‘Kate in ’88’

Wells County’s Kathleen Tyson Heslop made a brief but notable run for the White House

By MARK MILLER

While it is difficult to definitively say how many Wells County natives or former residents have run for a national office since the county’s birth in 1836, it is known that a 1963 Lancaster Central High School graduate was a candidate for the Republican nomination for U.S. President.

The significance of that is self-apparent in this, a presidential-election year, but also in what Kathleen Tyson Heslop chose as her key issue: the national debt.

“She was so smart,” her sister, Bluffton resident Sylvia Wann shares. “And always was a good salesman — she could sell a fly its own wings.”

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The year was 1988 — “Kate in ’88” was her campaign slogan, with a tag line of “Get the pork out of politics.” Ronald Reagan was completing his second term and a number of prominent Republicans were vying for the nomination: Pat Robertson, Jack Kemp, Bob Dole, Alexander Haig, Pierre S. “Pete” duPont IV and of course Vice President George H.W. Bush who would eventually be elected as the nation’s 41st president.

Then News-Banner editor Jim Barbieri interviewed Heslop twice — once by phone when she announced her candidacy in early May 1987, and another later that month when she traveled to Bluffton as part of an initial campaign swing through her home state.

“Kate comes across as neither blindly confident nor naive,” Barbieri wrote. “Good natured but particularly earnest, she insists both that she recognizes great odds and that she is a most serious candidate.”

Born in Allen County, she moved with her family to a small farm on the southeast corner of State Road 1 and County Road 400 North when she was 9-years-old. After graduation at nearby Lancaster, Heslop earned a degree in home economics at Ball State University in 1967 and then a masters degree in education at Iowa State University.

“For 17 years Kate lived in Charleston, South Carolina, where she taught art and home economics for seven years, worked as an interior designer and ran her own food brokerage business,” wrote Doug Haberland, then a columnist for the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel after he interviewed Heslop during that Indiana visit. 

She also owned and operated a dance studio there along with her second husband, Duke Roberts. High school friend Jeanne (Gerber) Rinkenberger recalls visiting her there and being impressed by her studio. It was in 1980, according to her diary.

“They had this beautiful garden behind their home and Kathy had become quite the Southern Belle,” Rinkenberger says. “She had adapted to the community and seemed quite happy.”

“They had a big, older house, there,” Linda (Decker) Isch, another high school classmate recalls, “and she once told me that it had been haunted but they had an exorcist come in.”

That food brokerage business reportedly went from zero to more than $4 million in annual revenue in just three years, a result, her sister says, of her sales skills.

Wann recalls that while she was earning her masters degree in Iowa, her sister worked part time at a Sears store in Ames. “She outsold her sales manager,” Wann says. “She was just so talented in so many ways,” adding that she was also known for her artistic talents, her sewing abilities and ballroom dancing.

In 1986, Heslop moved to Hattiesburg, Mississippi with her two sons from her first marriage (to Elwin “Ray” McAfee of Rockcreek Township) and her then husband Gordon Heslop, where Gordon was a professor at the University of Southern Mississippi. His career would cause several moves, Wann says. When she was introduced at a campaign event in September 1987 in Iowa, the speaker said she hailed from Minnesota since Gordon Heslop was then teaching at Mankato State University. 

‘Get the pork out of politics’

Heslop’s sister is not sure what spawned her candidacy. “I always thought maybe Gordon influenced that,” Wann says.

Barbieri reported that her attendance at the 1986 Conservative Congress and hearing former United Nations ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick “formulated her decision to run for president.” While his interview discussed education and foreign affairs, she “made it plain that her largest campaign emphasis is on the American economy.”

Heslop told Barbieri she was running because someone needed to come in from the outside, without obligations to anyone and halt the deficits and be able to say “no” when necessary “even to good-sounding programs.”

“We cannot continue to borrow $500 million per day — that’s $144 billion a year — it’s one fifth of our revenue,” Barbieri quoted her as saying in The News-Banner article dated May 27, 1987.

After their Indiana visit, the Heslops apparently traveled to New Hampshire. A United Press International article with a dateline of Concord, N.H., and dated June 26, 1987 reported on her campaign mascot — a piglet named “Sweet and Sour.”

“Kate Heslop, 42, a small business owner from Mississippi, plans to campaign with her 4-week-old piglet, which she walks on a leash around the country when she leaves the state that holds the nation’s first presidential primary,” the story reported.

