Berkley Bedell

In the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, Bedell endorsed Senator Elizabeth Warren.

Bedell died in Naples, Florida, on December 7, 2019, at age 98, from complications of a stroke he suffered three days earlier.

In the 2004 presidential election, Bedell attacked John Kerry for voting for Newt Gingrich's Freedom to Farm Act, which Bedell said wrecked the farm program. Bedell would later officially endorse Howard Dean's candidacy. For the 2008 election, Bedell met with Chris Dodd.

Built in 2004, Peace Harbor is Tom and Molly Bedell's former 25,000 square foot home on 1.26 acres with 178 feet of West Lake Okoboji shoreline near Spirit Lake, Iowa. It has a master wing, fifteen bathrooms, eight bedroms all facing the lake, six garages, an indoor entertainment stage over looking the water, a gathering room with a Brazilian blue marble floor and seating for over a hundred, a master retreat, master retreat bathroom, receiving room, conference room and private office with sweeping views of West Lake Okoboji, a commercial caterers kitchen, guest suite with its own bar, caretaker suite, catetaker suite kitchen, exercise room, upper level art studio, a movie theater with its own Lakeland Theatre Concession stand, and a large Irish Pub known as Kevin O'Sullivan's Pub. In June 2021, it listed for $9.9 million and was one of the most expensive homes in Iowa.

As an opponent of the Vietnam War, Bedell signed a petition urging against United States military intervention in Iraq. This petition was signed with the names of 70 former Congressmen from the 1970s and was presented in a press conference on March 15, 2003. Bedell said that it was unbelievable for the United States to settle disputes with war, and he said that an Iraq war would be similar to the Vietnam War.

Bedell did not seek reelection in 1986 after contracting Lyme disease from a tick bite. Though no longer serving in Congress, he remained active in Iowa politics, strongly supporting Howard Dean in 2004 over John Kerry. In the 2008 presidential election, he met several times with Chris Dodd, but ultimately endorsed Barack Obama.

Bedell decided not to seek reelection in 1986 after contracting Lyme disease from a tick bite. Afterward, he founded a center for alternative medicine and was a noted advocate of health freedom. Due largely to his friendship with Tom Harkin, he remained an important political figure in Iowa, with politicians such as Howard Dean meeting him in their trips to the state. Also, the Elinor Bedell State Park was established in 1998 on land donated by Berkley and Elinor Bedell. The park is named after the Congressman's wife.

In 1985, Bedell put forward an agricultural plan that he thought would increase production controls for farmers, thus raising prices for crops. This plan, backed by labor unions and certain Democrats, passed the Agriculture Committee as an amendment to farm legislation. It mandated a referendum that would then be used to determine what types of production controls to enact. The purpose of this plan was twofold: production controls would decrease the aggregate supply of crops, thus making individual crops cost more (which would benefit farmers, who were in the middle of an acute debt crisis). Second, by styling it as a referendum, the farmers would get to decide the severity of the controls.

In these investigations, Bedell quickly gained the support of small gasoline marketers and Congressman Bill Nelson. The chief target, ARCO, was accused of not paying all of its taxes on Alaskan crude oil. In the end, the government tried to make a case against ARCO, but it was eventually dropped in 1985. Bedell used this opportunity to attack the Administration for "not caring" about small business owners, and he advocated that Governmental agencies put aside 1–3% of their research and development money for small businesses.

In late 1982, Congress passed a law which forbade the United States from funding groups aiming to overthrow the Sandinista government of Nicaragua. Then, in 1983, Bedell visited Nicaragua and Honduras along with Representative Robert G. Torricelli. During the trip, Bedell spoke with soldiers, generals, governmental officials and members of the contras. His conclusion at the end of the trip was that Ronald Reagan was aiding the contras in violation of federal law. He promised to hold hearings after returning to Congress. Bedell would later join other House Democrats in demanding documents from the White House related to the contras, but the Reagan Administration refused to provide them. Bedell became angrier with the Reagan Administration as the decade wore on. He called his Central American policies "sheer lunacy," saying that the mining of harbors was an act of war. Bedell would retire from Congress before Reagan's actions in Central America would culminate with the Iran–Contra Affair.

In 1981, it was revealed in internal memos that Bedell may have known about potential customs violations that his company Berkley and Co. engaged in. It asserted that Bedell had gone to Taiwan in 1973 to discuss "prior violations of customs law" in regard to the sale of fishing rods from the company's Taiwan subsidiary. Bedell responded by denying any wrongdoing, saying that he has not been personally involved in the company in years. In the end, no charges were levied against him, and he was reelected after the story was published.

Bedell sponsored several bold initiatives during his tenure in the United States House of Representatives. One initiative, which came from his constituents' problems with the barge industry, focused on waterway usage fees. He introduced legislation in 1977 that would require the barge industry to pay a fee for using the waterways which, Bedell pointed out, the Government paid millions of dollars to create and maintain. Bedell's original plan set the rate the barge industry paid as directly related to the amount the Government spent on waterway projects. This would have the additional effect of helping curb unnecessary waterway projects, and it was the same plan proposed by Pete Domenici in the Senate.

By the early 1970s, Bedell had decided to run for political office. In 1972, he ran against Wiley Mayne, a Republican incumbent in Iowa's 6th congressional district. Mayne was a staunch supporter of Richard Nixon and secured victory along with the President in a year favorable to the Republicans. Mayne, however, would politically suffer after Watergate (he was one of only a few Republicans to vote against impeaching the President on the judiciary committee.) The damage had already been done, and Bedell defeated Mayne in a 1974 rematch.

Bedell was born in Spirit Lake, Iowa, the son of Virginia Viola (Price) and Walter Berkley Bedell. Bedell was educated in Spirit Lake public schools. He graduated from Spirit Lake High School in 1939, where he earned spending money with a business in the midst of the Great Depression. His business involved braiding dog hairs around fishhooks, the result of which could be sold as fish flies. He began tying the fly-fishing lures in his bedroom, then he moved the business into his parents' basement. In time, he got space above a grocery store to continue the business full-time.

After graduating from high school, he attended Iowa State University from 1940 to 1942, where he met fellow ISU student Elinor Healy (March 9, 1923 – March 2, 2017) from Saint Paul, Minnesota. Berkley and Elinor married in Minneapolis on August 29, 1943, and their son Kenneth was born in 1947, Thomas in 1950 and daughter Joanne in 1952. Berkley’s college and personal life was interrupted in 1942 when he joined the army. He served in the United States Army as first lieutenant and flight trainer from 1942 to 1945. When he got back, he began to garner success from his fishing tackle business. His business became larger, with hundreds of employees and international operations; he had become a millionaire by the 1960s. He served as member of the Spirit Lake Board of Education from 1957 to 1962.

Berkley Warren Bedell (March 5, 1921 – December 7, 2019) was an American Democratic Party politician and businessman who served as the U.S. representative for Iowa's 6th congressional district from 1975 to 1987. After starting a successful business in his youth, Berkley Fly Co., he ran for Congress in 1972, but was defeated by incumbent Wiley Mayne. In 1974 however, Bedell beat Mayne and was elected to the U.S. House.