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Prasong Nurack, whose Thai restaurants in Des Moines and Iowa City were gathering places for politicians and presidential candidates for nearly 25 years, was appointed by a special commission last week to serve as a senator in his Southeast Asia homeland.
“It is a great honor, and we have much work to do,” said Nurack, who is best known as Pak and who introduced Thai food to Iowa in 1977 with the opening of a restaurant in downtown Des Moines. “I will be calling on my friends in Iowa to help me when the time is right.”
Under a new Thai constitution enacted last year, the country’s 150-member senate is divided between appointed and elected members. The previous 1997 constitution had made the upper house an all-elective body. That charter was scrapped after a September 2006 military coup and ouster of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra for alleged corruption and abuse of power.
Nurack is one of 74 senators appointed by the Thai Election Commission based on recommendations and nominations from some 1,087 state agencies, media organizations, charity groups and non-governmental organizations. The entities nominated nearly 1,000 people for senator positions, and the final selection was made by a special committee of seven that included senior judges and university deans.
Nurack, a lawyer in Thailand, immigrated to the United States with his family in 1971. He settled in Iowa after studying political science at Northeastern Illinois University.In Iowa, Nurack was a walking civics lesson, holding progressive views but showing equal affection for both Democratic and Republican customers. A Taste of Thailand was one of the first businesses in the now fashionable East Village of Des Moines to lure people over the river.
Just seven blocks from the state capitol, the restaurant was a popular locale among state lawmakers, lobbyists, and members of the media.
The New York Times once called it Des Moines’ version of Elaine’s, the classic Big Apple restaurant where powerbrokers and stars go to see and be seen.
In Des Moines, everyone from presidential candidates like Joe Biden and Paul Simon to former Gov. Tom Vilsack and former Iowa Attorney General Bonnie Campbell were regulars at Nurack’s restaurant.
When new gift laws limited the amount of money that could be spent on a lawmaker to $3, Nurack created a $2.99 lobbyist special for his lunchtime crowd. A voting booth commanded a prominent spot near the front door of his restaurant, and he urged customers to vote on various issues of the day. The Taste of Thailand poll was featured on CNN, ABC-TV, and in the New York Times.
The polls also solicited opinions about other matters, such as reincarnation (37 percent of those polled believed in it); television (67 percent said they preferred ”M*A*S*H” to Johnny Carson); touching your toes (76 percent replied they could do it and 24 percent called it a dumb question), and where Jim and Tammy Bakker would end up (the majority said Switzerland, rather than heaven or hell).
Thailand has been in a state of upheaval for several years due to the corruption charges against the former prime minister, and widespread protests two years ago led to the military coup.
When that happened, Nurack turned his Iowa City restaurant into a command center for Thai nationals living in the United States, working the telephone late into the night and creating a website for the exchange of information.
Nurack has split time between Thailand and Iowa for several years and moved back to Bangkok full-time last year. An earlier run for a senate seat in Thailand was unsuccessful. He will face re-election in three years.
Nurack returned to Iowa earlier this year with several Thai politicians because he wanted them to experience the caucuses firsthand. He said during a brief telephone interview that he was pleased to be shaping the future of his homeland.
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