This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu

ROBERT J. DOLE ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

Interview with

WILLIAM A. (BILL) TAGGART and JUDY TAGGART

July 18, 2007

Interviewers

Brien R. Williams and Carol Ruppel

Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics 2350 Petefish Drive Lawrence, KS 66045 Phone: (785) 864-4900 Fax: (785) 864-1414 This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Taggart 7-18-07—p. 2

[Judy Taggart edited this transcript. Consequently, it may be at variance at some points with the original audio recording. This is the only interview recorded with the Taggarts for the Robert J. Dole Oral History Project. Reference to a prior interview is misleading and refers to a meeting we had with the Taggarts before this interview.—BW]

Williams: This is an oral history interview with Bill Taggart for the Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas. We’re in the Taggart residence in Arlington, VA. Today is July 18, 2007 and I’m Brien Williams. We’re also joined by Bill’s wife, Judy, who’s at the table, and by my wife who’s working on this project with me, Carol Ruppel.

So, Bill, let’s start with just a little about your family roots—where they came from and how they got to Kansas.

Taggart: Well, we assume they were part of the Mac Taggart clan out of Scotland. How they came to the United States we don’t know. They seem to have settled however in Iowa in the late 1800s and that’s where my father was the oldest of eight children. After they moved to Kansas, his father died and my father had to run the farm by himself, feeding cattle, selling milk, raising their own food and so forth. The loss of his parents put a big hurdle on him, so they had to hire a housekeeper or someone to cook. They found Dessie, who became Mrs. Logan Taggart, and she’d come from Olpe, Kansas. She was quite capable of keeping house. Her mother didn’t want her to take the job because here was this single man with a bunch of kids… and she said, “Don’t you go out there. You’ll get knocked up before anything happens.” “No, no, no, I won’t. I’m just going to work.” Well, she went to work and they raised their food, they canned the products they raised as far as gardens go. Everybody worked on it but with that many kids you couldn’t count on them. And they were of varying age. Logan was the oldest, and then Ben and Gid and Ruth and on down the line.

Williams: Now, Logan was your father?

Taggart: Yes. Logan Coyd. This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Taggart 7-18-07—p. 3

Williams: And he married this woman who came…

Taggart: He married Dessie Oakley. I think his parents came out in a covered wagon. And we have one box around the house some place that was in the covered wagon and we use it to keep toys in downstairs for the grandchildren. They came to Kansas with that in the back. Well, this now is my Dad’s parents. Some of the boys went into town and worked and maybe went to even Emporia. Giddeon and Ben (Logan’s brothers) would probably have done that. Ruth stayed in Iowa.

Ruppel: These were your uncles and aunts?

Taggart: Yes. There were two women—two girls--Ruth and Margaret, and that’s it.

Ruppel: And then what about your dad? Where did he settle, in Kansas?

Taggart: Well, he was raised there on the farm in Olpe, as were the kids. And then some of them…. Ruth stayed with an aunt, and I don’t know who it was, in Iowa. Williams: At what point did your ancestors move from Iowa down to Kansas? When did that happen?

Judy Taggart: I think it had to be the early-to-mid- twenties. Because he was born in ’31 and he was the last one born, so it had to be early twenties.

Williams: And, your father in Kansas, what was he doing?

Taggart: He was farming. And they fed some cattle and they grazed on the hills around there that they had access to, and they raised forage and put up silage. In those days they didn’t have silos. They had rolled-up fence that we see now used to break up snow accumulating into a field. They’d take the rolls of snow fence and make a circle around a bunch of silage and let it set and then they’d put another row around another stack of silage and go up about 15-20 feet, about 20 feet across in diameter, and that’s the way they fed the cattle during the winter.

Williams: You grew up on the farm.

Taggart: No. We left there. I was born in Manhattan, and at that time, my dad was working for the McPherson Concrete Stave and Silo Company, because they’d started making these silos out of concrete—sections of concrete that you put together like a puzzle, and put a steel rim around it like a pizza pie. A long piece of steel or band of This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Taggart 7-18-07—p. 4 steel fastened together by bolts around those stave silos. And they’d take them up to about 40 feet, I guess, maybe 50 later on. Now we have what’s known as A.O. Smith Harvest Stores, which are like a large thermos jar. And this protects the food that the livestock eat.

Williams: So, did your father stay in this business?

Taggart: Yes. Out of that he ended up being one of the first ones who took ahold of that silo concept and he started getting silage wherever he could get it, and putting it up and then he did it for some people, but mainly just for himself. It was an existence with all these kids.

Ruppel: How did the Depression impact your family?

Taggart: Well, Dad was working for the silo company and I think they split up a lot then. Ben and Gid went to Lyons, Kansas and opened a pool hall. They had several children. Ruth was in Iowa, of course. Didn’t spend much time—I don’t think she went to the farm. She married Wilbur Kempenaar and they had several children up there.

Ruppel: Do you have memories of the Depression?

Taggart: No, not really.

Ruppel: What about the Dust Bowl?

Taggart: Now, we’re talking about ’30, ’31, right?

Ruppel: Yes. Oh, of course you wouldn’t! I’m sorry.

Taggart: It was ’29, ’30 and ’31, I mean, it was pretty tight. I was conceived during that. They didn’t have anything to eat.

Ruppel: What about the Dust Bowl?

Taggart: Didn’t have that in central Kansas as bad as you had it west of there. You’ll find that the Arkansas River keeps things pretty green. That, and a couple of rivers that come down the border along the Missouri line. That’s what Dad was specializing in and he got some information from Kansas State through the county agents. They were on top of things and I think they helped him with his silo projects and things like that, and that kept things going. And they boys all went out on their own, so it all affected them, but This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Taggart 7-18-07—p. 5 they were on their own anyway and they were doing pretty humble stuff that had to be done, so yes, it was rough for them. But I don’t know because I wasn’t there.

Ruppel: Did your father stay in that business while you were growing up?

Taggart: Very much so. My family didn’t, but my dad did. Nobody went to WWI but they all made it up into the twenties, and my father went to a business college in Emporia just to learn something. I don’t know how he did it. To get some idea of how to borrow money and whatever. And all this time my mother was cooking and raising children.

Williams: How big a family was it? How many kids?

Taggart: It shrunk as the years went on, but it started out with eight and then two of the girls—Margaret went over to marry Wes Stevenson [phonetic] and then Ruth stayed in Iowa and married Kempenaar.

Williams: You were one of eight and you were the youngest? Did I get that right?

Taggart: No, my dad was the oldest of eight. They youngest was Paul Taggart, and he was around Manhattan and Wamego and his family still is.

Ruppel: But we skipped a generation.

Judy Taggart: Your dad’s generation.

Ruppel: Right. Now we need to go down to Bill’s generation.

Williams: Your generation. How many brothers and sisters did you have?

Taggart: I had three. Three brothers. I was born in ’31; there’s five years between me and Dale, so he was born in ’26, and that would have put Dick born in ’24 and Coyd [phonetic] in ’22.

Williams: Now, as you were growing up, what kind of political discussion did you hear your parents…were they talking much about politics?

Taggart: Oh, on occasion.

Williams: And I think that you told me that they didn’t agree.

Taggart: That’s right. My dad was a businessman. He was promoting business; he knew how to work and how to make money by working. So, he was a Republican and my mother was a hard-nosed Democrat. This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Taggart 7-18-07—p. 6

Williams: And when the subject of Roosevelt came up how did things go?

