The Quiet Rise of Jon Kyl
BARNES, FRED
The Quiet Rise of Jon Kyl How the junior senator from Arizona became a party leader in the Senate. BY FRED BARNES When Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona learned on the Sunday after Thanksgiving that...
...And last week, Kyl was formally elected whip...
...And that was just by making phone calls from his home in Phoenix...
...Though a leading conservative, Kyl has never become a lightning rod for attacks by liberals and leftists...
...The contrast between Kyl and his Arizona colleague, John McCain, is instructive...
...The media labeled him the “consensus” choice...
...One more thing: the kinder, gentler (and smarter) side of Jon Kyl...
...Democratic senator Byron Dorgan fi nally threatened “to plant myself on the fl oor like a potted plant” until a vote was scheduled...
...Twenty-four hours later, his chief rival for the whip post, Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, backed out of the race...
...The younger Kyl never pursued a political career in Iowa...
...Ordinarily I don’t talk about Republicans and Democrats...
...It didn’t take me long to pick Dick Cheney...
...After high school, he became ill with pneumonia and moved to Arizona for the climate...
...It was the defeat in 1999 of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT...
...When he had the 34 votes required to defeat ratifi cation, he asked Helms to allow a fl oor vote...
...True enough...
...This is the way Kyl, 65, has worked since he was elected to the House in 1986, then the Senate in 1994, and he has done so with remarkable effectiveness...
...He stayed for college and law school...
...To their surprise, Democrats discovered they lacked the votes for passage...
...Nonetheless, he won reelection last year, 53 percent to 44 percent, against a strong Democratic tide and against a candidate who spent more than $10.9 million of his own money on his campaign...
...By midday Monday, Kyl had locked up a solid majority of Republican senators...
...I’ve found I can be a lot more effective if I’m not in the limelight...
...He summoned Kyl and the late Senator Paul Coverdell of Georgia, one of Lott’s chief advisers, to his offi ce...
...As the leading expert on missile defense in Congress, he has impeded efforts by Democrats to slash spending and limit or prevent tests of antimissile systems...
...Kyl, operating inconspicuously, had outfoxed them...
...This is not an accident...
...We’ll vote next week...
...Meanwhile, Clinton and Democrats were clamoring for a vote...
...His infl uence comes from taking on issues with maximum media attention and building public support for his position...
...Kyl is a private senator...
...Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...Kyl had single-handedly put together a majority against it...
...That job involves turning policy ideas into appealing political messages...
...Lott, then Senate majority leader, said yes...
...The treaty was going to be ratifi ed...
...I have made an effort not to be partisan in an in-your-face sense,” he says...
...Vice President Cheney was then the House Republican whip...
...By acting unobtrusively but decisively, Kyl created a consensus rather than waiting for the possibility that it might form on its own...
...Cheney was a “thoughtful, responsible, moderate sort of person” who worked behind the scenes and rarely with great fanfare, Kyl says...
...By the end of the evening, he had 20 of the 25 votes needed to succeed Lott as the number two Republican in the Senate...
...I talk about ideas...
...What Kyl calls “my greatest legislative achievement” was the result of his no-press-conferences style...
...Oddly enough, his model in Congress is not his father...
...Alexander had to settle for succeeding Kyl as chairman of the Senate Republican conference...
...I have never had the need to get a lot of publicity...
...The Senate shot down the treaty, 51-48...
...Smart...
...But calling Kyl the winner by consensus doesn’t quite capture what happened...
...Lott was reluctant to dismiss Clinton’s plea out of hand...
...Today, he and Cheney, more conservative now, are close friends and political allies, agreeing particularly on national security...
...Kyl’s father, John Kyl, was a Republican congressman from Iowa who was squeezed out of offi ce in 1972 when the state lost a House seat in a reapportionment...
...It was mid-afternoon...
...McCain is a public senator...
...BY FRED BARNES When Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona learned on the Sunday after Thanksgiving that Senate Republican whip Trent Lott would announce his retirement the next day, he moved swiftly...
...Jon’s right,” Coverdell said...
...But Kyl is not an operator in the Lyndon Johnson or Bill Clinton sense...
...Kyl has become a major force on three issues of particular concern to conservatives: foreign policy, defense, and the judiciary...
...Kyl made the case for killing the CTBT...
...His style fits with the whip’s job, McCain’s with running for president...
...This went on for months...
...When getting ready to vote, pick out a Republican you trust who’s voting the other way and ask him why...
...As the leading expert on missile defense in Congress, he has impeded efforts by Democrats to slash spending and thus limit or prevent tests of antimissile systems...
...Kyl is a conservative— probably the smartest one in the Senate—in search of conservative victories...
...In the Senate, Kyl’s reputation has been as a policy wonk perfect for running the Republican conference...
...You can do so much by following that practice,” Kyl told me...
...Helms told Kyl to line up more votes, which he did...
...Desperate, Clinton called Lott and begged him to call off the vote...
...Kyl has never been known for playing hardball politics...
...As Time said, he succeeds by “subterfuge...
...He is not a pragmatist in search of compromise or popular applause...
...But his father, Kyl says, gave him one great piece of advice...
...He maneuvers skillfully out of public view to build Senate support for his positions...
...While Jesse Helms, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, kept the measure from reaching the fl oor, Kyl studied the details of the treaty, assembled a group of experts opposed to it, and took them to meet with individual senators...
...Last year, Time picked Kyl as one of the 10 best senators and called him “The Operator...
...When President Clinton submitted the treaty to the Senate in 1997, Kyl says he “could see the handwriting on the wall...
...Kyl has become a major force on three issues of particular concern to conservatives: foreign policy, defense, and the judiciary...
Vol. 13 • December 2007 • No. 14
