Wit and wisdom

Homegrown public servant Kerry Tymchuk makes politics fun

By Don Hamilton

The Portland Tribune, Sep 21, 2004, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Kerry Tymchuk learned everything he needed to know about politics behind the counter in his father’s grocery store.

His father, Tom, owned the Highland Market in Reedsport and was the city’s mayor. So growing up in a small town in the ’60s and ’70s, Tymchuk learned young about the political and economic consequences of not treating people right.

“In a small town everybody knows everybody, and you want customers to keep coming back,” said Tymchuk, 45, now of Beaverton and the state director for Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore. “If you’re rude to somebody, everybody knows about it.”

The grocery store lessons explain a lot about Tymchuk. In nearly two decades as a top congressional aide and speechwriter, mostly in Washington, D.C., he’s established a bipartisan reputation in a partisan world, an especially rare trait in this increasingly hostile election season.

No one in Oregon has a rŽsumŽ quite like Kerry Tymchuk’s. Republicans employ him, and Democrats admire him. He’s renowned in the political world for his skills as a speechwriter, humorist and author but likes to say his real claim to fame is as a four-time “Jeopardy!” champion.

He wrote speeches for Bob Dole, helping him craft his 1994 funeral eulogy for former President Nixon, his 1996 Senate resignation speech, his convention acceptance speech that summer and his election night concession speech that fall.

Before that, he worked as a speechwriter for Elizabeth Dole at the U.S. Labor Department and wrote her inaugural speech as head of the American Red Cross and her famous speech at the 1996 convention delivered while strolling among the delegates.

He drafts toasts, remarks, introductions, tributes, prayers, roasts or whatever either of the Doles needs. And he’s on call for one-liners when Bob Dole does Letterman or Leno.

“He’s always got some good ones,” Dole said.

In recent years he’s also been a prolific ghostwriter, helping Bob Dole on two volumes of political humor, Elizabeth Dole on her forthcoming volume of inspirational quotations and both Doles on their 1996 campaign biography, “Unlimited Partners.” He also helped Gert Boyle, Columbia Sportswear’s matriarch, write her autobiography, “One Tough Mother,” set for release in March.

Praise comes from all sides

Tymchuk is the latest in a long Oregon tradition of political aides who work behind the scenes for bipartisan cooperation. His predecessors in this tradition include Tom Imeson, an aide to former Republican Sen. Mark Hatfield and Democratic Gov. Neil Goldschmidt, and Gerry Frank, the multifaceted political aide, newspaper columnist and author who worked for Hatfield and advised Democrats.

“He’s a proud Republican, but he doesn’t go around beating up people,” Dole said. “He deals with independents, Democrats, Republicans. If he can help somebody do something, he doesn’t check their party registration.”

Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., praised Tymchuk’s work for such bipartisan projects as light rail and renovating the Pioneer Courthouse.

“Kerry is a throwback to a different age,” Blumenauer said. “There was a time when Republicans and Democrats at the staff level were part of a bigger picture that was less partisan. With him it’s not partisan. It’s ‘How do we get the job done?’ ”

Two Democratic governors appointed him to office. John Kitzhaber named him to the Criminal Justice Commission, and Ted Kulongoski named him chairman of the Oregon Lottery Commission.

Certainly, the job of state director for Sen. Smith isn’t always political. It involves more bread and butter chores of constituent relations and liaison to local governments, not the cut and slash of the political front lines.

“Kerry represents the piece of Gordon’s political life that’s bipartisan and compassionate,” said Dan Lavey, a political consultant and former Smith aide. “He’s ruthlessly nonpartisan. That makes him a good public servant, but the same qualities might not make him a super politician or candidate.”

Tact learned at an early age

Tymchuk’s name surfaces occasionally as a candidate for other offices, among them U.S. attorney, federal judge and Congress. But so far he seems content with his role behind the scenes as author, humorist and congressional aide.

His passion for politics emerged early. By age 8, he’d memorized the presidents, and his father would take him to local service clubs where they’d pepper him with presidential trivia questions. Who was 14th? Franklin Pierce. Who was vice president in 1930? Charles Curtis. When he got it right, they had to pay into the club kitty. When he got it wrong, his father had to pay.

“We grew up in a house with lots of adults in and out with different political leanings,” remembered his older brother, Keith, now Reedsport’s mayor. “We learned to respect points of view that weren’t necessarily ours because they were guests in our home. You respected them, so you respected their viewpoints as well.”

The grocery store also offered lessons in tact. At 10, he was working the register and noticed how adults grew uncomfortable when a kid rang up their adult health care products. So when they approached the line with grownup products, he’d find an excuse to turn over the register to an older clerk.

In 1985, after Willamette University School of Law and a year as a Marion County prosecutor, Rep. Denny Smith, R-Ore., hired Tymchuk as an aide in his Washington, D.C., office. Four years later, Elizabeth Dole hired him at the Department of Labor, the start of his long relationship with the Doles.

1 | 2 Next Page >>

Facebook	Digg	Del.icio.us
Newsvine	Stumbleupon	Reddit