Taggart: They went in two different directions. And Dad would vote Republican and she’d vote Democrat. They never said anything about it ‘cause we knew how they felt. We didn’t know why, we didn’t go into the subject matter, but we knew that they both…. Whoever was elected they supported.

Williams: Did that cause you to shy away from politics at all at that time, because that sounded like a tension subject?

Taggart: Not at all, because we had the same fights going on different ways with the rest of my dad’s family and my mother’s family. Everybody was trying to decide which they liked and it seemed like the Republicans hired more people, I think, and that’s what my dad was promoting, and Mother was interested because Democrats took care of a lot of people. That’s a simple way to express it. It was a lot more complicated than that, with Social Security instituted at the time. That was quite a shocker. But it also paid off like gangbusters because it’s taken care of a lot of people.

Williams: So, people at that time in Kansas took politics pretty seriously.

Taggart: Yes, I’d say so. About the same percentage that does today at about the same time that it does today. It’s a historical trend, I think. If you went percentage-wise it might be we aren’t as interested as they were, especially locally.

Williams: And which town is this that you grew up in?

Taggart: Manhattan, that was where I was born. And then they moved to Wichita when he went with McPherson Concrete Stave Silo.

Williams: So you went to Wichita schools?

Taggart: Yes, I started at College Hill Elementary, which is right at the foot of the only hill in Wichita, which is not a hill; it’s a slope. But it’s in the plains, and we lived on Hillside, and it was kind of the breaking line. You had Eastboro, which was north about two miles, and then you had another mile in-between and that was kind of a high falooting, high-priced houses and high-priced people. And then we lived on Hillside. I worked at grocery stores when I was a kid. I asked if I could go to work. I liked to go to movies and they had Br’er Fox Club which was a Saturday show for kids. I suppose they still have them. I would go out and sell script books for the Uptown Theater because they This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Taggart 7-18-07—p. 7 saw that I liked to go to the movies, and a guy said, well, if you can sell some script tickets –books of $2, $5--$5 was a big one. For a $2 one I’d get a pass, and for a $5 one I might get three. Well, I went around, called on all the little old ladies who liked to go to movies in the afternoon. That’s what they’d wanted, was to get somebody there in the afternoon, because they’d get some at night otherwise. I didn’t miss a movie. Anything that went to the Uptown. I was taking kids with me; they didn’t like that. So, I just got off of that. They were trying to start me on a commission basis when I said no, I think I’m going to go to work for Reed Coble Grocery, which was just north of the Uptown Theater in Wichita. So I started work at Reed Coble and learned what produce was and how it was marketed. A little retail store, but it catered to people who lived in an apartment house like we see around all the time only of a smaller nature, called Hillcrest. It was rental houses. A lot of widows lived there. We would deliver groceries to them, put them in their little cubby hole so that they didn’t have to answer the door. We also delivered groceries all over. There was another store just west of there called Landrum’s Pure Food Market, and it was run by two men and it was a step up. It went from Hillside East clear on out to Oliver, which was one mile and clear out to Eastboro, which is another mile.

Williams: So, you went to work for them?

Taggart: I went to work for them, and I went from maybe 10 cents an hour from Reed Coble and then maybe went to 15 cents….

Williams: Were you still doing this work when you were in high school?

Taggart: No. This is when I was in grade school. By the time I got to high school I was working for Landrum’s. My older brother Dale, who was five years older, was working at Safeway and making 75 cents an hour and that’s a lot of money. So, I ended up quitting Landrum’s and going over to Safeway and working at Safeway 625 for Jack Dempsey, who was the manager of the store. I was in fat city. I thought I had arrived.

Williams: So, as this young high school student, were you thinking you wanted to become a movie star? Because all of these movies you were seeing?

Taggart: No, I like to be entertained. And we had a lot of friends, a lot of guys, who were magicians and did a lot of things, and I was more interested in just working and I This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Taggart 7-18-07—p. 8 wasn’t worried about what I was going to be. And then this all pushed me in a direction I’d never thought of. But I found out that when I had money I could do things, so when I was in junior high school I took a lot of different courses and I got into government and things like that and I learned something about government. But at the same time I was working in the grocery store, but I thought maybe there was something else. So, long story short, I ended up at East High, which is right near the junior high school, and I went into a vocational printing school. We had welding, plumbing, and trades—drafting, you could design houses and stuff like that. And you go through three years of that and you learned your trade.

Williams: Now, as I recall you also were becoming interested in politics and started going to Boys State while you were in high school.

Taggart: That was while I was in high school.

Williams: Describe that a little bit.

Taggart: It was kind of a fluke, because I was a vocational student and we were the “shop boys,” they called us. But in the junior year they needed somebody to go. I don’t know how I was selected. I guess I may have gotten involved in…. I knew a lot of kids, and a lot of kids knew me because I was the biggest guy around. I stood probably six inches taller than most of them. So, yes, I was chosen by the school to go to the American Legion’s Boys State at North High School for one week during the summer. that’s where I met Kent Frizzell, who was to become a friend for life. And there I learned all the basics that I’d studied about in junior high on how elections are conducted. We experienced it there. The first day we elected precinct committeemen and then we had nominations that night and elected nominees to run for mayor, for county commissioners, and all those things. And then our cities voted and our counties voted. All took place in an hourly schedule, and you had to go around and shake hands and make your acquaintance with all your constituents. I didn’t realize this at the time. I was just doing it because they told us to. But I was learning. And we learned what we got. I ran for something and I got elected because people remembered me. So, we worked through that and at the end of that I never forgot that the American Legion was father of it and still continues it. Oh, the trade school. I wanted to get a job using my training, so they said in your senior year you can go work in a shop and get paid for it, half a day. So, I got to This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Taggart 7-18-07—p. 9 looking around and somebody told me, I guess some of the printers, said that the Christian Worker Publishing Co. was looking for somebody. I mean, McCormick Armstrong was located there, which is a topnotch publisher. But I went to Christian Worker Publishing Co. and asked if they wanted a new printer, and they liked the price. I don’t know what I was making but it was still under a dollar, I think.

Williams: I want to keep this a little closer to the politics of your life. I remember that your printing took you to what university or college?

Taggart: University of Kansas. And that was not unlike what I’d done before, because I didn’t know where I’d go, and my printing teacher at Wichita East, I talked to him about it, and I said if I could go to college, where would I go? And he said, well, I don’t know where you want to go, and I said, it’s not where I want to go, it’s where I can go. And he said, well, the University of Kansas is a state school, so they gotta take you if you graduated from a high school here. So, the guy that was teaching printing—Barry, what was his name—he was a fine gentleman and he really taught me a lot about it. He called his friend that had gone to trade school with him up in the Dakotas, and he was superintendent of the University of Kansas Press, and he said, “Tell him he’s got a job.”

Williams: So, just to cut short, you went up there…

Taggart: I went up there, worked my way through the University of Kansas,

Williams: And got a degree from the University of Kansas.

