Phil Hare

American politician (born 1949)

Philip Gary Hare (born February 21, 1949) is an American politician who was U. S. Representative for , serving from 2007 until 2011. He is a member of the Democratic Party. The district was based in Illinois's share of the Quad Cities area and included Rock Island, Moline, Quincy, Decatur, Galesburg and part of Springfield.

Hare was born in Galesburg but grew up in Rock Island. He graduated from Alleman High School in 1967. The son of a machinist, Hare went to work at Seaford Clothing Factory in Rock Island, where he stayed for 13 years. He received his A. A. degree at Black Hawk College in Moline, Illinois. While working there Hare served as a union leader and was President of HERE Local 617. He served in the U. S. Army Reserves from 1969 to 1975. Hare began his political career in 1980 when he ran as an alternate delegate to the Democratic National Convention in support of the presidential candidacy of Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts. He was one of six candidates running for alternate delegate but the three Kennedy delegates were defeated by the three candidates supporting President Jimmy Carter.

In 1982 Hare left his union position to help his friend Lane Evans, who was running for the U. S. House of Representatives in an attempt to unseat 16 year incumbent Republican Tom Railsback. Hare first met Evans in 1976 when the two were volunteers in U. S. Senator Fred R. Harris's campaign for president. Railsback was upset by conservative State Senator Kenneth McMillan in the Republican primary, and Evans defeated McMillan in November, and appointed Hare as district director. For the next 24 years, Hare worked as an aide to Evans, assisting the congressman primarily on constituent issues and labor problems. In the last few years of Evans's time in Congress, Hare attended several speaking engagements and even debated Evans's opponents in 2002 and 2004 because of the congressman's Parkinson's disease, which often prevented Evans from participating.

Hare and his wife Beckie currently live in Rock Island and have two grown children, Amy and Louis. Hare appeared on the March 15, 2007 episode of The Colbert Report in the show's "Better Know a District" series.