News-Sentinel.com

Tuesday, 12/26/2000

SON OF A SON OF A POLITICIAN

CHAPTER 9

This is my life



Photo by Helmke family
First day The Helmke family -- Paul and his wife, Deborah, flanked by daughters Kathryn, left, and Laura, right -- poses at the mayor's desk on the 9th floor of the City-County Building on New Year's Day 1988, Helmke's first day in office. Helmke's daughters traded places on New Year's Day 2000, his last. (See photo below.)

It's tough to carve out your own political identity when you learn about politics at the dining room table or around the living room with your father and grandfather. You get a sense of how politics works and what it can do because I grew up with it around me. A lot of the ideas and philosophy I have, as a result, are inherited.

Having inherited those ideas early, I started branching out on my own fairly quickly. There was student council at North Side High School and student government at Indiana University. How I applied those lessons often wasn't the same way my grandfather or father would have.

At IU

When I was at IU, my father, Walter P. Helmke, was running for state Senate after being a local prosecutor for eight years. He's getting complaints from friends about these protests at the university. He didn't bother me too much; he had confidence I'd do the right thing.

But he expressed concern about the vulgarities we used in some of the slogans and chants. I don't curse very much; it's the way I grew up. I told him it's not me, but other students would use all sorts of language. We were fighting a tuition increase, and we had a bunch of posters and placards that said, "No more bullshit!" And I guess at one rally, I held this sign and he had a picture that ran in one of the student government publications that showed me holding a sign saying, "No more bullshit!" I didn't use the vulgarity, but there were these kinds of conflicts.

Mostly, my father let me make my own decisions and express my own philosophy. In the late 1960s, we argued about Vietnam and student protests, but pretty much he respected my opinions. It was the way things were after I graduated from law school at Yale and came back to Fort Wayne. We saw eye to eye on a lot of things, but not everything.

Some advice

When I decided to run for office, my father didn't tell what to think and didn't criticize too often. He'd occasionally question what I was doing. Overall, he gave me the interest and skills in politics, and love of the political process. He taught me values, like truth and integrity and some of the Republican tenants of smaller government and fiscal responsibility, as well as respect for the law. But how I applied them was my decision.

It was great to have someone to turn to for advice, but he wasn't someone who tried to push me in one direction or another.

From an individual perspective, it was a great way to have it be. I had the love of the process and the love of politics, and the respect for what I decided without my father or grandfather telling me what to do.

Into politics

My father wasn't surprised I was interested in politics. I was arguing it in fourth grade and showing an interest in it from early schooling. I was always wearing political buttons going back to the third grade, arguing with the teacher in the seventh grade and attending the national convention while in high school. So it was pretty clear what I was interested in. He knew I wasn't too interested in the sciences and he always encouraged me to do more with speech and debates. He'd take me to political events.

If anything, he wasn't sure if I'd be better behind the scenes or in front as a politician. As a result, his advice when I considered running for mayor was for me to support someone else and become city attorney, like my grandfather, Walter E., had done under Fort Wayne Mayor Harry Baals. Maybe my father believed it was more lucrative or personally more stable and satisfying.

Politics are good

I've tried to encourage my two daughters to get involved in some way as well. Laura was 10, and Kathryn, 6, when I became mayor, so early on the reaction from them was a lot more negative. Unlike my father, who had a part-time prosecutor's job and the same as state senator, the mayor's job is full time. Some of the reaction initially was they did not like politics. But now, they enjoy politics. They pay attention to issues and get involved in their own way.

My older daughter went to Girl's Nation from Indiana; my younger daughter was senior class president in high school. They both show some of the same signs of interest.

I grew up with the message politics are good and exciting. It was the way you made the community better. Politics was how you got into government, and government was how you made your community stronger. The commitment was always how do you make the situation better. It was an inclusive view, never my interest group or political party vs. your interest group or political party.

Barry Goldwater

I went through some stages. Father and grandfather were strong Republicans, and it was reinforced by a lot of my friends. I was a big Barry Goldwater supporter in high school, and that's why I went to the national convention in 1964.

When I went to IU in 1966, it's when anti-war and civil rights movements were becoming bigger on campuses, even at non-radical ones like IU. I tried to go to as many different events as possible. I'd always try to hear as many different speakers and different points of views. It was never my thought I was only going to read Republican or conservative columnists. I remember in high school one of my closest friends was more conservative than I; the close friend was more liberal. It made for good discussion. Some times they'd win, some times you did.

Divergent voices

I was used to listening to all different sides of an argument. I remember even in high school hearing speakers from the John Birch Society. But I'd also hear Martin Luther King Jr., just about anybody, including Democratic candidates.

It was an important lesson early on: hear what all the sides are saying and get an independent judgment of what was going on. At IU, it was heightened because you'd hear anti-establishment, anti-war speakers, whether it was the Students for a Democratic Society or the Black Panthers.