The short article continued: “‘Sweet and Sour is kind of like the deficit,’ Heslop said. ‘The spending is sweet, but the sour part is that you have to pay later. It comes time when you have to stand up for what you believe. I plan to get the pork out of politics.’”

“Yes, she got a lot of attention with that pig,” Wann recalls. She remembers asking her sister how she could travel with it “but she told me that motels didn’t have a problem with it, and that it actually behaved better than a dog.”

The peak of Heslop’s campaign visibility likely occurred in August and September of 1987. She spoke for 10 minutes at what was labeled simply as a “GOP Picnic” in East Andover, New Hampshire Aug. 21, where she took the podium between Elizabeth Dole and Jack Kemp.

“Experience is said to be an issue in this campaign and I agree,” she told the crowd. “But I would ask ‘what kind of experience?’ Some say I have no experience in government. It is true I have no experience in creating a $200 billion deficit.

“I do believe that any group of 535 motorists selected at random from Interstate 93,” she continued, referring to the total number of members of the U.S. Congress and the interstate highway that passes near East Andover, “could have done a better job than Congress has this past decade of managing our economy.”

The remark brought some laughter and a hearty round of applause from her audience.

She saved her most pointed remarks for the “Cavalcade of the Stars” event organized by Iowa’s state Republican Party held in mid-September in Ames, Iowa. Heslop shared the stage at the Hilton Coliseum with Bush, Dole, Robertson, Kemp, DuPont and what was described as “another lesser candidate,” Ben Fernandez, reported to be the first presidential candidate of Hispanic heritage.

In her portion of the program, approximately 13 minutes in length, Heslop did not pull any punches.

“What I have to say today, you may not want to hear,” she began her remarks.

“I may be alone in this notion but I believe the American public deserves to hear it like it is. And the way it is, is that the professional politicians in Washington are financing their own political popularity on the backs of our children and grandchildren, borrowing another $500 million every day to keep the government afloat.”

This resulted in polite applause from the crowd, estimated at 5,700 who had paid $25 each to attend.

She referred to the national debt as “an economic time bomb,” which resulted in a more hearty round of applause. But that would soon change.

“Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Bob Dole and Jack Kemp are stealing the future of my children and your children.” No applause; a few scattered boos.

“It is sad to say but I believe that the Reagan administration has been the most irresponsible in the nation’s long history.” More audible boos were heard.

Heslop continued to harangue the party establishment about the debt; the video cuts to members of the crowd with sober faces. She had suggestions on how to cut the deficit, including welfare reform (applause) and opined that increasing taxes may be necessary (silence.)

“The real question is not whether you want to increase taxes but instead, whether you think we could pay for our spending ourselves or force our children to pay for our shortage.” This brought a spattering of applause but no boos.

Heslop moved on to her version of the American Dream, trade issues (Japan was seen then as the nation’s biggest threat), education and a criticism of farm subsidies. Her conclusion received better, if not enthusiastic applause that the Republican Party “should not be blinded by the politics of personality but rather let us be devoted to the politics of principle.”

The day concluded with a straw poll which Robertson won, Bush came in third and Heslop fifth, besting Haig, Fernandez and “Others” among the eight reported. In the Feb. 8, 1988 caucuses, Dole would finish first and Bush third. Heslop received less than 1% of the caucus polling.

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Although she created a few ripples in the political pond in Iowa, her campaign ended in the subsequent primary election in New Hampshire where the final results gave her no mention.

“She went back into the food business,” Wann recalls, “and she and Gordon divorced.” She took back her maiden name as her career took her back to Iowa and then to a small lake cottage near Coldwater, Michigan.

Linda Isch had kept in touch with her high school friend, always exchanging Christmas cards and birthday greetings.

“When she moved back into the area, she would call and we met several times in Fort Wayne for lunch,” Isch shares. “We’d just catch up, talk about family things.” Isch also recalls going to her friend’s cottage home on a small lake just north of the state line. “It was filled with her art. That’s what she was working on then. She was so talented.”

She died in the Laurels Nursing Home in Coldwater of pneumonia in November 2020 at the age of 75. Kathleen Tyson, Wells County’s only known person to be recognized by a major political party as a candidate for the nation’s highest office, was buried next to her parents in Elm Grove Cemetery.

miller@news-banner.com