Another tough race has Harkin talking about cleaning up election

Senator Tom Harkin says now that campaign 2002 is history, he’ll push for new rules of engagement for those in the political ring. Harkin says he hopes there can be some kind of “accommodation” between the parties. Harkin says it’d be wonderful if there were an agreement between the two major political parties that would set parameters for campaign advertising, and forbid certain allegations or hints about political adversaries. Harkin says he intends to try to work with the parties to try to structure something like that. Harkin, who was the recipient and the purveyor of negative campaign commercials, was also the keynote speaker at a memorial service for Paul Wellstone that turned into a partisan pep rally and may have caused so much backlash it cost Democrats the election in Minnesota. Harkin, though, claims to have been wounded by the sniping from his Republican opponent, Greg Ganske. He says this campaign got a little more personal than other campaigns by going after him for his values.Harkin won a fourth term to the U.S. Senate in Tuesday’s election.