A Small Businessman In Congress

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But however grounded they may be in the real world, most of Bedell's major legislative proposals go nowhere. The Small Business Committee lacks prestige and power in Congress. For many years it didn't even have authority to propose legislation; today, it shares jurisdiction with other committees. Tax bills, for example, must go through the Ways and Means Committee. And when small business is pitted against big business, as in the Reagan tax cut fight, small business is usually outmaneuvered. "Big business has so many more lobbyists in Washington working on members of Congress and their staffs," Rosenberg says. "Small businesses are vastly underrepresented here in proportion to their numbers."

Bedell's zealousness may also be part of the reason he doesn't have more influence over his fellow congressmen. "I love the guy," says a former aide, "but maybe a weakness of his is seeing things in black and white. Not all bigness is bad, and not all big businesses are bad."

That zeal in support of his cause also explains Bedell's involvement in issues that at first glance have nothing to do with small business. For instance, he's deeply involved in the Third U.N. Conference on the Law of the Sea, where delegates from over 150 countries are hammering out a treaty governing uses of the ocean. Yet Bedell represents a landlocked district and doesn't serve on any congressional committee with jurisdiction over the treaty.

The issue is tied in Bedell's mind to big company dominance. He says four mining consortia, formed by the likes of U.S. Steel and Kennecott, are trying to dictate the terms of the treaty for their own interests. If the consortia get their way, Bedell says, the treaty could be sabotaged, producing disputes about ocean rights that could lead to future wars. Bedell has pleaded with the Reagan Administration to put to rest rumors that it may "renege" on the Law of the Sea negotiations of four previous presidents. His plea appears to have been ignored. Last year, he urged his colleagues to defeat a bill that would open the way for U.S. mining firms to explore the ocean for mineral riches. The bill was approved overwhelmingly.

Bedell's popularity with the voters back home seems not to be diminished by his inability to get the rest of Congress to see things his way. He was reelected last year with 64% of the vote, despite a legal cloud over Berkley and Co. that his opponent pointed to frequently during the campaign. In 1978, federal customs agents raided the company's offices because of allegations that the firm was importing materials from its Taiwan subsidiary at artificially low prices, to avoid payment of duties. Earlier this year, a federal grand jury indicted company presided Donald Porter and three other current or former employees on charges of conspiring to cheat the government out of import taxes and of filing allegedly false customs declarations.

Bedell was not indicted, and David Hallberg, a former Bedell aide, agrees with others who know the congressman well that he wouldn't break the law. Hallberg concedes the investigation has been hard on Bedell: "It's plain agony for Berk to think that, after the way he's conducted his life, some people might believe he's guilty of a crime," Hallberg says.

Bedell himself says nobody has ever hinted he's the target of a federal investigation. Any doubt about his innocence, he says, should have been removed when he wasn't indicted.

And even Iowa Republicans, who would love to defeat Bedell, don't think Berkley and Co.'s legal problems, or Bedell's concentration on issues with little direct Iowa relevance, have hurt the incumbent. George Wittgraf, a northwest Iowa attorney and Republican county chairman, says Bedell is especially popular among small businesspeople and farmers, "who are traditionally the core of the Republican party here, not the Democratic party." Bedell's 1980 opponent, a GOP state legislator, complained that Bedell was too popular with Republicans, who seemed to have forgotten that the incumbent deserted the party 10 years earlier.

Organized labor supports Bedell, too, despite having suffered four defeats trying to unionize Berkley and Co. -- once when Bedell still ran the business, and three times since his election to Congress.

When he's not preaching to Congress on the virtues of small business, Bedell is preaching to small businesspeople. The most important thing, he tells them, "is to educate yourself on the issues, independently of the Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable," whose views, he says, are those of the giant companies. "The best way to influence members of Congress is through personal contact, and there are plenty of opportunities for that," says Bedell, citing the meetings he holds with constituents in his district and the advisory committees he maintains. "Next best is an individual letter. By far the least effective was is sending a form postcard supplied by one of the business lobbies."

Bedell also encourages small businesspeople to testify at congressional hearings, some of which he holds outside Washington for easier accessibility. "Berkley likes to bring in small business witnesses first," Rosenberg says. "Only after that does he call government officials, so he can test their theories against the real world experience of businessmen."

Rosenberg believe Bedell will survive the jokes that he's a Don Quixote tilting at the big business windmill. "Berkley has the self-assurance from his successful business background to take on unpopular issues," he says. "He isn't looking for parts on the back. He knows he's going to lose often. But that doesn't discourage him. Losing isn't the end of the world if it's something you believe in, something that's important."

Bedell plans to serve a little bit longer in Congress, then go back to being a full-time small businessman. "If I were to try to get my money out of my business," he says, "about the only way would be to sell to a bigger business. That would be a dirty shame, because it would just lead to more concentration. That's what I'm here fighting against."

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