Taggart: Well, yes, but a lot went through that. That was four years and interrupted by going overseas, or going to the Army and coming back. But the point there is that when I went to the University of Kansas I ran into all these guys—not all of them, but a lot of them—that I’d known in Boys State. And there was politics on the campus, and so we became somewhat… Big fight there between the Greeks and the independents, and I was independent, and people like Kent Frizzell were in law school. But we all enjoyed politics and what we learned in Boys State was that it didn’t make any difference where you were from as long as you went and got the votes. So we broke down the university in the same way as we broke down Boys State and we got some campaigns going there. But we maintained our context [?]. And I lived in rooming houses and then I lived in a dormitory the last year or two. That gave me a new exposure to a lot of other people This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Taggart 7-18-07—p. 10 including some Arabs and all kinds of people. There was a WWII barracks-type arrangement. When I laid down in the bed I was touching both sides of the room. We had showers down the way and restrooms.

Williams: How soon had WWII ended at this point when you were at the university? Was this the forties?

Taggart: I graduated in ’48. And then I went up to K.U. and took a limited number of hours because I was working and I knew it would take me a little longer. I wasn’t going to worry about that but I had to make my grades. The nice thing about this was I maintained my contact with guys from all over Kansas through the Boys State program. On a local basis there with the collegiate work and then by working in the print shop I knew a lot of people in Lawrence because I stayed there all summer and worked in the shop and I got acquainted in Lawrence, so I knew something about Lawrence politics. I did a lot of grunt work for that like I had in every political thing I did. You start at the ground up.

Williams: Did you know at this point that you were a Republican?

Taggart: No. I wasn’t anything. I mean, you just kind of get acquainted with people and make a judgment and I think that’s the way people vote. That’s if they really are interested. Otherwise they do something because somebody asked them to and they believe in them and the more people you talk to, if you’re really convinced, the more people you can convert.

Williams: So, you went to K.U. and then you were in the Army.

Taggart: Well, I was going to be drafted. So, I volunteered for the draft because it just makes sense. It also didn’t interrupt my school time. I went at the end of the spring semester, which was summer, and I went to Ft. Leonard Wood [Missouri]. When I was checked in at Ft. Leonard Wood, they issued us clothes. Well, they didn’t have anything that fit me. So I got fatigues. They went over and they had some sort of a sewing bee over there and then somebody put together a set of fatigues for me because I was standing six foot two or three, I don’t know. Scoggins [phonetic] was the platoon guide, and that’s the tallest man in the company. The next one was Dale Webb [phonetic], who played basketball for one of the schools in Wisconsin, and then Scoggins was black, and he was This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Taggart 7-18-07—p. 11 our platoon guide. So it all broke down that way and long story short, at the end of my basic training, which was 16, 18 months, the Korean War was right at its peak and the guys all shipped out, and I had to stay there because I didn’t have Class A uniforms. And so they figured they’d have Class A’s, but they plan ahead on who you’re going to ship, when they’re going to ship and they couldn’t ship. By the time they got ready to ship I had my Class A’s. But when they’d fall out for parades, I would stay in the barracks. They couldn’t answer that. When I got my Class A’s, the War was still on and I was working as a clerk-typist in division artillery office, and so they had me writing some stuff. They’d found out I was a journalist so they let me do some filing and things like that but they also gave us access to typewriters and had some tasks for us to do, which we did. And then we handled a little bit of the education of the troops cause we knew something about what was going on. They had their I and E sections.

Williams: Where were you stationed?

Taggart: At Ft. Leonard Wood.

Williams: Did you ever ship overseas?

Taggart: No.

Williams: So, when did you separate from the military?

Taggart: Well, I went on to Ft. Hood, Texas, and got into information and education (I and E) there, which is related to P.R. Congress passed a law that every non- commissioned officer had to have a high school education equivalency, which is basic courses, and our section, in I and E for Third Corps in Texas, which is two divisions, we had to go out and teach these master sergeants and sergeant-first class. The officers had to have it first off, and they were taken care of when they got their commission. But we had to go out and train these guys, to get their education up, or they had to have a high school diploma. Well, some of them came up with high school diplomas, but we were in charge of keeping them up. They couldn’t go on bivouac until we got them cleared to go. They had to have some basics. Some of them didn’t have language or anything else.

Williams: And so you did this kind of work right through till the end of your military service. This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Taggart 7-18-07—p. 12

Taggart: Yes, information and education. We worked with these guys. I got a good cross-section of people there. And the frustrating thing was, Master Sergeant Vickers—I can’t think of his name now—he called me and he said, “Corporal, come on. We’re going to go out. We’ve lost some tests.” We had evaluation tests that we gave to these guys that had been in two wars and stuff like that. They were going to take their stripes away from them because they didn’t have a high school education, so they were taking mathematics and English and so forth. We had to administer these tests and so the Master Sergeant Ed Veitz [phonetic], he’d been career for years and years, and all he had was a high school education, but he knew the Army top to bottom. Veitz called me, I was bigger than most of them so he wanted me to go out with him to bivouac where they were on maneuvers. And to see this one master sergeant who had not turned his paper in. He’s stolen the test and was going to try to get somebody else to do it, and so Veitz said, come on Corporal, we’re going out and see Sergeant so and so, so we went out there. He said, “We’ll go in together and then you leave and I want to talk to him private.” I went back to the Jeep and he stayed there in the tent with the guy. He asked him where it was. He said, “You know I had to do this myself and we’ve got to do it. What did you do with the test?” He finally convinced him, and he said, “Well, I put it in the latrine.” So, Master Sergeant Veitz came and got me and said, “Now come on, we’re going to take this guy over to the latrine. And they got a truck or something and they lifted the latrine off the hole in the ground, and he said, “O.K., Sergeant, go down there and get it.” So he got down there in the middle of it, got the test out, and brought it up. We made sure it that the number on it we were accounting for and we all signed the certificate later that this was the test and that he was not going to be kicked out of the Army. And we gave him special classes as we did all of them. It was fun, because these guys, their life had been the Army. So Veitz took the thing and built a little fire and they burned it on the spot. And they had two master sergeants sign along with us that that was burned. It really taught me a lot about people and what they have to go through and what can result and the system works.

Williams: When did you first have contact with Bob Dole? Was that long after your military service?

Taggart: I can cut this down quite a bit. I went back when I got out of the service and finished college, which took something short of a year. I was welcomed by the This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Taggart 7-18-07—p. 13

University Press so I had my job. During that time I made a contact with a former employee at University Press who ran a typesetting business in Kansas City and on the weekends I’d go over there and make more money on a weekend than I did in a month at University Press. So I was doing pretty well.

When I finished college, went to work for the Wichita Eagle as a salesman in advertising. I was dating a girl from Hutchinson and we had a mutual friend who’d gone to New York to work on Department Store Economist and then she went on to other things. She came back all of a sudden and I was dating Sue Berry, and we found out that she was up in Atchison and was going to come down to Wichita. I didn’t know she was back. Sue had her come down and I walked in and there was Judy, so that’s how I hooked up with her.

Two weeks later I was knocking on her door and six months or a year later we got married. And that was in the fifties. We lived in Wichita and I got involved with politics there with Kent Frizzell. Later, he was assistant attorney general under the Nixon administration. Now he’s retired and his son was just appointed to a federal bench down in Oklahoma. I was active in politics from the first day I was in Wichita because I met Julian Zimmerman at the University, who had gone back to finish his school when he got out of the service and he had married quite well.

Williams: So, were you still on the Wichita paper when you had contact with Dole?

