CHAPTER FOUR
“You Can Start Too Late, but Never Too Soon”
Legendary former Kentucky governor Happy Chandler always said, “You can start too late, but never too soon.” Once I had set my goal of trying to become a senator, I knew it was time to start. It would be several years before I actually launched a Senate campaign—years spent preparing and planning in every possible way.
My first step was to find a way out of practicing law and into a job in politics. I had been at the law firm just a few months when that opportunity came. In 1968, Marlow Cook, the county judge of Jefferson County—the chief administrator, much like the mayor of Kentucky’s largest county—declared his campaign for the Senate seat left vacant by the retirement of Thruston B. Morton. I didn’t know Cook at all, but I sat down, wrote him a letter expressing my desire to work on his campaign, and hand-delivered it to his office at the courthouse. To my surprise, Cook invited me in to talk.
“What do you want to do?” he asked me.
I’d given it a lot of thought. “I’d like to be the state youth chairman,” I said. Three years before the passage of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment, the voting age in Kentucky was eighteen. Gaining the youth vote could make a big difference for Cook, and at twenty-six, I was confident I could make a connection with younger voters. “And I’d like to do it on a full-time basis.”
“You mean, get paid for it?”
“Yes, sir, that’s what I’d like.”
“Okay,” he said. “Why not?”
I was overjoyed and went into it knowing full well what I had signed on to: long days, little sleep, and hard work. But on my first day on the job, I was surprised to find that come five-thirty, the people around me at campaign headquarters cleaned off their desks, pulled on their coats, and went home. The same thing happened the next day. This was nothing like what I had expected. And, in my quest to achieve as much as I could in my first political job, I saw an opportunity.
The next day, and most days after, I was the first to arrive in the office and the last to leave. If anybody called in over the weekend with a question, I was the one answering the phone. I organized the Young Kentuckians for Cook, which we later expanded to become Young Kentuckians for Nixon-Cook. Before long, Cook noticed my work, and after he was elected, he offered me $17,000 a year to come with him to Washington as his chief legislative assistant. As soon as I got home that night, I called my parents. “It’s incredible,” I said. “We’re going to DC. And I’m actually going to get paid to do something this much fun.”
Sherrill and I packed our things in our 1966 Mustang, and headed to Washington in search of an apartment we could afford on my salary. The nation’s sense of security, first shaken by JFK’s assassination in 1963, had been all but shattered after the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. a few months earlier and with the growing resentment of the Vietnam War. We saw evidence of this as we drove into Washington, through neighborhoods dotted with burned-out buildings destroyed in the riots after King’s assassination. It made our new city feel much farther away from Louisville than the nine hours we’d driven. We ended up finding an affordable apartment on Dumbarton Street in Georgetown, and as I arrived in Cook’s office in the Old Senate Office Building on my first day, despite the national anxiety of the time, I couldn’t believe my own good fortune. An apartment in DC. A job on the Hill as a legislative assistant, having a hand—no matter how minor it may have seemed—in the direction of our country. My dreams were actually coming true.
I managed a five-person legislative department, while also helping with speechwriting and constituent services. What I felt was exactly the opposite of my experience practicing law—everything was interesting to me. From my perch as a young man with dreams of being elected senator from Kentucky one day, I absorbed everything happening around me. Mike Mansfield, a Democrat from Montana, was Senate majority leader at the time. He’d go on to be the longest-serving majority leader in history, holding the position for sixteen years. His evenhandedness and clear respect for every senator, regardless of political affiliation, made him very popular not only among his Democratic colleagues, but among most members of the Republican minority as well. This was in far contrast to his predecessor, LBJ. The popular account of LBJ’s life and legacy often leaves out this important detail, but by the time he left the Senate, LBJ’s colleagues had had enough. They may have bent to his will while he was there, but the moment they had a chance to be delivered from his iron-fisted rule, they took it. With their support, Mike Mansfield would spend the next sixteen years restoring the Senate to a place of greater cooperation and freedom. And as I looked at what the Senate could be, his example offered a clue. There are many well-known stories about Mansfield’s fairness and equanimity as leader. But they all seem to come down to one thing, and that was his unbending belief that every senator should be treated as an equal.
What I learned most from observing Marlow Cook was that when it came to being a freshman senator, he could have worked much harder. It’s unrealistic to think that a first-term senator is going to have a significant impact. Freshman senators rank lowest on committees, and it takes time to understand the workings of the Senate and the complicated procedures that govern how the institution operates. But given these limitations of entering the Senate, it is still important to stand firm in one’s beliefs. To do that, one has to have them, which Cook did not.
With political views that were a bit of an amalgam, born of no particular political philosophy, he tended to lumber from one issue to another. He also preferred the social aspects of politics: the conversational side of things. I became frustrated by the fact that he didn’t work harder and, as time passed, how seldom he returned to Kentucky to stay in touch with constituents. One difference between me and a lot of the legislative assistants was that I was very much interested in what was going on back in Kentucky, and I became the contact in the office keeping abreast of the issues on people’s minds back home.