You had such a splintering, such a profusion of differing points of views in the 1960s. There were so many variations on all sides of the spectrum and I tried to listen to all of them. Listening to those viewpoints, you'd realize what the arguments were going to be. It's one of my skills. I'm good at sensing what the arguments are going to be from differing sides and can figure out the strong and weak points of each. It's something you pick up as a lawyer as well.



Photo by Helmke family
Final dayThe Helmke family -- Paul and his wife, Deborah, flanked by daughters Laura, left, and Kathryn, right -- poses at the mayor's desk on the 9th floor of the City-County Building on New Year's Day 2000, Helmke's last day in office. Helmke's daughters traded places from New Year's Day 1988, his first day in the office. (See photo above.)

Even if issues didn't logically make sense, you could sense which ones resonated with an audience. Spellbinding speakers makes you think why are people responding? What is it about the message that's connecting with them? Is it the logic, emotion or self-interest?

It's that part of political discourse that always fascinated me and always has driven my allies, and opponents, crazy. They're never sure where I'm coming from and it's because I'm pretty good at analyzing different approaches.

Life skills

The skills you need in politics are the same skills you need in life. Politics are communications, analysis and people skills. For politics, it's important to convey your message. Analytical skills give you a sense of what the issues are and what side you are on. People skills, meanwhile, are just relating to people. It applies to all jobs, especially in the new economy in the 21st century. Those skills are becoming more rare because of the Internet and other forms of communication that have become so impersonal.

There's something in us that just doesn't want to deal with robots or machines. It's what politics is all about. Yet, it's scary in these days of money when you can almost envision a nonhuman, make-believe candidate being able to run a TV campaign and get elected.

Competing with my father

I don't think I would have done anything differently, although my family would have supported whatever vocation I had chosen. But, in a sense, I was competing with my father. Part of it is being the oldest child, and my parents were very young when I was born. When I learned what my father did in high school or college, I set it as my goal. Not only would I emulate or copy it, I'd try to beat what my father did or would compete with him. Sometimes I did; sometimes I didn't. From my side, it was built into me to do what my father and grandfather had done, and do it better if possible.

Politics has its pitfalls. It was always clear to me; there was a financial cost to it. My father gave up a lot of productive time and years by getting involved in politics. While my father was financially healthy, he was not as financially healthy as his peers who focused on a legal practice or on a business profession. When he was doing politics, it took precedence over the making money side of things.

For my grandfather, it was probably the case as well. Actually, in the Depression, politics was a stabilizing force. To be city attorney during those times meant he had a steady income even if the other guys were paying you with chickens and vegetables.

I grew up comfortably financially, and it's been the same on my own. But my focus has never been on making money. My peers made a lot more money over the years than I. And I knew I was giving it up by running for mayor. It was a lesson I got from my dad and granddad: It's OK. There's more to life than making money.

Loss of privacy

There was pride from my folks, but also the realization I was giving up some as well. The other cost was the loss of privacy. It's changed over the years and it became more an issue for me than what my parents and grandparents had gone through. In the 1930s and 1940s, when my grandfather was in politics, you didn't have the same loss of privacy as you do today. In my dad's era it was somewhat the same.

Now, you have media, newspapers, talk radio, and a lot more exposure. People are a lot more curious about politicians' private lives, their wealth and their health; those intrusions weren't so common in the old days. It's one of the reasons my dad was concerned about me running for mayor; he saw how politics became a game with a lot more down sides. Win Moses, for example was involved in scandals, and my father saw it as a nasty business.

The one advantage of the mayor's job, however, is being at home. If I was in Congress when my daughters were young, it would have been more of a concern. It's tough to have your family there. Here, even with travel or late hours, I was generally home most of the time. I could still get to the school plays and graduation activities.

By the time I ran for U.S. Senate, the girls were juniors in college and high school so the timing was better. I look at politicians that way; I look at the age of their children and it tells me a lot about what they think of their family or what they're going to put into it. A lot of politicians pass up opportunities because of the age of their children. If they don't pass up the opportunities, there's an extra cost to the family they have to be careful about.

Used to the spotlight

I was used to the spotlight and had an expectation of what it would be like. I remember college, when Dad was prosecutor around the late 1960s, and having some of my friends over to the house. This is a time my father's a prosecutor and drugs are becoming very prevalent on college campuses. As a result, some of my friends began to wonder whether I was a narc or an informer; not that anybody was actually doing drugs there, but just the suspicion lingered.

I always believed the best thing was to keep my family out of the public eye.

My wife, Debbie, really doesn't like politics. I didn't like using my children as political props either. They'd be in an occasional photo for a political brochure, for example, but even not much of that.

