Keefe May Be Too Connected His Knowledge Of Government Poses Challenge

The lines in Tom Keefe’s resume generating the most talk in his congressional campaign are those showing his short residency in Eastern Washington’s 5th District, which for nearly six decades has picked only native sons to represent it.

But the lines that show his years in and around government could pose a bigger challenge for the 52-year-old lawyer. His love for the process may be a tough sell in a district that can show real antagonism toward government.

As one longtime Democrat wondered recently: Is candidate Keefe too much of a government wonk to win his battle against Republican incumbent George Nethercutt?

Keefe insists not - and, in almost the next breath, admits being fascinated with the way government works. He can wax nostalgic about Senate hearings that led to nationwide flammability standards for cellulose insulation - not too fascinating until you realize the law probably kept houses from burning down.

“I like understanding the process and seeing how it can directly impact people,” said Keefe, a former aide to Sens. Warren Magnuson and Brock Adams. “I used to love oversight hearings, getting witnesses up there and asking them, `Why do we have this rule? Do we need this rule?”’

Process rarely makes for a rousing stump speech or a 30-second television commercial, which is the weapon of choice in this campaign year.

Keefe is unfazed. “I’m not a bumper-sticker slogan kind of guy,” he said.

He is the kind of guy, say longtime friends and colleagues, who is plain-speaking and self-starting. A guy who will work from early morning to late night on a cause or an issue, but has a quick temper and can get frustrated when government bogs down. He has a good, but sometimes quirky, sense of humor, which he blames for a comment about Jews that earned him a brief suspension from a job in the Seattle mayor’s office.

But he is most of all a guy who knows and loves the intricacies of government.

After all, he met his wife, Jo Ann Kauffman, because of his knowledge of government.

It was 1982, and Kauffman had come to Seattle to run the city’s Indian Health Board. Federal funding for urban Indian health programs was being cut, and she was looking for a way to replace it. Friends told her to go see this guy in the mayor’s office who “used to work in D.C. and knows the process.” They worked together to find money for the program; they married in 1983.

Keefe was then the legal assistant to Seattle Mayor Charles Royer, trouble-shooting programs and reviewing new ordinances the City Council proposed.

“He was almost encyclopedic in his knowledge,” the former mayor said recently.

Royer had known Keefe, one of nine children in a politically active Seattle family, for years and worked with him when Keefe was an assistant to Magnuson in the 1970s.

Magnuson found Keefe a patronage job running a Senate elevator at nights while the young law school student attended Catholic University. When he graduated, he went to work on Magnuson’s staff.

“He was legendary for coming in at 3 a.m. and going straight through to the evening,” said Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Bremerton, who was also one of Magnuson’s proteges.

One of his tasks in 1979 was finding a way for Magnuson to save a 61-mile stretch of the Milwaukee Railroad from Newport to Metaline Falls. The towns needed the line to keep a cement plant running, but the railroad was in bankruptcy and the tracks were deteriorating.

John McLaughlin of Newport recalls Keefe working tirelessly to arrange for the railroad to sell the spur, which the newly formed Pend Oreille Port District bought with money Magnuson found in the federal budget.

“That was our lifeline,” said McLaughlin, a former port district commissioner and Democratic county chairman.

When Magnuson lost his re-election bid in 1980, Keefe returned to Seattle, worked on Royer’s re-election campaign the following year and landed a job as legal counsel. He reviewed budgets, talked with the news media and worked with the congressional delegation and Indian tribes.

“If he’s afflicted with one thing he needs to watch, it’s his sense of humor,” Royer said.

One remark Keefe said he meant in jest backfired on him. In talking about various events the city commemorated, Keefe told a reporter there were proclamations the mayor shouldn’t sign. “A Holocaust Appreciation Week or Make a Jew Into a Lampshade Month is not the sort of thing the mayor ought to do,” he said.

Some people regarded the comment as anti-semitic, although representatives of Jewish groups said at the time they didn’t think he was bigoted. Keefe offered to resign. Royer suspended him for three days.

“He doesn’t have an iota of bigotry,’ Royer said. “I told him, `Don’t make a mistake that hurts people.”’

Keefe said the incident was a painful lesson. “I didn’t have to learn there was nothing funny about the Holocaust. I learned that in public life, off-beat humor can be easily misinterpreted.”

In 1989, when Keefe and Kauffman were expecting their third child, Brock Adams called from Washington, D.C., offering a job handling transportation issues. Keefe went to work for Adams, and Kauffman, a member of the Nez Perce Tribe, set up a lobbying firm specializing in tribal and Indian health issues.

In 1992, as Adams was preparing for a re-election campaign, The Seattle Times reported that eight women had leveled charges of sexual assault and harassment against the senator. The newspaper printed their stories, but granted the women anonymity. Keefe defended Adams and criticized the paper on national television for not letting the senator confront his accusers.

“He spoke his mind when I couldn’t,” Adams said recently. “He’s a close friend, and a fighter.”

Adams eventually dropped out of the race, and when his term was over, Keefe went to work for a large Washington, D.C., lobbying firm where his clients included the Hopi Indian Tribe, the National Restaurant Association and biotech companies. One icy morning as he left for work, he slipped on the driveway, hit his head and suffered a concussion. He remembers waking up in the emergency room, unable to answer a question as simple as “How old are you?”

The accident prompted him to ask himself if he was really doing what he wanted. The answer was no. He quit the large firm and went to work with Kauffman. Within a year, they moved their lobbying firm to Kamiah, Idaho, on the Nez Perce Reservation.

“It was a commitment I made to Jo Ann before we got married,” he said. “She wanted the children to be culturally connected to their tribe.”

The plus side of the move was the children growing up on a 15-acre farm across from the school. The minus side was confronting a community he describes as “divided along racial lines in a hostile way. One day, his son Kevin came home from school with news that the tribe was going to restrict fishing for non-Indians. “Which side are we going to be on?” his son asked.

“We’re not fighting anybody,” Keefe told him.

Early this year, Keefe and Kauffman moved to Spokane to have more options for school for their children, ages 15, 14 and 11. When he arrived in Spokane, Keefe said he discovered the Democrats were still looking for a candidate for Congress against Nethercutt. He talked to several “usual suspects” who were shying away from the race, and decided to enter.

Some longtime political friends always thought Keefe would run for office. “I always thought he had the outgoing personality to be an elected official,” said Rep. Dicks.

“I wasn’t surprised he was running,” said Royer. “I was surprised he was running over there.”

But Royer and others argue that Keefe’s recent move to Spokane - something that Nethercutt and Republican campaign ads have been pounding on - shouldn’t count against him.

“It shouldn’t be a negative rap that he knows the state or spent time in Seattle,” Royer said.

McLaughlin said Keefe’s government experience would be a plus for a new congressman. But it’s obviously a problem for a candidate, he added.

“We seem to like people who have experience, but don’t like the aura of Washington,” he said.

This sidebar appeared with the story: Up next

Wednesday: A look at incumbent Rep. George Nethercutt.