Taggart: No, I was contacted by a man in Dodge City who said, “I want to start a central edition of the High Plains Journal,” published out of Dodge City. So, Joe Berkeley hired me to open an office in Hutchinson and sell advertising for the High Plains Journal Kansas edition. And after we got that going I hired another guy I’d gone to high school with to be out in Boulder and sell advertising for a Colorado edition. We moved to Hutchinson to open this office in the airport at Hutchinson. The little office there turned out to be unnecessary but we were there for about six months. My wife had had Laura and Bill in Wichita and she had the twins in Wichita.

Ruppel: Judy, did you give up your career when you moved to Kansas?

Judy Taggart: No. I was the copy editor for an advertising agency in Kansas City, and had worked for KMBC before that and then when we married, I worked for one of This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Taggart 7-18-07—p. 14 the TV stations in Wichita, KAKE it was, in Wichita. But then when I started to have children I did some freelancing.

Taggart: Well, we had four children then, when we were working for Berkeley.

Ruppel: Bill, you were involved with the American Legion while you were publishing two weeklies?

Taggart: I was publishing a weekly newspaper with two different editions. Covering from the Rockies to Mississippi for farmers. It wasn’t a big established one, but we were trying to sell what we could and it was printed in Missouri at a very good print house.

Ruppel: Well, that’s how you got to know Julian Zimmerman?

Taggert: No, I met him in college. When I came back he and his wife were there. He had been in the service and had a law degree or he was getting his law degree.

Ruppel: And he’s the one who got you involved in the American Legion?

Taggart: No. I did that on my own because of Boys State. And then when I went to K.U. I stayed active in that and in politics at K.U.

Ruppel: And then you went to a convention in Washington for the American Legion with Sebelius…?

Taggart: No. Sebelius was state commander of the American Legion as was another guy from Junction City who was active there. My contact with Dole started in Dodge. I knew of him. He was in Congress then.

Judy Taggart: No, wasn’t he running and you worked for the candidate that opposed him in the primary?

Taggart: I worked for the Party. We were not in his district.

Judy Taggart: He wasn’t the first district? O.K.

Ruppel: So this is when he ran in ’59-60 for the House?

Taggart: When he ran for Senate is when I really got acquainted with him.

Ruppel: But you already knew him when he was in the House.

Taggart: I knew him because of the American Legion because I’d been active in state politics and they were always close to the Members. There’s a guy out of…Fred This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Taggart 7-18-07—p. 15

Bramlage out of Junction City. Bill Haney and Keith Sebelius were all very active in the American Legion.

Ruppel: Was it a natural fit to be Republican in the American Legion?

Taggart: No. Not at all. But the tendency, it depends on the local area. Your politics is governed by local area, to a point. And then when it comes to federal offices, people start thinking differently about federal and they don’t lump it all together. There are some communities, I guess, where they lump it all together.

Ruppel: Last time you talked about having gone to Washington with the American Legion and having met with Sebelius when he was in the House, and

Taggart: Right. That was with Bramlage and Sebelius and we’d all been active in the Legion. This is when I was in Wichita, and when I went to Lawrence and whatever, but it all blends in on a different track.

Ruppel: Then you worked for Sebelius’ campaign to run for the Senate. He was one of the primaries…

Taggart: No, I worked for him to put him in the House.

Judy Taggart: I don’t remember Sebelius ever running for the Senate. He was always in the House. And then Dole ran for the House after Sebelius was already there.

Taggart: Pat Roberts was on Sebelius’ staff and that’s when I got to know him. And I ended up on Dole’s staff. And Pat had come from north-central Kansas up around Oskaloosa and gotten interested in journalism.

Ruppel: Didn’t Sebelius lose an election? It must have been a House election. And Dole called you and asked you to work for him. Is that right?

Judy/Taggart: No, that’s not right.

Taggart: No. The contact with Dole, I had met him through Republican politics, just meeting him. But how he heard about me was in Johnson County. Oh, I’d run a campaign against him for Sebelius.

Judy Taggart: Yes, I think you’d worked for Sebelius. They were opposing each other when Sebelius first went into the House. This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Taggart 7-18-07—p. 16

Taggart: Yes, that was it. When Dole went to the Senate then he called me and said come on up. He knew about my work with the High Plains Journal and journalism, so he said come on up and be my Ag staffer.

Ruppel: You didn’t work for Dole until ’74?

Judy Taggart: ’70. And there’s a little twist there. Bill was working at the Board of Trade for the Coop, and they’d moved their headquarters and Bill wasn’t happy there anyway.

Taggart: Magazine.

Judy Taggart: He was doing their magazine. And so he really decided that he’d like to go—we’d all like to go—overseas and get a job with one of the organizations, one of the farm organizations that had overseas offices. So a friend of his here, Helen Spurzem, who was a journalist with the Ag Department said why don’t you come back and I’ll set up some interviews. Bill talked to Dole. So he came back. That was a big deal for us to get the money for him to come back and he spent several days and Dole actually set up some interview for you because you’d called him and said you were looking for a job and wanted to go overseas. When you came home you said, “I wouldn’t work for the Department of Agriculture for all the tea in China. I don’t want to be part of that bureaucracy.” And he called Dole and told him that and talked to Dole, and Dole said, “Well, you want to come to work for me?” And Bill said, “Well, why not?” He said, “Well, I need an ag person and they’ve been pushing me to get one.” So Bill took the job in early December, before Christmas. He said, “Yes, I’ll come.” You haven’t talked to Judy Harbaugh yet. So, I said, “How much is he going to pay you?” You said, “I have no idea.” So Judy called and she said, and she didn’t know Bill, “Mr. Taggart, we need to set up a salary because you don’t need to bring your family back here for no money.” So, she set the salary for him, and we came back.

Taggart: With his blessing.

Judy Taggart: Well, he hired you on the phone but it was because without any hesitation you said yes.

Ruppel: How did you have expertise in agriculture? This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Taggart 7-18-07—p. 17

Taggart: Cause I’d been writing these stories and been working with wheat growers. I’d worked on farms when I was a kid, very indirectly sometimes, but I was familiar with agriculture. But I got intimately acquainted with it with the High Plains Journal in writing stories about it and dealing with farmers all the time and with the Wheat Growers, which was part and parcel, they sold all our subscriptions for us. It was a close-knit group. You know that politics exists in agriculture. But it’s bipartisan because if you’re on a farm program, both Republicans and Democrats were helping support the farmers in Kansas.

Ruppel: When Dole made you the offer to come work for him, was it on his personal staff or committee staff?

Taggart: Yes. On his personal staff.

Ruppel: In 1970?

Judy Taggart: It was in 1969 he made the offer in December and we went the first of January.

Ruppel: So you started when Dole started in the Senate.

Taggart: Yes. There was a whole new group there. Bill Katz was the A.A. He’d been with the prior senator and stayed on because he knew the ropes.

Ruppel: Was it Carlson?

Taggart: Yes, Senator Carlson. And I had known Frank Carlson when I visited the Capitol through the Boys State Program. I mean, he didn’t know me personally. He had met me officially, but I had met him when he was in office. So that didn’t hurt when Dole saw that.

Ruppel: What pushed you from the personal staff of Dole to his Committee staff?

Why did you make that transition?

Taggart: That came when somebody from our side retired or whatever. The senator who was ranking on the Republican side was …

Judy Taggart: Was it Curtis [Senator Carl Curtis]? This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Taggart 7-18-07—p. 18

Taggart: Yes, it was. The guy from Vermont had left and that put Curtis in, so when Curtis got in, he didn’t have anybody in mind, and Dole told him about me, and he said, “Get him up here.”

