Kathleen Kelley: Farming, Skiing, and Politicking

"There's nothing I like better than driving down the road with one hand on a bottle of booze and the other around my favorite doll."

It was this comment by a Colorado state legislator during a debate over drinking and driving that persuaded Kathleen Kelley to enter politics. That very legislator would be her first political opponent.

Just out of college, with a brief speech writing stint for the lieutenant governor's office her only political experience, Kelley launched her candidacy for the state legislature.

"For a democracy to work you have to take the risk," says Kelley, a fellow at the Institute of Politics this spring. The risk seemed to pay off for Kelley. She defeated a Republican incumbent in the midst of the GOP landslide of 1980 and became at 25 the youngest woman ever elected to the state legislature.

The primary issue in the campaign was a proposal by Exxon to develop the oil deposits in western Colorado and the Rocky Mountains, where more oil is locked up than in the Middle East, Kelley explains.

Exxon wanted to construct the world's largest strip mine and bring in 2.5 million workers into an area with a population of 50,000.

Kelley opposed the plan, arguing that it would destroy tourism and agriculture and would "decimate the wildlife population," she explains. With two major ski resorts in her district, Aspen and Vail, the public shared her fears about the plan's effects on the skiing industry.

Kelley's farming backgound may explain her concern for the land and the environment. Kelley, whose family has been in farming for several generations, said of her interest in farming, "I think its genetic." Kelley wanted to be a farmer even as a young girl, she recalls, although her mother, a Chicago opera singer, encouraged her to pursue ballet.

Kelley, who operates a grain farm and cattle ranch with her husband and lobbies for the Rocky Mountain Farmer's Union, feels that there are serious problems with the nation's farm policy.

The Reagan administration has passed "the most expensive farm bill in history that does the least," Kelley says. She says that present farm policies are helping large "corporate" farmers more than they help the individual farmer. "We've subsidized corporate farming the most which has needed it the least," Kelley says.

The total debt U.S. agricultural debt has piled up to $214 billion, more than the combined foreign debt of Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil, she says, arguing that "It is sad that we can let these countries off the hook" while the government sends foreclosure notices to American farms. Kelley, who proposes a three-year moratorium on farm foreclosures, says that next month the government will send out 65,000 foreclosure notices.

Kelley expresses a Jeffersonian concern for the survival of the small farmer. "I see us destroying a way of life, destroying one of the most critical segments of the foundation of democracy," she says.

Kelley says that the American farming system has been "touted as an example to the world as the best of democracy and the free market system." To allow the individual farmer to disappear would send a message to the rest of the world, Kelley says, and could influence farm policy in China, the Soviet Union, and Eastern Bloc countries.

Kelley lost her reelection bid by 13 votes in the most expensive race in Colorado history. Her opponent's campaign was financed by a large Colorado mining company, she says. Kelley had opposed the company's efforts to overturn the state's mine safety laws.

Kelley says her loss illustrates that every vote is important. She says she is here as a fellow "because I believe it is essential that we have the brightest, most caring people," go into public affairs.