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A CANDIDATE IN THE MAKING FOR FOUR DECADES Businessman, yes, but raised to run(News Tribune, The (Tacoma, WA) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Oct. 25--Two years into his tenure as CEO of Safeco Insurance, Mike McGavick delivered the keynote address at the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce's annual meeting. It was September 2002, and McGavick used Safeco's recent financial successes to discuss the problems facing Washington state and how they could be fixed. Government should shrink, schools should be directly accountable to the governor and public discourse has become too negative, he told the crowd. To those with a short-term knowledge of McGavick's background, the speech could have simply been a civic-minded appeal with business overtones. For people who knew him better, it sounded like a return to a career path that began when he was a 6-year-old tagging along on his dad's campaign for state Legislature and culminated three decades later when he was director of Slade Gorton's U.S. Senate office. "People talked about it for several weeks afterwards and speculated on what Mike's next move would be and what he would be running for," said Lynn Claudon, a public affairs consultant who attended the meeting. McGavick stayed on at Safeco for nearly three more years before deciding to challenge Democratic U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell. He said recently that he didn't intend for his speech to be seen as political, and that he wasn't sure he'd ever return to that life. That is, until he was inspired by Republican Dino Rossi's 2004 gubernatorial campaign. ENJOYING POLITICS AND RUGBY McGavick was the oldest of three children and the only one who'd choose to listen to his father Joe, a one-term Republican state legislator, and his uncle Don, a Democratic activist and Tacoma attorney, heatedly discuss the political issues of the day during Sunday family dinners in the 1960s. And he was always underfoot when his dad's friends, up-and-comers Dan Evans and Slade Gorton, would talk Republican strategy at the McGavick home in Seattle's Wallingford neighborhood. When his father first ran for office in 1964, 6-year-old Mike helped out by stuffing envelopes. He worked for his father's subsequent campaigns, and later volunteered with others, including Gorton's successful run for state attorney general. "I never had a doubt that he would get interested in politics," Joe McGavick, 71, said in an interview earlier this month in his Seattle home. Mike McGavick's only other run at public office was during his time at the University of Washington. The political science major ran for student body president, but lost. College friend Charles Cross, who went on to write biographies on rock stars Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain, said McGavick was the "life of the party," outspoken and proud to be a Republican. "He comes across like he's very sure of himself, and he did that at a very young age," said Cross. Much to his father's chagrin, McGavick took up rugby. He'd run track and cross-country when he attended Seattle Prep, but his dad forbade him from playing football after a doctor said his bones couldn't withstand the sport's physical punishment. McGavick played rugby well into adulthood, suffering a variety of related injuries, Joe McGavick said. Years later, as Safeco CEO, he even showed up to an analysts meeting in New York with a black eye he acquired during a match. CAREER FORESHADOWING In 1980, McGavick quit school to work on Gorton's Senate campaign against Democrat Warren Magnuson. Gorton and McGavick met when the boy was just 8, working on his father's state legislative campaign, Gorton said. The McGavick and Gorton families remained friendly through the years, spending time together on Whidbey Island during the summers, Joe McGavick said. Mike McGavick served as Gorton's driver, shuttling him to campaign appearances across Washington. As the election neared, McGavick shifted to a larger role, overseeing Gorton campaign activities in Eastern Washington. Gorton beat Magnuson, and McGavick went to work as the new senator's aide on military affairs. He continued to impress Gorton, particularly with his grasp of issues at such a young age. "General officers stood up straight and called him sir, and he was 22," Gorton said. At Gorton's insistence, McGavick returned to Seattle in 1983 to finish college. He also got married, to Kim Rainey, whom he met at a rugby match in Philadelphia. The couple had a son Jack, who is now 18. McGavick landed at the Washington Roundtable, a public policy research group led by many of the state's corporate heavy-hitters. In an odd bit of foreshadowing, Safeco Insurance CEO Bruce Maines invited McGavick to his office. When he arrived for the lunchtime meeting, McGavick found two sandwiches, some paper-filled binders and an extra chair next to Maines' desk. "He said, 'I observe that you people in the political world don't understand insurance,'" McGavick said. Then Maines began to teach him the basics about the economics and regulations of the insurance industry. "I remember thinking 'Why am I here? This is bizarre,'" McGavick said. SOFTENING GORTON'S EDGES In 1987, Gorton called and asked for help in getting back to the U.S. Senate. He had lost a re-election bid in 1986 and wanted to run in 1988 for an open seat. McGavick agreed to run the campaign. But he knew that his mentor had a major image problem. Gorton remembers McGavick saying that he'd lost his seat because he "was too aloof, and too cold, (and) didn't relate to people the way that I ought to." McGavick says he worked with Gorton on his listening skills, teaching him to restate people's questions and not cut them off midsentence. He also encouraged Gorton to get new eyeglasses because the Coke-bottle lenses he wore made him tilt his head back to see, giving him an air of arrogance. Gorton beat Democrat Mike Lowry to return to the Senate, and McGavick