Ruppel: Did Dole replace you with another ag staffer on his personal staff or did he just assign you to the Ag Committee?

Taggart: He just assigned me to the Ag Committee. Remember, he was a sophomore senator, but he needed to learn a little bit more about journalism and I had been in the job of translating agriculture, and that is why we got along well. And I’d been active politically and I knew all the vote-getters in the Republican Party because I’d been active in it.

Ruppel: But when you went to work for the Ag Committee you were Dole’s person on the Ag Committee?

Taggart: That’s right. But I worked for all the Republicans too. When you’re on a major committee, they have a person on their staff until they are there long enough to get someone onto the committee.

Judy Taggart: It was Senator [George] Aiken from Vermont.

Ruppel: What were some of the sticking points on the Ag Committee? What were Kansas’ interests? Did you represent Kansas’ issues more than just issues generically?

Taggart: There were two of us and a secretary, and the secretary had come from the senator from Iowa at the behest of Senator… . Well, the politics kind of perked down to… The Democrats lost some; [Sen. Herman] Talmadge became chairman and Curtis was ranking minority. Curtis had been active in Finance, I think. He had another committee that he was ranking on. And he said, “Hey, you got a guy from Kansas, and that’s similar to Nebraska.” Or Dole brought it up. I don’t know which. But anyway, I came on with Dole and Curtis’ support and blessing after Aiken left.

Ruppel: What are some of the issues that were interesting politically or any other way on the Ag Committee?

Taggart: Milk, because the price of milk is determined by a lot of different facts. The milk producers have a good, solid lobby and they had a lot of bad publicity about their contributions, because they started a political action committee. And the coops were big This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Taggart 7-18-07—p. 19 in milk and they were controlling the price of milk. Or they had an effect, let’s put it that way; they didn’t control. God knows we didn’t need that, but they had an effect.

Ruppel: How did Midwest interests, for example, offset Northeast interests, and so on?

Taggart: They were together, because the National Milk Federation included the others, but the primary dairies had always traditionally been the Northeast. Then as dairying changed a lot, and cooperatives helped them, the farmers all got together and formed cooperatives to market their products, and they were not at the beck and call of special interests, and they got a better price through the cooperative system.

Ruppel: How does Congress impact the price of commodities?

Taggart: They tried to stay away from it as much as they could and hit a fair market price and that’s where they came in, because we worked with the growers on a price— there were loan rates. What they did was give the farmer a loan for what he produced at a certain figure, and then whenever he sold it to the market he paid off the loan plus interest.

Ruppel: And that was provided by the federal government?

Taggart: Right. That’s how the grain elevators got built, because they put them up and they paid storage and that’s how they had feed. They were able to feed all these animals. They also had it on corn; they had it on cotton. The subsidy on cotton was really manipulated because the textile manufacturers were the ones who really benefited from it because it gave them a supply of cotton, they got the quantities up and we didn’t have to import so much stuff to make fabrics. And cotton became more of a utilization that we all wear. That’s one reason the Northeast and the Midwest—they provided a lot of the stuff that the West Coast needed and they were producing people faster than we were producing food. That was some of the synergism that brought about some of the Republicans.

Ruppel: Do you remember issues that Dole went to bat for that you had to back him up on in the Ag Committee?

Taggart: Every one he wanted. Whenever he had to have something, I was supposed to already know it and have it on his desk. This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Taggart 7-18-07—p. 20

Ruppel: Did you always agree with his priorities?

Taggart: Yes, his priorities were mine, unless I knew it was wrong and I’d tell him that, and he’d accept, or he’d check it with somebody else.

Williams: Can you think of a time when he was misinformed or you had to correct him?

Taggart: The ones I remember were the ones when I was misinformed and he corrected me. Because this man is one of the smartest people I’ve ever known. He’s got a computer in his head.

Williams: Someone used the term “100 percent parity” one day with me in an interview. What does that mean?

Taggart: That’s a target, and they used to provide loans based on the consumption and the historical price. There’s a ratio or something like that: the cost of production against the market price. So they calculate it and they figure that the cost of production, you could loan so much and that was jointly worked out with the producers and the Department of Agriculture economists and the Office of Management and Budget. They set local prices and that has gradually disappeared. I think the farmers still have it, but they get the loan so that they can plant their crop and when it’s harvested they pay it off and it gives them the working capital they need to produce. The more they produce, the more money they make and so the fertilizer companies provide the fertilizer and we now feed a lot of people because of a support program. It’s price support, not payment. They get a loan and they have to pay it off.

Ruppel: What about some of Dole’s colleagues on the Ag Committee who are memorable?

Taggart: Oh, wonderful, wonderful.

Ruppel: Talk about some of them.

Taggart: Aiken was there, I think. It was dominated by Northern and Eastern dairy producers because that was the big item. No one ever worried about grain.

Ruppel: Was Stafford on the Ag Committee? Senator Stafford from Vermont?

Taggart: Who was there before him? Where was Aiken from?

Williams: He was from Vermont. This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Taggart 7-18-07—p. 21

Taggert: That’s what I thought.

Williams: There was Ellender.

Taggart: [Sen. Alle] Ellender was a Southerner and he was cotton. Cotton and milk. Corn and wheat and others really hadn’t gotten into it yet.

Williams: Really?

Taggart: Oh, yes. And that’s why they controlled…. Talmadge being from cotton, and Aiken from milk, and then the coops got big enough that they broke down that choke on them and they started producing milk all over the United States. Along with the industry, and then everybody got together.

Williams: So did corn begin to take over and corporations like Archer Daniel Midlands and whatnot during your time on the Committee?

Taggart: They sure did. They had more impact. Mainly, corn is a feed. Dwayne has taken off on another angle there and he’s had a hell of a time selling it. But he’s right and it will all probably come about one of these days. He hits another little nerve every once in a while and comes up with a new product. Dwayne Andreas is a very knowledgeable person. I’ve dealt with his staff and his people for years, as I have with the milk producers’ cooperatives from all over the country, California and so forth. And with the beef producers, and with the wool producers, and so forth. Wool is pretty much off by itself; it’s never really caused that much problem. These people all want to make a good living for their farmers. The farmers know how, if they will give them the cost of production, they can help market it with their contacts and their work overseas and their work with land grant colleges who develop new uses for products, and all this goes together with a marketing system that nobody else has got and a delivery system that nobody else has got.

Ruppel: How did farmers react to Dole on the whole? How did their political organizations, special interests, interact with Dole when you were on the Ag Committee?

Taggart: They courted him. He was not a flip flopper and he was not an assumer. He has us work with them so we made damn sure what they were saying was true. Whatever they would feed me I would check with the Department of Agriculture, who would check with OMB, who’d check with this and check with that. And we set up systems where we This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Taggart 7-18-07—p. 22 could verify the stuff and properly inform him. A good help in a lot of that are people like Martin Sorkin. Martin Sorkin is an economist and I don’t know what all, but he is Dwayne Andreas’ man in Washington. He was working with other people too. He stays up on the market. But there are many other people—I can’t name them all. I could with a little research, if I had my old telephone book. The corn people, the cattle people, leather goods, syrups, whiskey, anything you eat or consume or wear. At the same time the government was helping coordinate production to assure them the cost of production, in turn, the farmers turned around with Senators’ support and all others. That’s one thing that Bob Dole brought to them was the fact that our wheat growers, our corn growers, are developing markets overseas and that’s going to ensure that the loan program will work. It’s just been wonderful the way they worked with the world food groups, the United Nations…I don’t know, I never really got into it. The farmers have developed contacts worldwide—wheat growers, corn growers, soy beans and other food derivatives, they go over there and they develop markets. They hire people from there to come over here and learn about it and go back and tell people. And that’s how our economy is really based. We produced enough food to feed us adequately and still ship a lot overseas.

