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This former Arizona lawmaker knows the joys and frustrations of the Capitol

lisa graham keegan
Gage Skidmore/CC BY 2.0
Former Superintendent of Public Instruction Lisa Graham Keegan speaking with attendees at the 2017 Annual Awards Luncheon hosted by the Arizona Chamber of Commerce & Industry at the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix, Arizona, June 6, 2017.

This fall, lots of candidates are running for lots of offices up and down the ballot. But we’ve also seen a number of elected officials call it quits in recent years — from the state legislature to the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors to the U.S. Senate. Some of them have cited gridlock as a reason for their departures, saying they couldn’t get anything done. Others have said they thought they could be more effective pursuing particular policies outside of government.

Lisa Graham Keegan, former Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction, worked as an elected official and as a private citizen. She’s also advocated for education policies outside of government. She joined The Show to talk about if she was able to really tackle the kinds of issues she wanted to tackle while she was in elected office.

Full conversation

LISA GRAHAM KEEGAN: I was super lucky, super lucky for two reasons. First of all, education was a big issue for everybody and I was able to, I became the vice chair in my first term and then the chairman of the committee in my second term.

And at that time, Fife Symington was governor and he had blue ribbon committees on education and it just was top of everybody's mind. Speaker [Jane Dee] Hull was my first speaker, which was a huge blessing. She was a great mentor and then we did manage to ultimately in my second term pass some major legislation in 1994. So that was really, really gratifying and it has had a huge effect over time.

MARK BRODIE: So how do you see the calculation of what office holders, what policymakers, what politicians can do while they are in those offices versus the kind of impact they might be able to have as a private citizen.

KEEGAN: Yeah, the number two reason I was lucky, Mark, that I didn't mention was that I was in the majority. Republicans are in the majority in the House. Oh my gosh, it just made it, it makes a huge difference. And, and so because you can set the agenda et cetera, it is really the case that for me, I think it's really important to know your work.

You can't be great at everything. It's impossible, there's too much going on, but you can study particular issues. And I became really fascinated with the possibility of what educators could do given the freedom, et cetera. And so I also recognize there were gonna be some ways and some organizations that probably we were gonna need to get started in order to support the movement of educators, teachers, parents in the market if you will, because we were doing some things in Arizona, like public charter schools and open enrollment in the districts which was causing a dis we thought would produce a disruption and it has. And there were no outside supports for that.

So I was really interested in, yes, in becoming superintendent to sort of implement the 94 laws, but then also getting outside of that and, and addressing these things through nonprofit advocacy.

BRODIE: Well, how do you view those different kinds of work? Because it seems to me that there are certain things you can do and certain authority and power you have when you are, for example, superintendent of public instruction. But I would also imagine there are limitations with what you're able to do when you are in that role.

KEEGAN: For sure, Mark. And the superintendent's role is in a lot of ways, it's certainly an executive role. It's an administrative role. It isn't a legislative role. And so I had the benefit of having come from the Legislature relationships and I could talk to people there, but it is not the same thing as having a vote. Nothing is like being able to help write law.

BRODIE: I wonder though if there are certain things that just being out of elected office altogether, help you do that, maybe you can't do when you are elected, be it to the Legislature or, you know, a more executive role like the state school superintendent.

KEEGAN: I mean, one of the things is when you're in an elective office, there's somebody else who would actually like to be there, who's going to run against you. And that's their right. I mean, that's the way it should be. So, we should have to be defending ideas all the time. And, and one of the nice things about being a private citizen is it's not quite as acute. Certainly there's organizational disagreements, et cetera and all the things you have to do when you're running an organization or participating with an organization.

But you know, the acute opposition of elective office is you gotta want to put up with that, I should say, and that pressure comes off when you get out of elected office and, and you go work somewhere else. Although I have to say that the most difficult times I ever had were in nonprofit work that was connected to a political world.

BRODIE: What were the biggest adjustments for you when you left the superintendent's office and went into the kind of advocacy work because you stayed in, in education policy work. Yeah, you're still doing it. So I'm curious what the biggest adjustments were for you when you weren't state school superintendent and you were just Lisa Graham Keegan advocate.

KEEGAN: Yeah. Well, I was really lucky because I had Senator John McCain as a mentor, and he ran for president and invited me to help with his education policy team when he was running in 2000 and then again in 2008, Mark. And so that by 2008, I had been out of office for seven years or so and, but I had remained in touch with the work, doing the work in different organizations. And so I still had contact with people across the country that I had known.

So the big, you know, the big difference in your ability to do things is again, really relational.

BRODIE: We've seen over the last few years, a number of elected officials in the state decide just to leave office, be it the Legislature or, or other offices. And you occasionally hear from them that they are of the belief that they can have more influence on a particular policy away from the Capitol that they can while they're in elected office. Is that something that has come to your mind? Like, is that something that, that you would agree with?

KEEGAN: Two things, I guess, Mark. Yes, you can have a huge amount of all of us have power to do things, right? We want to apply enough energy and patience, working with other people, et cetera, of course. In the legislative realm, I worry quite frankly that people get frustrated with an inability to make progress because we've come, we've become so unwilling to talk to whoever opposes us. I maintain a very strong belief that whatever creation looks like it, it probably is about 360 degrees in a sphere of perspective. And you've got one and you can deny it, but you probably got one.

But I think you're obligated to help others understand your perspective and why it might be a good addition to this idea. When you eliminate 180 degrees of perspective from your thinking, the world is not a better place and Arizona is not a better place.

BRODIE: Are there certain policy areas where you think it might be easier for someone to have more impact outside of government than within?

KEEGAN: I mean, yes, yes, for sure. And you know, I, I think it's important for me, my perspective is as policymakers, you're actually not doing this work. And it's important to remember you have a narrow job and I think it's critically important to remember what your role is and not to try to do everybody's and I think that's a danger of being in, in elective offices. You, you think, you know everything about everybody. You don't, you don't actually know much and you're not doing the work.

What you're doing is you're trying to create a legal environment in which people can do the work, they can move ahead with whatever it is they're trying to do. Can they do that by law?

Are they free to do that? And on the other side is our regulatory scheme strong enough so that nothing bad happens. Are we preventing what we ought to be preventing, particularly where children are concerned?

And so you, those things are really, really important and they're constrained that it's just policy, you're not doing the actual work. So if you're really interested in the actual work, there's probably going to come a time when you, when you say, OK, well, I was able to contribute to some of this policy. Maybe I'd like to now go take advantage of it.

The only thing that I think is a negative is people leaving because in fact, they can't get a hearing for their ideas or they just don't think that the system is supportive of their even making an attempt.

KJZZ's The Show transcripts are created on deadline. This text is edited for length and clarity, and may not be in its final form. The authoritative record of KJZZ's programming is the audio record.

Mark Brodie is a co-host of The Show, KJZZ’s locally produced news magazine. Since starting at KJZZ in 2002, Brodie has been a host, reporter and producer, including several years covering the Arizona Legislature, based at the Capitol.
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