Jill L. Long, an academic by training, rose through the ranks
of Indiana politics to become an influential advocate for
the state’s agricultural interests.1
Long wrested away from
Republicans a northeastern Indiana district considered a safe
GOP seat. She went on to serve in the United States House
of Representatives for three terms, campaigning as a no-tax, conservative Democrat. In Congress, Long focused on
farm issues and, as chair of the Congressional Rural Caucus,
doubled the group’s membership.
Jill Lynette Long was born on July 15, 1952, in Warsaw,
Indiana. Raised on a family grain and dairy farm, Long’s
rural upbringing influenced her future political career.
“Growing up on a farm, I really learned, at an early age, the
importance of this democratic community involvement,”
Long noted.2
She graduated from Columbia City Joint
High School in Columbia City, Indiana, and became the
first person in her family to graduate from college, receiving
a BS at Valparaiso University in 1974.3
Long pursued
her academic studies at Indiana University; she earned
an MBA in 1978 and a PhD in business in 1984. From
1981 to 1988, Long taught business administration as an
assistant professor at Valparaiso University. She also served
as a lecturer at Indiana University at Bloomington and an adjunct at Indiana University-Purdue University at Fort
Wayne from 1987 to 1989.
Long’s first public service experience was as a member
of the city council of Valparaiso from 1984 to 1986. “Up
until that time, I had no interest in running for public
office,” Long explained. “But I would listen to politicians
talk about the economy, and I realized that I knew more
about economics than most of the people who were trying
to lead us out of this difficult economic time and decided
that maybe I could have a role to play.”4
She was dubbed
“Jill Longshot” when she ran as a Democrat against GOP
incumbent James Danforth (Dan) Quayle in the 1986 race
for a seat in the U.S. Senate. “I sort of like the nickname,”
Long admitted. “The more people hear it, the more they’ll
remember me.”5
That contention proved prophetic later in
her career, though at the time Quayle beat her handily with
61 percent of the vote. In 1988 she ran in a Fort Wayne-centered U.S. House district in northeast Indiana against
incumbent Daniel Ray Coats, a Quayle protégé. Coats
turned back Long’s bid, capturing 62 percent of the vote.6
When Coats was appointed to fill his mentor’s U.S.
Senate seat after Quayle resigned to become Vice President
in 1989, Long challenged the Republican candidate Dan Heath in a special election for the vacant Indiana House
seat. The district had been in GOP control since 1976,
and Heath, a former adviser to the Fort Wayne mayor and
Representative Coats, was initially favored to win. “There
was a great deal of national attention because it was a special
election,” Long observed, “but also because it was the Vice
President’s old congressional district because he had held
that as his congressional seat before he went to the United
States Senate.”7
The candidates held similar positions on
the budget, military spending, and gun control. Both also
grew up on farms and shared many of the same views on
agriculture policy.8
In part because of her name recognition,
but also because of an anti-tax pledge and attacks on Heath’s
controversial connection to a proposed Fort Wayne income
tax plan, Long defeated her opponent by a slim one-point
margin in the March 28, 1989, special election, winning
with fewer than 2,000 votes out of more than 128,000
cast.9
Democrats trumpeted her surprise election, eager to
advertise their success in what had traditionally been a “safe”
seat for the GOP. Long’s victory also defied expectations
because of her gender. “It’s always been more difficult for
women to be taken as seriously, and at that time, there had
been no woman to represent that district in Congress,”
Long recalled. “I was the fourth woman from Indiana to
even hold a congressional seat, and so it was a novelty.”10
In the 1990 and 1992 elections, Long defeated her
Republican challengers by 61 and 62 percent, respectively.
She ran effectively as a conservative Democrat, depriving
her Republican challengers of issues related to taxation and
fiscal conservatism. “She’s done a good job of impersonating
a Republican,” a longtime local GOP chairman observed.
“Tell the truth, she sometimes sounds more conservative
than I do.”11
After being sworn in on April 5, 1989, Long sought
and received a seat on the Agricultural Committee to
represent her largely rural district. She served on several
of its subcommittees: Environment, Credit, and Rural
Development; General Farm Commodities; and Livestock.
One of the few women to serve on the Agriculture
Committee during her tenure, Long recalled, “In my TV
spots that were produced for my campaigns, I always had
one with me driving a tractor. I actually think some of the
men were intimidated by that because they hadn’t, some
of the men on the committee, hadn’t driven tractors.”12
She was successful in amending the 1990 Farm Bill to
include provisions that provided incentives to farmers who employed conservation techniques and ensured fair
planting flexibility for farmers. She also served on the Select
Committee on Hunger. In 1993 she was elected chair of
the Congressional Rural Caucus. She managed to double its
membership to more than 100 and earned a reputation as a
leading advocate for farm interests on Capitol Hill.
Long established herself as a fiscal conservative, opposing
congressional pay raises and all tax increases including
President William J. (Bill) Clinton’s 1994 budget. “I’m
cautious and moderate by nature,” she said. “I was raised
not to like taxes, to save money, to darn socks and refinish
furniture—all the 4-H Club stuff.”13 On the Task Force
on Government Waste, Long helped investigate dozens of
government agencies to identify inefficient use of federal
money. But she usually sided with liberals on social issues.
She voted to increase the minimum wage and for federal
funding for abortion in cases of rape and incest. She also
opposed the authorization granting President George H. W.
Bush the use of force against Iraq in the Persian Gulf War.
As a member of the Veterans’ Affairs Committee and its
Subcommittee on Hospitals and Health Care, she worked
for better treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder and
advocated the expansion of hospice care for dying veterans.
“I just always knew that my dad was willing to give his
life for this country,” Long revealed when reflecting on
her committee service. “And knowing that makes you
approach—when it’s someone that close to you, and my dad
and I are still very close—knowing that makes you approach
veterans’ issues, I think, in a way that it’s so personal, and
you’re so passionate about it.”14
Congresswoman Long had been a Democrat popular
among GOP voters, relying by one estimate on 20
percent or more of the Republican vote.15 The Republican
groundswell of 1994 and the backlash against Democratic
President Clinton cut into her margins. Despite her fiscally
conservative roots, Long was one of the victims of the 1994
“Republican Revolution,” losing by 10 percent of the vote
to Republican Mark Edward Souder, an aide to Senator
Dan Coats. After Congress, she served briefly as a Fellow
at the Institute of Politics in the John F. Kennedy School
of Government at Harvard University. President Clinton
then appointed her as an Undersecretary of Agriculture,
where she served from 1995 to 2001. As Undersecretary
for Rural Development, Long managed 7,000 employees
and an $11 billion budget. After leaving the Department
of Agriculture, she taught as the Mark E. Johnson Professor of Entrepreneurship at Manchester College in North
Manchester, Indiana, and as an adjunct professor in the
School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana
State University.
In 2002 Long easily won the Democratic primary for
a newly redrawn U.S. House seat in north-central Indiana
encompassing South Bend and lying just west of much of
her old district. She faced business executive Chris Chocola
in the general election for the open seat. In a competitive
and, at times, heated race in which both candidates spent
more than $1 million, Long narrowly lost to her Republican
opponent, 50 to 46 percent.16 After her defeat, she offered
a conciliatory message to her backers: “It’s important for us
to give support to whoever is elected in this position because
the top priority for all of us is to do all we can to make sure
our government is as strong as it can be.”17 Long lives on
a farm with her husband, Don Thompson, a former Navy
pilot, near Argos, Indiana.18
View Record in the Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress
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