Dr. Ganske takes Iowa work ethic to D.C.

The surgeon-U.S. representative hopes to further his battles for patients in a run this fall for the Senate.

By Kathleen Phalen, AMNews correspondent. Sept. 23/30, 2002.

The Nation is their Patient
Doctors serve America at all levels of government. This occasional series explores how their medical background influences what they do.

Greg Ganske, MD, learned early that things don't happen without effort. Working in his family's Manchester, Iowa, grocery store as a child, he was stocking shelves when other kids were fishing by the pond.

"My mom and dad taught me the value of being honest, the necessity of hard work," says Dr. Ganske, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon. "You don't get anywhere without hard work."

So when he thought his Iowa congressman was out of touch, when he saw things in his own practice that made him uneasy, Dr. Ganske set out to do something about it.

He ran for Congress against a 36-year congressional veteran. And won.

That was eight years ago.

The Republican congressman has been operating in a different sort of arena ever since. He's traded a solo practice of 100-hour workweeks in Des Moines for his Monday-through-Thursday life on Capitol Hill. He's exchanged individual patient contact for writing bills intended to help millions. He's traded the immediacy of the operating room for the sometimes slower-than-slow process of lawmaking.

"The legislative process is ongoing," Dr. Ganske says. "It takes years and years until it is signed into law."

There's one thing he didn't get to trade in -- his beeper. "I still carry a beeper, I can't get rid of it," he says, laughing. He likens the two professions to wrestling -- his high school sport.

"Being a surgeon or being in politics is like a contact sport. Success or failure depends on your effort."

This spring he announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate. Running against incumbent Sen. Tom Harkin (D), Dr. Ganske is in what some have predicted to be one of the thorniest races this year. So he's digging in, pounding home his record, quickly recounting a litany of political differences between him and Harkin on everything from tort reform to the environment. He's confident he'll win. [...]