Ruppel: Did you work on the Food for Peace program?

Taggart: Well, food for peace is a generality. The whole thing is food for peace. I mean, if we can keep things settled by feeding people, that’s a lot better than bullets.

Ruppel: And what about the child nutrition and WIC?

Taggart: That’s something that came along during the time that I was on the Committee.

Ruppel: So you worked on those?

Taggart: We hired staffers to come to work on that and economists, or home economists, who knew foods. We got into diets and that sort of thing. We didn’t administer them. All we did was make information available. And then here’s when the growers take over. They take the information that the USDA may provide, or the Food and Drug [Administration] people provide and they make sure that everybody knows what’s good and bad about a commodity and that it’s utilized properly and that the consumer is assured of a good product. It’s kind of like a governmental guarantee that This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Taggart 7-18-07—p. 23 our food’s good. It’s not a guarantee. They’re preparing a lot of foods themselves. But they know the product is going to be good.

Ruppel: When you started, until you left the Ag Committee, had the staff mushroomed? You hired many many staffers, right?

Taggart: No. I don’t know how many staffers they have now. They have a majority and minority staff and they work separately but closely together. They got a lot of input from a lot of people: the Finance Committee, the State Department, the food and agricultural organizations. You have to maintain contact with all those. That’s what staff does. They get the information from all those sources and feed it to the men who get together and with you in the background, work out some deals—deals being policies or thoughts or actions they may take or ways they may go.

Ruppel: Talk about the times that you had to take a leave of absence from the Ag Committee to work on Dole campaigns. Didn’t you have to do that, at least once?

Judy Taggart: It was Dole’s first re-election campaign, and that was a pretty serious step because you had to go to Curtis and tell him that you really wanted to leave but you needed to be able to come back to the job afterwards.

Ruppel: Oh, the ’74 campaign.

Judy Taggart: Yes.

Williams: Just before we leave the Ag Committee, some people have made the assumption or insinuation that Dole’s interests in farm policy involved who was providing campaign funds for him and whatnot. Talk about that a little bit. Was there any relationship between what Dole wanted to have accomplished in the Agriculture Committee and who was supporting his political career?

Taggart: Yes and no. I say, Hell, no. The man wouldn’t allow it. If it was done, it was done through providing him information and he makes his own judgment on it. But the sugar lobby and the others learned that if they feed the people they’re going to have to have the product. So if they’re asking for something outrageous he’d balk immediately. I’ve never seen him sell out to the bucks.

Williams: So, he never came to you and said, “We owe these people a favor.” This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Taggart 7-18-07—p. 24

Taggart: Bob Dole would never do that. He’d tell me to look into it, see what it’s all about. He’d say, “Why didn’t you tell me about this earlier?” That’s usually what he said.

Ruppel: What about the campaigns? Bill chose to work on a number of the campaigns.

Williams: What did you do in the ’74 campaign?

Taggart: Refresh my memories.

Judy Taggart: You went to Wichita.

Taggart: Oh, who were they running?

Judy Taggart: Bill Roy. And the senator was down a lot. Thirteen to 15 points.

Williams: You laugh when you hear the name Bill Roy. What’s going on in your mind?

Taggart: That was one that I really wanted to get into. The votes were in Johnson County. Was it Roy running against Dole?

Judy Taggart: Oh, yes. And he was really beating Dole. In the first of October he was really, it looked like it was a lost campaign. And the votes were in Johnson County and Wichita--Sedgwick County.

Taggart: Yes, O.K. Johnson County was his first re-election?

Judy Taggart: That was his first re-election. After that he coasted.

Taggart: I went to Johnson County first because that’s where the airplane landed, and talked to him, and talked to John Franke and John Franke, who was on top of Republican politics in Johnson County, which is a percentage of the total vote—the biggest in the whole state. That’s all the suburbs of Kansas City. And that coupled with the others and with Sebelius being in Topeka and also in the House, that helped us, because he would cover outlying areas. I came back and got a hold of my friends that I’d worked campaigns for before, and along with the people that were staffing it, rented an apartment, and about three or four other people stayed there at different times. We were going out and making appearances and talking to people.

Ruppel: Sebelius campaigned for Dole? This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Taggart 7-18-07—p. 25

Taggart: In his district, yes. I’m sure that was one of the times that Fred Bramledge [phonetic] was a past commander from Junction City. Keith Sebelius was there. The American Legion came to town and we went down and saw them.

Ruppel: How do you think that you pulled the election out for Dole when he was 13 points behind?

Taggart: Johnson County with John Franke’s leadership, and I’d like to claim Wichita and Hutchinson and that area because I was working that area.

Judy Taggart: And you organized the Democrats down there because that was a heavily Democrat area.

Taggart: I had a lot of good Democrat friends that were conservative.

Judy Taggart: And also Bill Wohlford worked on that campaign.

Ruppel: And then I think you worked on the Dole for vice president campaign in ’76 when he was the candidate with Ford.

Taggart: Oh, yes. If he had a campaign I was working on it.

Ruppel: And did you take time off from the Ag Committee for that? You had to, right?

Judy Taggart: No, I don’t know that you did. I don’t know what you did on that campaign.

Taggart: I think I was out of there, wasn’t I?

Judy Taggart: No, in ’76 you weren’t. You were on the Platform Committee in Kansas City and you were out there in Kansas City when he was nominated. When Ford was nominated and then chose Dole as his running mate.

Taggart: Yes.

Judy Taggart: You didn’t overtly campaign in the sense of going out and establishing an office, but like all of us….

Williams: Do you have some recollection of the Kansas City Convention in ’76?

Taggart: Not a lot. I was there. That was different from things I’d ever dealt with. This was a lot of high muckity mucks and stuff like that. Am I fair in that? This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Taggart 7-18-07—p. 26

Judy Taggart: We’re talking about the presidential [vice presidential]. And actually, didn’t you really work with those states where you knew people? Because he had to carry the Midwest. He had to carry certain states, and I think he did that. You worked with your friends and contacts out there.

Taggart: I wasn’t real big on that because once you get into a presidential campaign you try and maintain his integrity in whatever is being said. Some people would check with you before they did it and if they didn’t, I’d let the senator know and he’d tell them what to do. Because these were pros.

Williams: You were on the Platform Committee, and you were probably there because of your agricultural expertise.

Taggart: Right.

Williams: And so part of that platform was an agricultural plank that you helped….

Taggart: Right. I don’t remember explicitly, but that was something that was pretty much put together by the Committee and the producers and so forth.

Ruppel: In all the Dole campaigns you worked on did you advise Dole, or did you mostly go out and speak to potential voters? What did you do on his three presidential campaigns, do you remember?

Judy Taggart: You raised money, for one thing. He’s a very good man at raising money.