As a result, unless the family really wanted to go to something, I left them out. I wanted the kids to have some privacy; the same with Debbie.

Debbie is a kindergarten teacher at Harrison Hill, and both girls went there. When I first ran, Kathryn might have been in kindergarten, Laura might have been in fourth grade there. For elementary school kids, being the daughter of a teacher is a lot more notorious than being the daughter of a politician. It had a lot more cachet. To these school kids, it was Mrs. Helmke and the "schoolteacher's daughter," not the mayor's daughter. Having that might have shielded them somewhat from being identified as the mayor's kids.

I remember going to the grocery store with Debbie shortly after being elected, and there was one of the kids she had a year before. His parents said to him, "Do you know who that is?" And they're pointing at me. And the kid says, yes, that's Mrs. Helmke's husband.

I wasn't Mayor Helmke; I was Mrs. Helmke's husband.

Crank calls

We got a lot of crank phone calls. We had set up two phone lines, one in the basement for business; the other, personal. We wanted a listed line so people could reach me.

As a result, some calls were threatening; they gave you an insight into human behavior. It was one aspect of the job as an elected official I didn't enjoy, and neither did my family. We were relieved of that part when I left office. There's a lot of wear and tear with the job.

Rewarding as well

Flip side, the job is rewarding. There are parts to it I liked: meeting people, having fun going places.

Often, the family couldn't be part of it because they had their own lives. The parenting aspect was difficult; I always tried to set aside time for the family life and the parental responsibilities, but the time demands of being a mayor made marriage and parenting a problem. You try to get through it but everything you do is magnified.

As a result, it put a strain on my personal life, but it was nobody else's business.

This kind of scrutiny makes it harder for good people to run for office. When you add all these costs -- professional, relatively low pay, personal -- it makes it tough for anyone to handle. Under that kind of microscope, it makes things tricky.

Your ego also tells you that you like walking the tightrope and living on the edge. There's an excitement when you don't know quite where events are leading.

I miss the job but it was time to move on. Being mayor's one of the greatest jobs in the world. It's a good feeling despite the pressures on the family. I'm a better person for it and hopefully better for my family.

'Hit the road, Jack'

The job also came with a lot of funny stories.

There was the time Ray Charles came to town. Some local promoter brought Charles to sing at the Franke Park outdoor theater. I always liked Ray Charles so I was excited about this. Barb Nussa, who was doing my scheduling then, was a good scheduler and she felt this was an exciting event. We did a key to the city for it; we didn't do many of these and less afterward.

The promoter, however, didn't have the money put together for the show. And Ray Charles is there and he's backstage and I'm backstage. He's in one of these back rooms and he's basically saying that unless he gets another several grand, he wasn't going to sing. The guy didn't have the money, and he's running around scrambling trying to find some more bucks. There's a decent crowd of several thousand people, and they're getting unhappy as Ray Charles is getting unhappy. I'm backstage saying to myself, "This is getting embarrassing."

It's the tricky part of being mayor; you're connected with a lot that you have no control over.

I'm there but I didn't put this together. I didn't ask this guy about the finances or anything; this is a private venture.

So it gets to the point where Charles has waited about 45 minutes, the crowd's getting unruly and the promoter's trying to spin all sorts of things. Finally, Ray decides he's leaving.

"Can't you come out and say, 'Hi', maybe sing one song," I'm thinking. But I understand from his perspective: I don't get paid, I don't sing.

He walked out, but at least I had a chance to meet him. He was gracious; I wasn't the problem. I think I gave the key to him anyway; what else was I going to do with it?

It was too bad how the situation turned out.

To me it was a lesson. It's real easy to get caught up in other people's problems as mayor; I wasn't going to bail the guy out with money from the city. I might have paid for my ticket if it would have made a difference. But this guy messed over the audience, the city, Ray Charles and me.

I told Barb Nussa afterward we're going to watch these things a lot more closely. There are a lot of folks who have ideas, whether it's entertainment or economic development, that don't work out like they're supposed to.

Everyone wants the mayor

It's real hard to have a rule of thumb about where you go and where you don't. It all depends on a good scheduler who's hearing these schemes firsthand. There are so many requests, you get swamped. I tried to have two nights a week clear, and would do things during those nights but only if I signed off on them ahead of time.

It was the same with weekends.

However, in an election year, you say yes to just about everything because you want to be visible. And then you're really swamped.

I'd get to the stage where I knew I had attended similar events more so than the organizers of these events. They'd say, "The mayor's never been to our event." I'd respond "I was there four years ago, seven years ago. You don't remember when I was there."

I always had to get the family schedule done first before doing the mayoral schedule so the two would fit as best as possible. Scheduling was one of the toughest parts of the job; folks expected you to be there.

We put together a question sheet when these requests came up for people to answer. What's this all about? What's the mayor's role? How many people are expected? How long will it last? Can I get in and out, or am I expected to stay the entire time? Those were always tough decisions.