I worked with Cook for about two years before I began to feel the restless pull of wanting to get back home and figure out a way to get started on my own political career. In 1971, I accepted a position working on Tom Emberton’s campaign for governor and returned to Kentucky, where I promptly made what I now consider to be my first big political mistake. The census of 1970 had brought about the creation of new state legislative districts in Jefferson County, where Louisville is located. Sherrill and I decided to find a town house to rent in a neighborhood that fell within one of the new districts that, obviously, had no incumbent, so that I could, while working for Emberton’s campaign, also try a run for the state legislature. But soon after filing, I received notice that one of my opponents had filed a suit against me, claiming I didn’t fulfill the residency requirement. It was only then that I looked carefully at what I should have noticed in the beginning: the constitutional residency requirement clearly stated that a candidate had to be living in the district at least a year prior to the election. This kind of hasty mistake was highly unusual given my meticulous nature. In the suit against me, I chose to represent myself, appearing in court to argue that nobody lived in the district the previous year because the district hadn’t existed. The case went to the Kentucky Supreme Court, and in the end, while one of the justices said my argument was ingenious, it simply wasn’t persuasive, and I was disqualified from running.
Failing to check the districting carefully was not my only mistake. My plan was to take a position working for Tom Emberton’s administration after he won. Foolishly, it hadn’t dawned on me that he might lose, but he did. When the results came in, it was difficult to accept the reality, but I knew I’d taken a risk, and when you take a great risk, there can be great rewards, or great disappointments. For me, I was facing the latter. I was without an income. I had very little savings. And Sherrill was pregnant with our first child. I had no choice but to get a job, and the only job I could get was as a lawye
r.
The experiences of my mistake and Emberton’s failure were both disappointing and embarrassing, but I also knew that I could wallow, or I could recognize the lessons that would serve me in the long term. First, I couldn’t afford to be so careless, and I have tried never to make such a mistake again. And second, I had simply overreached. I wasn’t ready to hold an elected office of my own, and my decision to run before I was ready was opportunistic. I had let my ambition get in the way of my judgment. From experience and observation, I knew that the most effective leaders were not ones who got where they were quickly, but were those who took their time, understanding the issues, learning the system, paying attention to what voters were asking for, and making sure they were superbly prepared. I vowed that this would be my approach going forward because if I wanted to be a strong, effective leader, and not just a short-term one, this was what was required.
But in the meantime, I was once again back at a law firm, not knowing much about practicing law, interested only in pursuing a political career, but confronting the very real necessity of having to eat. Which, given how ambitious and eager I was to get started on my road to becoming a senator, was a real inconvenience.
After slogging through being a lawyer for a few years, providing for my family and building valuable life experience, I finally reached a point where I had had enough. One night, I had to travel to Springhill, Louisiana, for a case I was working on. I couldn’t sleep, and at four-thirty in the morning, I went to find some coffee. Sitting alone in the dead of night, drinking bad coffee, I couldn’t deny it any longer. I was dying on the vine. Not only did I not enjoy practicing law, but I wasn’t very good at it. I knew I couldn’t keep doing this. The good news was that I had begun to set my sights on a clear goal. In three years, the current county judge of Jefferson County would be up for reelection. Marlow Cook had held this position before he was elected to the US Senate. I hoped I might follow the path that had worked for him. Holding this office would give me the chance to have an impact on the issues facing my county while also helping to prepare me for a Senate run one day. By the time I left the coffee shop, I’d made a decision. Over the next three years, I would continue to make connections and get myself ready to run for the position, but in the meantime, I had to find a different way of making a living.
At exactly nine o’clock the next morning, I called my friend Vince Rakestraw. He was head of the Office of Legislative Affairs in the Justice Department in Washington, and was one of the better-connected people I knew.
“Have you got any jobs?” I said as soon as he answered the phone, explaining that I had the support of the deputy attorney general, Laurence Silberman, whose sister Jan was a friend of mine in Louisville. “I’ve got to get out of here.”
Luckily, he did, and in October of 1974, four years after I’d left Washington, I returned. Sherrill and I decided it would be easier for her to remain in Kentucky rather than uproot our lives once again, and I commuted home to Louisville every weekend. With Ford in the White House, I went to work as the deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legislative Affairs at the Justice Department, where I’d stay for fifteen months.
