalist affiliations.
For much of King's congressional tenure, Republican politicians and officials were silent about his rhetoric, and frequently sought his endorsement and campaigned with him because of his popularity with northwest Iowa's voters. Shortly before the 2018 election, the National Republican Congressional Committee withdrew funding for King's reelection campaign and its chairman, Steve Stivers, condemned King's conduct, although Iowa's Republican senators and governor continued to endorse him. King was narrowly reelected, but after a January 2019 interview in which he questioned the negative connotations of the terms "white nationalist" and "white supremacy", he was widely condemned by both parties, the media, and public figures, and the Republican Steering Committee removed him from all House committee assignments. King ran for reelection but, campaign funding and support having declined, lost the June 2020 Republican primary to Randy Feenstra by 10 points.
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Personal life, education, and business career
King was born on May 28, 1949, in Storm Lake, Iowa, the son of Mildred Lila (née Culler), a homemaker, and Emmett A. King, a state police dispatcher. His father has Irish and German ancestry, and his mother has Welsh roots, as well as American ancestry going back to the colonial era. His grandmother was a German immigrant. King graduated in 1967 from Denison Community High School. In 1972, he married Marilyn Kelly, with whom he has three children. Though raised Methodist, King attends his wife's Catholic church, having converted 17 years after marrying her. His son Jeff King, a consultant, has been active in his political campaigns.
King attended Northwest Missouri State University from 1967 to 1970, where he was a member of the Alpha Kappa Lambda fraternity and majored in math and biology, but did not graduate. In 1975, King founded King Construction, an earthmoving company. In the 1980s, he founded the Kiron Business Association. King's involvement with the Iowa Land Improvement Contractors' Association led to regional and national offices in that organization and a growing interest in public policy.
Iowa State Senate (1997–2003)
In 1996, King was elected to Iowa's 6th Senate district, defeating incumbent senator Wayne Bennett in the primary 68%–31% and Democrat Eileen Heiden in the general election 64%–35%. In 2000, he won reelection to a second term, defeating Democratic nominee Dennis Ryan 70%–30%. During his tenure in the Iowa State Senate, King filed a bill requiring public schools to teach children that the U.S. "is the unchallenged greatest nation in the world and that it has derived its strength from... Christianity, free enterprise capitalism and Western civilization", and served as chief sponsor of a law making English the official language of Iowa.
U.S. House of Representatives (2003–2021)
King is considered an outspoken fiscal and social conservative. After winning the 2002 Republican nomination, he said that he intended to use his seat in Congress to "move the political center of gravity in Congress to the right." During the 110th Congress, King voted with the majority of the Republican Party 90.9% of the time. He has continuously voted for Iraq War legislation, supported surge efforts and opposed a time table for troop withdrawals. During the 112th United States Congress King was one of 40 "staunch" members of the Republican Study Committee who frequently voted against Republican party leadership and vocally expressed displeasure with House bills. In August 2015, King was named the least effective member of Congress by InsideGov due to his persistent failures to get legislation out of committee. On December 18, 2019, King voted against both articles of impeachment against Trump, as did all 195 Republicans who voted.
Committee assignments
King served on the Judiciary, Agriculture, and Small Business Committees until January 14, 2019, when he was removed from all committee assignments after bipartisan condemnation of his remarks on white supremacy.
Caucus memberships
- Republican Study Committee
- Tea Party Caucus
- Congressional Constitution Caucus
- Congressional Western Caucus
Political positions
King has dismissed concern over global warming, calling it a "religion" and claiming efforts to address climate change are useless.
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King opposes stricter regulations on gun ownership.
King is a staunch opponent of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and has led attempts to repeal it. He fought against Medicare and Medicaid covering a number of medications.
On October 7, 2014, King was one of 19 members of Congress inducted into the LGBT civil rights advocacy group Human Rights Campaign's "Hall of Shame" for his opposition to LGBT equality.
King is a staunch opponent of immigration and multiculturalism. He is a proponent of the Great Replacement theory, the theory states that the white population is being replaced by mass non-white immigrants.
In April 2006, when asked if "the US economy simply couldn't function without" the presence of illegal immigrants, King said that he rejected that position "categorically". He said the 77.5 million people between the ages of 16 and 65 in the United States who are not part of the workforce "could be put to work and we could invent machines to replace the rest." In 2006, King called for an electrified fence on the US border.
In July 2017, the House Appropriations Committee voted to fund the US-Mexico border wall, allocating $1.6 billion for it. King called for an additional $5 billion for the wall.
King opposes affirmative action.
Post-political career
After King's loss in the 2020 Republican primary in Iowa's 4th congressional district, he wrote a book giving his account of what happened and travelled for several months to promote it. The book is entitled Walking Through the Fire: My Fight for the Heart and Soul of America. It was put out by Fidelis Publishing, known for publishing Christian and conservative books. King says he was motivated to write lest "the media and the elitists in the Republican Party write a political epitaph" for him. The book maintains that freedom of speech is being undermined and that the Democratic Party is weaponizing terms like "white nationalist" and "white supremacist".
In 2021, he told the Des Moines Register that while he currently had no plans to return to politics, he would if there was a "groundswell". He went on to say, "I don't see that at this point. But I do see a lot of support, and we've got a lot of policies and causes that we need to push. We've got state conventions coming up and a platform to be shaped."
King has campaigned against carbon-capture pipelines; at an August 2023 event cosponsored by the John Birch Society, he criticized the use of eminent domain and financial motivations behind the pipelines.
In December 2023, King campaigned with 2024 presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy at an event in Lakeside, Iowa, but stopped short of endorsing him. In January 2024, he gave a full endorsement of him.
