Our Friend Keith Smith

News of the death of Keith Smith was a particularly unexpected disappointment this fall.  I, like so many of us, was looking forward to visiting with him again in Santa Fe in December, enjoying his excellent company, and admiring a truly first-rate personality who remained fully engaged with his companions any and all the times he was with them.  Keith succumbed to pneumonia, a complication of immune disability with which he had quietly lived for many years.  Keeping that possibly disquieting information to himself was about the only reticent thing I know about the man. 

I, most of us I suppose, first met Keith in Santa Fe, when he showed up for the Sierra Club lobbyists lying convention in a black cowboy hat, cowboy boots and an expansive manner that just hollered OKLAHOMOSEXUAL!  And if you have a problem with that, well bud, that would be your problem, wouldn’t it?  Keith’s whole persona was about openness, and as I type that I can hear him saying, “Don’t hold back!”  It was both a funny remark, and the way he lived and encouraged, hell, insisted that others live. 

I first spoke to Keith individually on the porch of the Plaza, outside, smoking, when we both still were addicted to tobacco.  He was as quick-witted as anyone you will ever meet, and had a gift for acute observation and quick analysis that was plainly among his greatest assets as a lobbyist and political operative. 

My daughters and I were lucky enough to visit Keith in OK City during the end of a legislative session, and we took our “nice” clothes because he promised to put us to work lobbying, a splendid busman’s holiday for our family, which is held in simple-minded thrall by the lore and folkways of state legislatures.  Keith was not only as gracious a host as might be expected, even enlisting his neighbors in making certain of our comfort, he was also perfectly brilliant in his ability to utilize whatever tools fell into his hands.  My older daughter had a cadre of opposition lobbyists completely befuddled in the space of 15 minutes, (Who is she?  What does she want?) while my younger was cozening up to the old ladies running the Page Desk, assuring that our notes to legislators, polling the chamber, were at the top of each stack for each page. 

We polled over half the OK House in less than an hour, and were able to give our sponsor a count that allowed him to move the bill with ease—an excellent demonstration of how lobbying can be done with dispatch and efficiency when the lobbyist is skilled at such techniques.  We also got the State Capitol tour to die for, met all the lefty legislators and lobbyists, had lunch at a restaurant only a resident could find, along with about half the Capitol, and got to see a water bill to help Texas (South Oklahoma) get killed in a House floor vote.

That night Keith and the neighbor lady took us out on the town, and we got the full tourist treatment in Bricktown, then when we got home Keith’s twin brother Kurt was waiting for us, and what a fine thing it was to get to meet this man, whose existence I had known nothing about.  Fraternal twins, they had just ended a period of estrangement brought about by Kurt’s by then ex-wife, and they were together to plan for their mom’s care.  Kurt is a plumber from Missoula.  The family was finally united again, as they had been as kids, then against the feckless father, now around their mom. 

Keith’s skills at politics were both brash, and incredibly subtle.  I have never seen anyone better at working “against type.”  He was confrontational when it could be made to pay, and Mr. Behind the Scenes when that would work better.  And he was indifferent as to which role he was to be cast in on any occasion.  Keith wanted to do a good job for whoever was lucky enough to have him work for them, and he wanted to do the right thing. 

Keith Smith was respected, feared and dearly loved.  Too few of us are going to be able to move on and make that claim for ourselves among both our friends and our foes.  Losing the example he provided will only make it that much more difficult. 

Neill Herring