Dirk Kempthorne, Idaho’s former governor, U.S. senator and Secretary of the Interior, died Friday in Boise after battling cancer. He was 74.
Kempthorne spent much of his life in public service, with friends and former colleagues remembering his infectious personality and drive to change Idaho for the better.
Aside from his piercing blue eyes, one of the first impressions people got of Dirk Kempthorne was his photographic memory for names, according to his former communications director and budget chief, Brian Whitlock.
Even a decade later, Whitlock said Kempthorne would immediately recognize people on the campaign trail, out on the town or even in far-away airports.
“It didn’t matter whether it was the mayor or the barber or the newspaper editor in that community, he not only knew their name, he knew the spouse’s name, and in many cases the kids’ names,” he said. “Once he even knew the dog’s name.”
Those are the skills of some of the most memorable politicians regardless of their party affiliation.
Whitlock said that was one of his former boss’s keys to success.
“When you’re working on behalf of 1 million or 1.5 million people and yet people are able to make a personal connection to you because you’ve made that personal connection to them.”
Kempthorne wasn’t a native Idahoan. In fact, he was born and raised in California, the state that shall not be named.
After graduating high school in San Bernardino, he made his way north to study political science at the University of Idaho. There, he was elected student body president and became friends with Idaho’s current governor, Brad Little.
During a 2020 interview with U of I alumni, Kempthorne said he would often visit the university’s farmland to work on his public speaking.
“I took a course called ‘Voice Diction and Oral Interpretation’ and I’d go out there where you’d find a number of cows and they’d be grazing and I’d go and I’d give them a speech. You know, they’d all come up to the fence,” said Kempthorne. “I did pretty good in that class.”
A trip to Boise one winter to lobby on behalf of the student body would sow the seeds for one of his biggest legacies during his time as governor.
As the group drove back to Moscow, the driver hit something on the icy roads and flipped the car several times.
“Had it not been for that large snowbank outside of Banks, we’d have gone into the river. We ended up with the roof on the pavement, our stuff scattered everywhere. We were so fortunate to walk away from it, but when I became governor, I said that’s something we have to correct.”
It would take a few decades until he could make good on that promise to make roads safer, with stints as the mayor of Boise and as a U.S. senator in between.
Idahoans elected him as the state’s top leader in 1998 and again in 2002.
Toward the end of Kempthorne’s tenure as governor, he proposed that the state should – for the first time – borrow money against future federal road funding.
Lawmakers could then use that money to build safer highways and retrofit existing roads to save lives.
Whitlock said it was a radical idea in 2005.
“We’d always been a pay as you go state and because we were a pay as you go state you could just never get ahead of the curve,” he said.
Such large amounts of debt worried some lawmakers to the point they initially rejected the idea.
That’s when Kempthorne called a press conference with a stack of bills on his desk.
“He took the first bill off the top of the stack, took out his veto stamp and stamped it and then he took the next bill off and he stamped that one,” Whitlock said.
It became known as the “vetorama.” In all, Kempthorne struck down eight bills before explaining why he took such drastic action.
“He looked at the cameras and delivered a very strong message to legislators that these were the first eight [vetoes] and there are more to come and we will keep doing this until we can get this GARVEE program resurrected and moving forward again,” Whitlock said.
And it worked. State transportation officials say fatalities dropped by 89% after GARVEE-funded projects were completed, along with significant reductions for serious injuries and overall crashes.
While Kempthorne served as a Republican, his priorities stretched across ideological lines.
Take, for example, his full-throated support of childhood vaccinations and establishing a voluntary database to track them.
“I set a goal of reaching a 90% immunization rate for Idaho children under the age of three. Today, for the first three series of shots, Idaho’s rate is above 90%. By the time children enter school the rate is approximately 95%,” Kempthorne said during one of his state of the state addresses.
Now, that rate for kindergartners is 75%, according to Idaho Education News, after lawmakers over the years repealed vaccination requirements and added exemptions for personal beliefs.
He also worked to establish a minimum wage for farm workers and tried to get rid of the two-thirds majority required to pass a school bond.
At the same time, Kempthorne decried federal overreach, like when he pushed back against expanding the superfund site at Bunker Hill near Coeur d’Alene in the late ‘90s and early 2000s.
“I told EPA that I am so frustrated with them that I’m on the verge of inviting them to leave the state of Idaho,” he said during a speech before the legislature.
Kempthorne and other local officials won that fight and kept Lake Coeur d’Alene’s waters out of EPA oversight.
After serving nearly two terms as governor, former President George W. Bush tapped Kempthorne to be his secretary of the interior in 2006.
He stayed in the D.C. area after that, working as the president of the American Council of Life Insurers until 2018.
Kempthorne is survived by his wife, Patricia, and his children, Heather and Jeff.
“Our family is heartbroken, but we are also deeply grateful — for the time we had with him and for the extraordinary outpouring of love and support we have received from across Idaho and the country,” his family said in a statement.
“I will always remember Dirk’s generosity and warmth,” said Gov. Little in a statement. “He was thoughtful, gracious, and deeply committed to the people around him.”
Flags across the state will be flown at half staff until the day following Kempthorne’s memorial service, which has yet to be announced.
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