7.20.00
Former Coverdell Staffer Kyle McSlarrow

7.14.00
Lou Cannon

7.11.00
The Oklahoman's Patrick McGuigan on Frank Keating

7.07.00
The Heritage Foundation's Baker Spring

7.05.00
Harry Browne

6.30.00
Nebraska Attorney General Donald Stenberg

6.29.00
Grover Joseph Rees Says...

6.28.00
Pro-Life Activist Clark Forsythe

6.22.00
Condoleezza Rice

6.21.00
Rep. Richard Baker

7/20/00 10:50 a.m.
Former Coverdell Staffer Kyle McSlarrow
“Sen. Coverdell was the kind of guy who never left a moment wasted. . .”

By Kathryn Jean Lopez, NR associate editor--------------lopezk@ix.netcom.com

yle E. McSlarrow served as chief of staff for Paul Coverdell. He currently runs the Washington, D.C. office of grassroots.com.

Lopez: What was it like to work for Paul Coverdell?

McSlarrow: It was a lot of fun. It was always hopping. Sen. Coverdell was the kind of guy who never left a moment wasted: If he could fill it with action and activity, he did it. And that meant we did it right along with him. So you were always in the middle of things and we were always doing very interesting things. But as seriously as he took his job, he was in some ways very lighthearted. He was just fun to be around. He was one of those members of Congress who really treated everyone, and most especially his staff, with real respect. He just made you want to work as hard as he did, although, frankly, none of us ever worked as hard as he did.

Lopez: He was a different kind of senator, wasn't he?

McSlarrow: Yes, he really was.

Lopez: How so?

McSlarrow: I remember there was an article somebody wrote a few years ago, when I was his chief of staff, and I think the title was "Paul Coverdell, The Best Staffer in the Senate." And in a way it summed it up. His attitude was "solve problems," "advance the ball." He described himself very often as a foot soldier. While the rest of us saw a guy who was a U.S. senator, he never saw himself that way. He saw himself as a guy who had been a local state legislator for years, who had been a party chairman, who had always been an activist, and now he was an activist who had the good fortune to inhabit the office of a U.S. senator. So while he was there — getting back to the title of that article — he really approached things from the perspective of, "How can I roll up the shirtsleeves and sit down and solve this problem?" So he would put teams of people together, and whether they were teams of senators or teams of coalition members outside his office or teams of staffers, he would sit down and work right alongside with us. Many times I would walk inside his office and say, "Here's what we need to do, I need you to make these ten calls," and he would just pick up the phone and ask what the first number was, and he would just roll right through. The whole attitude was very down to earth. And there are others who are like that, but I think most people would agree, and most of his colleagues would agree, that he was just spectacular in that way. And as a result people — and the Republican Conference in particular — just kept giving him more and more work to do. Because they just realized that's what he enjoyed, that's what he was good at.

Lopez: What was his most important contribution as a senator?

McSlarrow: Legislatively, I think his most important contribution was that he did more — there were others who contributed to this, like Dan Coats — but I think he did more than anybody else, in the last five years, certainly, to put the Republicans on par with Democrats in terms of their appeal on the education issue. He wasn't actually on any committees that had education as part of their jurisdiction, but he thought it was important. He thought that it was completely nuts that the Democrats always enjoyed huge margins in the polls in terms of people thinking that they could handle the issue better than we could. And he thought it was partly a problem of message, and partly a problem of lack of focus and strategy. And so he set out to put together a package, which we just kept ramming through the Senate, and then the House, year after year. It kept getting vetoed. But in doing so, it gave us a set of issues and programs that people could rally around and talk about and really put the White House on the defensive year after year. And the result was that in all those polls that years ago showed us at such a disadvantage, in the last few years we hadn't quite reached parity, but they had really narrowed. I don't think that there is anybody else who deserves credit for that like he does.

Lopez: If we could sit down with him today and ask him what he'd like his legacy to be, do you think that would be it?

McSlarrow: It would be that, or it would be his work on drugs. In particular, down in the state of Georgia, one of the things that he did was to start what was essentially a drug-free Georgia program where he, for several years, would go from high school to high school, elementary and junior high schools for, essentially, town halls — every weekend he was home I think he did at least one, and he was home every weekend — and he would talk to the kids and their parents and their teachers about drugs. He would leave behind him at every stop a little chapter of what became a fully functioning statewide organization, and a really vibrant one. The reason he might pick that issue is because I know nothing pleased him more than to be stopped in downtown Atlanta or somewhere else by someone who said, I went to this and you really made a difference. He used to tell us those stories all the time, so I know it really made an impact on him as well.

Lopez: Is there anything special you'll remember about Sen. Paul Coverdell?

McSlarrow: He was fundamentally one of the most decent people I've ever met in my life. I always thought that if I were ever in public service, that he would be my model. Just a very good person.

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