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Hoegh's maneuverings brought him to the attention of Ike-minded Governor William Beardsley, who appointed Hoegh Iowa's attorney general in February 1953. Methodist Teetotaler Hoegh soon created a fuss by insisting on strict enforcement of Iowa's widely ignored law against sale of liquor by the drink. With the help of the state's well-organized dry forces, he won the Republican nomination for governor in 1954 and beat Des Moines Democrat Clyde Herring, namesake of the late Democratic U.S. Senator (1937-43), by a cornhusk-thin margin of 25,000 votes in a total of 850,000. Anxious to get going, he moved into the governor's mansion before inauguration day, thereby set tongues chucking.
"High-Tax Hoegh." When the new governor delivered his first message to the legislature, the Old Guard and the old-timers who remembered his prewar days as an economizer were shocked right off their seats. He proposed a wide-ranging program which raised state aid to public schools to 25% of the cost of operating schools, increased appropriations for state colleges and institutions. He outlined a new highway safety program, including speed limits (there had been none previously). He urged recognition of the union shop, legislative reapportionment to 'reduce the control of rural areas over the cities, funds to promote industrial expansion, and a reduction in the voting age from 21 to 18. Said a dazed legislator: "No Iowa governor in history has presented so ambitious a program. He can't hope to get it all enacted in one session."
While the legislature was still reeling from the first message, Hoegh hit it again by asking for an increase of more than $31 million a year in revenue to finance the biggest annual budget in Iowa history, $146 million. His requests included almost $19 million for aid to education, $1,700,000 more for state institutions, $2,700,000 for increased salaries and services. To pay the cost, he proposed increases in the taxes on beer, cigarettes and gasoline, a capital-gains tax and extension of the sales tax to include services. By that time the legislature was aghast, and the Republican floor leaders of the house and senate handed out a cold statement: "This legislature will not be anxious to levy new taxes."
But after in days of pulling and hauling, including some cajoling and table-pounding by Hoegh, the legislature gave him a great deal of what he had asked for. It increased revenue $22 million, accepted in major part his programs for education, highways, state services and institutions. It increased taxes on cigarettes, corporations, beer and gasoline, and adopted a capital-gains tax. Then, just before the session ended, it tossed on Hoegh's desk a politically sizzling tax increase that he had opposed: a raise in the state sales tax from 2% to 2 ½%. He signed it. Says he: "I was saddled with the thing the legislature had passed. But I had to sign it or we'd go back to deficit spending."
Governor Hoegh came out of the session with praise from educators, good-roads enthusiasts and the progressive wing of his party, but with a label that his Democratic opponents are, in 1956, splattering all over his record: "High-Tax Hoegh."