The estimates were amazing. They'd say 400 people; you'd get there, and there were 40. But people were trying to get you there, thus the inflated estimates. You had to realize as mayor, by attending, you were giving an event validity and exposure, often from the media. A lot of TV stations decided where to go based on a weekly schedule of events I had made available.

A real fun job

The job also allowed me to pick things that were fun. "This sounds like fun, and I'm being invited because I am mayor."

I saw the job as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and I wanted to take advantage of it. I believed I had been active in the community and knew things before I became mayor. But there were things going on I didn't realize were out there.

To wear a kilt at Scottish Highland Days, for example, and to march in the Three Rivers Parade, and to hang from the monkey nets at the zoo, throw out a ball at a Wizards games, drop the puck at a Komets game, it's so exciting to do these things.

I threw out the ball twice at Chicago's Wrigley Field. It was the most nervous I had ever been, and this includes being on national TV, introducing the president and being a contestant on "Jeopardy!"

The first time I threw out the ball at the stadium, there were 30,000 people, although not more than 20 were probably looking at me because I was no big deal. So I'm on the mound throwing out this pitch, and it's my windup, and the catcher's Damon Berryhill, who didn't last long before moving onto the Braves, and he's coming out of a crouch to catch it. My pitch is high but it's over the plate. And I remember winding up and I remember him catching it. I don't remember throwing the ball; I had blanked out. It was the most nervous I had ever been.

There, I wanted to do it right. Wrigley Field was the hallowed confines; that was fun.

I remember telling local attorney John Walda I'd be throwing out a pitch at Wrigley Field. Walda said if he had known the mayor could do that, he'd have run for office.

Tough being gone

I do miss the people. While it's nice to look at my schedule and see how I'm home evenings, weekends, and didn't have to go to Cinco de Mayo or Arbor Day or the North vs. South Civil War re-enactment. But I liked doing those things.

There's always a flip side; there are tremendous demands on your time but you also like doing it. It would still be nice to go to things, although I still do some as ex-mayor.

It's tough being gone. It was more exciting than what I'm doing now as an attorney at Barnes & Thornburg. It would be more exciting than almost any job you could have. You were always on your toes; you never knew what was going to happen. The challenge was fun. Walking the tightrope, living on the edge, that was exciting. I've been telling people it was like doing a treadmill going 100 mph.

I was handling it and doing a good job, and could have kept on doing it. But I knew sooner or later, I would burn out. That's why I decided not to run. Sooner or later, I'd get bored with it -- at least with some facets -- and then I wouldn't be doing a very good job for the city and its citizens. It's when you start making mistakes.

Going out on top

It's like watching a star athlete; I wanted to come out on top. I could have been a good productive mayor, but after a while, you realize you're doing something over and over again. After a while, you don't want to be the old fogey saying, "This is the way we used to do things" or "We thought about this idea before and rejected it for these reasons."

It would be a sign I was losing my edge and sharpness. And it's not fair to the city or to me. I figured there'd be challenges for me in the private sector, and I'm still looking for them.

Run again?

I've had people ask me if I would ever run again for mayor. I doubt it.

Look at the history of Fort Wayne mayors. Few served as long as I did. Both of the mayors who served at least 12 years like I -- Harry Baals in the 1930s, 40s and 50s, and Charles Zollinger, in the latter part of the 19th century -- stepped down and then ran again. And both died in office after they came back. I told people, "Remind me, that if I think about running for mayor again, what happened to Zollinger and Baals when they came back."

Now, I'm making more money. I'm home a lot more. I'm more in control of my schedule, whereas in the past, your schedule controlled you. I don't worry as much about media coverage as I did when mayor, when I wanted to see what they were saying about me. I still pay attention, but now more about events related to my era. If it's what the new guys are doing, I'm not going to comment unless it relates to my legacy.

A proud man

I'm really proud of my legacy and how we left the city. You can't live in the past, but I worked with good people that I try to keep in touch with. When something comes up that tries to tarnish the legacy and the work done by other people, I might comment on it.

With the passage of time, I'll become more distant from affairs. People will stop pointing fingers at me. I've always liked people to pay attention to me when I speak up, because generally I believe my opinions are worth listening to. When you're mayor, people do that.

I hope they still stay pay attention to me statewide or locally after being out of office. Hopefully, it's the ideas that count, not just the office.

Cast of characters:

Walter P. Helmke -- Paul Helmke's father and currently a local attorney, he was the Republican Party's unsuccessful candidate for Congress in 1974

Walter E. Helmke -- Paul Helmke's grandfather, he was elected Allen County prosector in 1928

Barry Goldwater -- Long-time conservative Arizona senator, he ran unsuccessfully for President against Lyndon Johnson in 1964

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