When I reached him Thursday in San Diego, former State Rep. David Finkelstein hadn't heard that Tim Kelly had died. I wanted to check with Finkelstein, a Democrat, because he had worked closely with Kelly, a Republican senator from Anchorage, to pass Alaska's landmark campaign financing reform in 1996. Kelly's support was pragmatic, not ideological. Rep. Finkelstein had managed to get a campaign finance reform measure onto the statewide ballot, and Kelly knew it would pass overwhelmingly. Kelly thought the Legislature might as well pass a slightly less restrictive version, which would knock the initiative off the ballot and allow legislators to look good with voters.
Finkelstein had no heartburn over the compromises he made with Kelly to get the reform bill passed.
The final measure "took out the things least likely to stand up to court scrutiny," he said. "Ninety percent of the (reforms in the voter) initiative survived."
Kelly's advocacy "was what made the difference," Finkelstein said. "I was in the minority in the House and all I had was this initiative (to reform campaign finance laws). There's no way that bill would have passed without him."
Kelly "was a pragmatist. He worked with whoever," Finkelstein said. "He didn't let party lines get in the way. ... He was a very reasonable person to negotiate with."
Unlike many senators, Kelly was cordial to staffers and members of the lower house. "Kelly could be brusque but he was never caught up in the hierarchy of it all," Finkelstein said. "He'd see you in a bar and call you over and buy you a drink" -- unlike another Senate president, Finkelstein said, who wouldn't even deign to acknowledge his presence when they shared a Capitol elevator.
Kelly was also a "baseball nut," according to Finkelstein. A colleague here remembers playing softball against Kelly's team and watching him wallop a monster drive far over the outfield fence.
Tim brought his passion for baseball to my neighborhood Little League, where his son played. I recruited Tim to serve on the board. Tim was a busy lobbyist then, and in a year of high oil prices, he said he could get the Legislature to put some money into improving the league's equipment and playing fields. With help of another lobbyist/Little League parent, he did.
Those were two chapters, one big, one small, from a life well-lived, a life that came to an end much too soon last Monday, when Tim died at age 65.
-- Matt Zencey