Taggart: Well, I had punched the button before and I knew all these guys and I knew they had gotten a fair shake. So, yes, I called them up, and I said, “You know, it’s time.”

Ruppel: Money in Kansas or across the country?

Taggart: All over. Milk, dairy, cotton. You log roll there because once cotton wants something then they know that we’re going to want something. Same thing with sugar and all the other things. It’s gotten a lot broader than that now. But the money flow is there because the people who are interested in Bob Dole are interested because of everything he does. You can’t limit it to agriculture. So we would go to the end product and how it affects the people. It was still pretty much basic politics. This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Taggart 7-18-07—p. 27

Ruppel: And when you were an adviser to the World Food Conferences in Rome and I guess accompanied the respective Agriculture secretaries, were you representing Senator Dole on those? Or were just an expert from the Ag Committee on loan to the Department of Agriculture for these meetings, is that right?

Taggart: Yes. There was myself and a guy from Minnesota. We were there as part of the delegation to the World Food Conference, and it was more supporting the commodity groups that went over and made the pitch that we have our products and we’ll help you do it the most effective way and feed as many people as we can and our food aid programs, and how we can work this. That’s the main thrust of it. It was all done on a high level and all we did was produce the…if they wanted a question answered we’d do it. It was largely developed long before we ever left the United States. The World Food Conference was there to feed the people of the world and make sure it continued to have a food supply. I think if anybody checks, there’s more food now and more people fed a good diet of the essential stuff—some form of meat which is locally determined, but also determined by mass production like chicken and so forth and beef that we export. All sorts of things that agriculture stimulates either as a product or as feed for production of a product. It’s not a direct thing that you can take up…. That’s the reason we have a World Food Conference is to determine that there is a supply and that the countries that are producing are performing.

Ruppel: Back to Dole, can you talk about Dole as a boss, as a candidate, as a senator? First of all, what was Dole like as a boss?

Taggart: What’s a boss supposed to be like? You know he’s boss.

Williams: How did he interact with his staff?

Taggart: He expected us to do the right thing, and the more you did the right thing before he had to tell you about it the better-off you were.

Ruppel: Was he a hands-on kind of boss—intrusive, or, it sounds to me like you’re saying he gave you enough rope to hang yourself.

Taggart: You had that automatically when you go to work for him. If you don’t size it up and do the right thing you’d know pretty much after the second trip.

Ruppel: So he didn’t micro-manage. This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Taggart 7-18-07—p. 28

Taggart: Oh, hell no. Well, we never took any action—it’s always in his name. We would try and get unanimity or 51 percent of the committee or group or whatever. You want him to have a winning position, because it usually comes down to a vote, whether it would be a food conference or a Senate or a committee, he wants the right thing done at the finish line.

Ruppel: Did the time of your being in the Senate coincide with his becoming Finance Committee chairman? Is that why you left the Ag Committee?

Taggart: No, I had a better deal. I had a hell of a deal, but it fit right with it. Curtis was willing for me to stay, but I had this opportunity to go work for a guy that represented the Vatican and that kind of whelmed over me. I didn’t realize what it amounted to. He handled it himself.

Ruppel: Was that Martin Healy?

Taggart: Yes. He represented the Vatican and he was tripping to Rome all the time and all we did was back it up when he needed something here. We had the Mars Corporation, and that was the biggy. Joe Johnson and Martin somehow got that. I forget who I had.

Ruppel: You had big contracts particularly with agriculture.

Taggart: Yes, I had a lot of ag stuff.

Ruppel: When you were in this government relations/pr firm.

Taggart: Yes, that’s it.

Judy Taggart: I have to interject here. I still have this vision: when that election was over in ’80 and we were at the big party when we saw the returns coming it, I can still see Bill and Powell Moore dancing on the floor, because we had taken the Senate, and this is the first time in anybody’s memory—their memory—that we’d ever had the Senate. And they kept saying to each other, “Why aren’t we still there?” We’d be in the majority. Why aren’t we still there? You guys were just ecstatic, as everybody was, but the two of them were just beyond belief.

Taggart: Did you talk to…? This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Taggart 7-18-07—p. 29

Judy Taggart: No, Powell Moore is who I’m talking about. Because he had been in the White House for some time, and then he’d left, and gone back again. And then I guess he want back with Reagan.

Williams: So was it hard to walk away from Washington and go to work for Healy?

Taggart: Oh, no. I was ready.

Williams: When you say that, what do you mean? Why were you ready?

Taggart: Well, it was just that I would like to see the outside of it and I’d hoped to make some money. A guy with clients like that who lived in Washington, DC and traveled to Rome periodically and had something behind him. Joe and I were responsible for the Mars Corporation account. He gave me that and I had two or three others that I can’t recall right now. The airport at Memphis.

Ruppel: Talk about your relationship with Dole after you left the Senate. Both you and Judy seem to be in fairly regular contact with Dole or Dole’s staff since ’79 when you left the Senate. What’s that about?

Taggart: Has anybody told you about the Dole Alumni Association?

Ruppel: No.

Taggart: I’ve got a whole file downstairs that you might want to look at. We had a convention out in L.A. Was that during the Republican Convention?

Judy Taggart: It was the Republican Convention when Dole was running. So Alison Carter, who works for the Dole Institute, Alison Heath Carter, and myself and Judy Harbaugh, Trudy Bryan, I’ve got a file down there I’ll be glad to share with you. We put on a big bash out there, we put out a newsletter.

Ruppel: 1980?

Williams: It was ’96.

Judy Taggart: Yes, it was ’96. The Convention was in San Diego.

Ruppel: From ’79-’96 anyway, you’ve been active. Describe your and Judy’s activities. When Dole called, you said, you’d take action. So, why would he call? This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Taggart 7-18-07—p. 30

Taggart: After that many years he knew me pretty well and he knew Judy pretty well. He didn’t call a hell of a lot. It was usually us second-guessing him and getting the information to him before.

Judy Taggart: But then in ’88 he ran in the primary against Bush. And I don’t know, I mean we were both involved with it. I went out to campaign for a weekend. You [Taggart] were supporting him. It seems like a long period of time, doesn’t it? But it’s not been a long period of time because every time he starts to do something or wants some sort of support then somehow we hear about it. We’ve always been involved.

Taggart: Oh, yes.

Ruppel: You said once you worked for Dole, you never stop working for Dole.

Taggart: You wouldn’t want to. Even if he fired you, you’d probably still help him.

Ruppel: So what does that mean?

Taggart: He’s devoted. He’s devoted to the nation and the people.

Judy Taggart: Well, that means in concrete terms that if he’s campaigning, you’re sure that you contribute what you can, and with him it’s always been whatever the legal limit is. Then other things, like when he wrote this last book, I don’t know, how many did we buy? We bought it seems to me hundreds of them, because we kept buying these books and sending them out to people. I would buy them, send them up by messenger for him to sign. The last time I think I had 20 books. And Ruth Ann called, and she said, “The senator wants to know if you will be offended if Mo [Morell] Taggart signs these.” She said, “You know, he says signing 20 books is a lot of books at one time. And he appreciates your buying the books, but he doesn’t want to have to sign them, so is it all right if Mo does it?” I said, yes. I thought she was signing them all along. I didn’t know for sure that he was signing them. So, I mean, those are the things you do.

Taggart: No relation to me.