Nothing—and I mean nothing—confirmed my Republican skepticism about big government more than my confrontation with the unmovable federal bureaucracy I saw at work there. I came into contact with incredible laziness and inefficiency every day in the Office of Legislative Affairs. People shuffling paper, doing the bare minimum, spending their days in an endless cycle of bureaucracy that had no impact, no meaning, and no point. This was nothing like the idea of government that I espoused, and I would have found my job wholly unsatisfying if it weren’t for the chance to encounter, above the stacks of paper, some of the nation’s best conservative minds—Robert Bork, Laurence Silberman, Antonin Scalia—legal luminaries who were all serving in the department at the time. We’d hold nearly daily staff meetings, where I’d get a chance to hear them speak. As a young guy who felt as if I knew nothing about the law, I never opened my mouth. At the time, knowing squat about most legal matters, feeling as if I’d escaped the purgatory of practicing law, I was lucky to be in their presence.
Even though I was in Washington during the week, I continued my efforts to build my reputation in Kentucky in preparation for a run for county judge. I participated in a story about commuting back and forth to Louisville. I even called the Courier-Journal and offered to write book reviews for them—which they agreed to—just to get my name out there. A little over a year later, I decided that my wait was over. I had served as a staffer to a congressman, an intern to a senator, and a deputy assistant attorney general. It was time to return home, and to start campaigning, not yet for a Senate seat, but at least this time for myself.
The first check I ever received for a political campaign was written by a guy named Marshall Royce as a contribution to my run for county judge. It was for $500, and it was thrilling that somebody was willing to bet some of his own money on my political future. I announced my campaign at the house Sherrill and I owned on Fleming Road. Beside us were our two daughters, Elly and Claire, then four and one. Our third, Porter, would be born two years later.
My old friend Joe Schiff volunteered to help manage my campaign, and we slogged through the summer, spending our weekends eating fish sandwiches and shaking hands at the Catholic picnics popular throughout the county. During the week, on the warm summer evenings, I’d travel up and down Dixie and Preston Highways as the sun went down, going in and out of stores by myself, introducing myself to the employees and customers at local diners and small businesses, and explaining why I was running for county judge. County government was a mess. People were escaping from the jail. Taxes were going up. I compiled a list of complaints from every neighborhood in the county—from broken streetlights to potholes—and vowed to address them if I was elected.
Approaching strangers, speaking in front of crowds—it was all extremely hard for me at the time. I’ve had time to work through it, but at my core, I’m quite shy. Often, on the way to these picnics or as I’d hear the jingle of the bell while opening the glass door on the next shop, I’d get actual pains in my stomach.
It took me an entire week, but I worked every one of the six buildings of the GE Appliance Park, an industrial complex that covers more than a thousand acres, and employed around twenty thousand people at the time. I spent my first day there studying how to make the best use of my time. I observed people’s habits, like where they parked their cars, and which doors they typically went in and out of every day. I would therefore work one door of a building early in the morning and another door in the afternoon, to avoid meeting the same person more than once. The morning shift would arrive around 6:00 a.m. and the late shift around two in the afternoon. I was there for each of them, telling people my name and my plans to clean up county government and end the cronyism that defined government under the Democrats. Meanwhile, I was running ads on radio and TV. In one of my favorite commercials, I emphasized how dysfunctional the current administration was by using the very real example of a prisoner at the county jail who had escaped after popping the broken lock on his cell with his toothbrush. I was working my butt off, literally; I lost several pounds just during the time I spent at the Appliance Park. But this is what I had been working toward for years. I had to give it everything I had.
And I had to win this race. The thought of being unemployed if I lost kept me awake many nights. I was the father of two young girls, soon to be three, and nothing was more important to me than providing for my family. I could, if necessary, return to practicing law, but I desperately wanted to avoid that. And then my dad called.
“Look, Mitch,” he said. “Your mom and I have been talking a lot about this. We both know what this means to you. And we know what’s at stake, with Sherrill and the girls. You just go and give it your best. If things don’t work out, we’ll be there for you after the election if you need help.”
After being sworn in as county judge, there were two things I did immediately: buy my first pair of Brooks Brothers shoes, just like the kind Senator Cooper had worn, and, with no intention of hiding my statewide ambitions, begin to look for ways to become better known throughout Kentucky. I accepted just about every invitation I received outside the county and spent a lot of time over the next few years, in between taking care of matters in Jefferson County—where my role was to address everything from broken-down infrastructure to managing all of the county agencies—to find excuses to crisscross the state, meeting families and hearing people’s concerns, from the coal miners of eastern Kentucky to the farmers out west.
In 1980, three years into my administration, I was a delegate to the Republican National Convention in Detroit that saw Ronald Reagan win the presidential nomination. It was a very exciting time for the Republican Party. Reagan ultimately outshone his conservative forebears because he articulated conservative principles with optimism, and he would lead the party of Goldwater to victory—winning forty-four of the fifty states that election—with that same openness and optimism. Reagan was a good example of the Edmund Burke style of governing that drew me to John Sherman Cooper. He enjoyed overwhelming electoral success because voters saw him as a person of conviction. They had confidence that he was doing what he thought was right, and they were willing to cut him slack even when they disagreed with him.
The Long Game Page 5