Judy Taggart: Yes, no relation. But then Elizabeth became active in a lot of things. She was at D.O.T. and she was at Red Cross. We didn’t help so much at Red Cross, but there’ve just been connections. Not so much recently with Elizabeth.

Taggart: What was it we had a staff dinner at…. This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Taggart 7-18-07—p. 31

Judy Taggart: We had a party for Judy Harbaugh when she left, and the Doles came to that.

Taggart: Was that when he took me over and said I want you me to meet somebody? That was down at the Watergate. He said, come here a minute. I want you to meet somebody. So he walked across the dining room there walked me over and introduced me to Elizabeth.

Judy Taggart: That’s when you first met her.

Taggart: I don’t know whether I’d heard of her or not by then.

Judy Taggart: Oh there were always rumors about him. Always somebody…not bad rumors. Like Ann Dore McLaughlin, I think, would have liked to have… Have you talked to her? No, no, well I think she had her eyes on the senator. We always gossiped about things like that. I don’t think anybody saw Elizabeth coming. I don’t think anybody really knew that this was serious.

Taggart: Are you going to get to talk to Judy Harbaugh?

Ruppel: Based on your recommendation, I think.

Judy Taggart: Absolutely. You have to.

Williams: Did you pick up on Elizabeth having any major influence on the senator?

Taggart: No.

Williams: He didn’t change in any significant way?

Judy Taggart: I think he was happier. But I don’t think she influenced him politically. I’m just saying that off the top of my head. I didn’t feel that. But she was a warm person when I was ill, I guess in ’90 or so, she was always.

Williams: How do you think Dole will be remembered as time goes on?

Taggart: I really ought to write it down. This takes some thought. As a statesman, a diplomat, a leader. He’s 100 percent American, that would be the first thing, from the Plains of Kansas.

Judy Taggart: Which makes him 100 percent honest in what he did in the Senate. This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Taggart 7-18-07—p. 32

Taggart: Yes. And he’s been deprived of some of the dexterity that a lot of us enjoy but it’s been ignored and overwhelmed by his integrity and his way with people, his knowledge of right and wrong. He’s always got his hand out to help somebody who’s willing to work to help the country. Unless you want to go on for an hour.

Judy Taggart: Have you talked to people who just know about all the people he’s helped? He’s done this without anybody knowing. He’s helped children, he’s helped families, he’s helped a lot of people that nobody ever knows about. Put kids through school. I don’t know the names of all those people he’s helped but I do know that…

Taggart: Mo should know, shouldn’t she?

Judy Taggart: Mo Taggart. Well, Ruth Ann would know if she would talk about it.

Taggart: Yes. Ruth Ann Komarek you’ve got to talk to.

Judy Taggart: Yes, Ruth Ann will know. I haven’t talked to her.

Taggart: She’ll fight you. If you want we’ll work with you. Tell her we’ll be there too.

Judy Taggart: Maybe Ruth Ann will come over here some morning. I mean, the only time we get Ruth Ann to socialize with us is to take her to breakfast at the Warehouse, which she would do, but you don’t want to interview her…. Maybe she would come here some Saturday morning if you would like to try that.

Williams: I think I’ll stop the recording now.

[End of interview.]

This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Taggart 7-18-07—p. 33

Index Aiken, Sen. George, 18, 20 American Legion, 14 Andreas, Dwayne, 21

Barry, Sue, 13 Bramledge, Fred, 15, 25

Carlson, Sen. Frank, 17 Carter, Alison Heath, 29 Curtis, Sen. Carl, 17, 18, 28

Department of Agriculture, 20, 21, 22 Department Store Economist (magazine), 13 Dole, Elizabeth, 30 Dole, Robert J. 1974 senate campaign, 23 Dole, Robert J., 19, 21, 23, 27, 30 and Elizabeth Dole, 31 invites Bill Taggart to work for Senate Agriculture Committee, 16

Ellender, Sen. Allen, 21 farm parity, 20 Food and Drug Administration, 22 Food for Peace program, 22 Frankie, John, 24

Haney, Bill, 15 Harbaugh, Judy, 31 Healy, Martin, 28 High Plains Journal, 13, 16, 17

Johnson, Joe, 28

Kansas Boys State, 8, 9 Kansas University Press, 13 Katz, Bill, 17 Komarek, Ruth Ann, 32

Manhattan, Kansas, 3 Mars Corporation, 28 McLaughlin, Ann Dore, 31 Moore, Powell, 28

National Milk Federation, 19 This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Taggart 7-18-07—p. 34

Oakley, Bessie, 3 Office of Management and Budget (OMB), 20, 21

Roberts, Sen. Pat, 15 Roy, Dr. Bill, 24

Scoggins, ______, 10 Sebelius, Rep. Keith, 14, 24 Senate Agriculture Committee, 18, 20 Sorkin, Martin, 22 Spursom, Helen, 16

Taggart, Bill campaign work for Rep. Keith Sebelius, 15 effects of Depression on family, 4 familiarity with agriculture issues, 17 family background, 2, 3, 5 family political background, 5 farmer's reactions to Robert J. Dole, 21 father's work, 3 first contacts with Robert Dole, 14 going to Boys State, 8 growing up in Wichita, Kansas, 6 how Robert J. Dole will be remembered, 31 invited by Robert J. Dole to work for Senate Agriculture Committee, 16 issues of the Senate Agriculture Committee, 18 Kansas politics, 6 learning how government works, 7 on "food for peace programs", 22 on 1976 Republican National Convention, 6, 15, 25 on Army life, 11, 12 on becoming a printer, 9 on campaign fundraising, 26 on farm parity, 20 on federal support of farming industries, 19 on his life at the University of Kansas, 9 on influence of agribusinesses, 21 on leaving the Senate, 28, 29 on meeting Elizabeth Dole, 31 on members of the Senate Agriculture Committee, 20 on price supports, 20 on recent contacts with Robert J. Dole, 30 on staff size of the Senate Agriculture Committee, 23 on the Senate Agriculture Committee, 18 on working for Robert J. Dole, 18, 27, 30 on World Food Conferences, 27 political pressurees on Robert J. Dole, 2, 4, 6, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20 This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Taggart 7-18-07—p. 35

political pressures on Robert J. Dole, 23 selling newspaper advertising, 13 silo construction, 3 transition from Robert J. Dole's personal staff to the Senate Agriculture Committee, 17 volunteering for the Army during the Korean War, 10 working for Robert J. Dole, 19 Taggart, Bill, Jr. (son), 13 Taggart, Judy 1974 senate campaign, 24 1988 presidential campaign, 30 early career, 13 on Bill Taggart at the 1976 Republican National Convention, 25 on Bill Taggart becoming Robert J. Dole's agriculture aide, 16 on campaign fundraising, 26 on Elizabeth Dole, 30 on generosity of Robert J. Dole, 32 on giving away Robert J. Dole's book, 30 on influence of Elizabeth Dole on Robert J. Dole, 31 on Republican takeover of the Senate, 1980, 28 Taggart, Laura (daughter), 13 Taggart, Logan Coyd, 2 Taggart, Morell, 30, 32 Talmadge, Sen. Herman, 18

United Nations, 22 University of Kansas, 9 University of Kansas Press, 9

Veitz, Ed, 12

Webb, Dale, 10 Wichita Eagle, 13 Wohlford, Bill, 25 World Food Conferences, 27

Zimmerman, Julian, 13, 14