served as his chief of staff. He earned a reputation as a smart strategist who could also soften Gorton's partisan edges. But McGavick still harbored ambitions to work for his own company, and returned to Seattle in 1991. He teamed up with friend and former Gorton staffer Gary Smith to start a public affairs consulting firm now known as the Gallatin Group. But he worked there less than two years. McGavick's marriage had dissolved, and Rainey moved with their son to Pennsylvania to live near family. "It weighed on him a lot," Smith said of McGavick living so far from Jack. "I know that it just gnawed at him." To be closer to his son, McGavick moved back to Washington, D.C., this time to lead a group within the American Insurance Association that, he said, wanted to change the Superfund program to steer money away from attorneys and toward quicker cleanup of polluted sites. Democrats note that McGavick was a registered insurance industry lobbyist and make that sound like it's a bad thing by calling him "Lobbyist Mike!" McGavick said he never lobbied as part of the job -- although "I've never objected to being called a lobbyist." In 1994, McGavick married Gaelynn DeMartino, an attorney he met through a mutual friend. The couple have two boys, Gates, 10, and Marco, 7. A CAREER CHANGE At the end of 1994, it became clear that Superfund policies weren't going to be changed, and McGavick said he began to look elsewhere for work. He'd soured on the political world, which he said had become nastier since his formal introduction to it in 1980. McGavick took a job with the Chicago-based insurance company CNA, and left politics behind, he thought, for good. Dennis Chookaszian, former CNA chief executive officer, recruited McGavick, whom he met during the Superfund job. He offered McGavick a position rotating through roles at the company to learn the business. McGavick eventually led the company's largest department as its president and chief operating officer. "He was just very good at being conciliatory and drawing a consensus with people," Chookaszian said. "I saw him as someone who could be a possible successor for me." During this time, McGavick said he flew to the East Coast to visit his son Jack every third weekend. LEADING SAFECO'S TURNAROUND After six years, McGavick left CNA in early 2001 to become Safeco's chief executive officer. The Seattle-based company had seen better days. Its earnings began to decline in the late 1990s, and the company lost nearly $1 billion in 2001, according to a company annual report. McGavick set out an aggressive plan to overhaul the company in part by raising insurance rates and better gauging the risk in policies, said Dan Nelson, a Ragen MacKenzie analyst who studies Safeco. He shrank the company's large commercial business and sold off its life insurance line, Nelson said. Democrats have criticized Safeco's increased use of credit scoring under McGavick's leadership. The process can be used to cancel or raise a customer's rate, based on a credit score. McGavick defended the practice, and said that credit scoring allowed Safeco to offer a wider range of price rates to customers and expand "in communities that we weren't even selling insurance in before." In 2001, McGavick announced layoffs of 10 percent of Safeco's roughly 12,000 employees. Afterward, he said he thought things were turning around for the company. However, the company later slashed another 500 jobs in 2003. "I was wrong to raise such hopes," he wrote on his campaign blog in August. In the same letter he wrote that the company's turnaround was "one of the greatest things I have ever participated in, (but) the heart-wrenching decisions to let people go will stay with me forever." Safeco's profits turned around during McGavick's tenure, from the nearly $1 billion loss in 2001 to a $691 million profit in 2005. The company's stock price, at $25 when he joined the company, was around $56 in July 2005 when McGavick announced he was stepping down. How much of Safeco's success can be contributed to McGavick's leadership and how much to a simultaneous overall industry improvement is hard to tell, Nelson said. However, "he knew what needed to be done, and he kept his eye on the ball," said analyst Nelson. "I think you've got to give him a lot of credit." McGavick received a $28 million payout -- mostly stock and options -- when he left the company. Democrats derided it as a "golden parachute." McGavick simply says he was paid what he was owed based on the company's improved stock performance. MIKE! RUNS A CIVIL CAMPAIGN His campaign literature makes frequent use of exclamation points after his name, which aides say is designed to punctuate his energy, enthusiasm and positive approach. McGavick has held numerous "Open Mike!" town hall-style forums. He's casual and plain-spoken in his commercials. He laments the partisanship that's bitterly dividing the country. His biggest campaign hurdle has been a 1993 drunken driving arrest in Maryland. He owned up to the incident in an "open letter" on his campaign Web site. The following week police records surfaced showing that McGavick had driven through a red light, not a yellow light as he had written in the letter. McGavick said he didn't have a copy of the records, and that he relied on his memory. McGavick looks to be facing an uphill battle in the campaign's final weeks, as two national Republican campaign committees haven't run television ads supporting him, and a McClatchy-MSNBC poll released Tuesday showed him trailing Cantwell by 15 points. McGavick has pledged to run a civil campaign, outlining his policy differences with Cantwell and criticizing her record, but condemning any personal attacks. It's a lesson he said he learned growing up watching political sparring at family dinners. "You had to stand your ground and defend your ground with facts," McGavick told the Tacoma Rotary Club in September. "You didn't attack each other. You talked about the issues." Mike McGavick Age: 48 Education: University of Washington, B.A. in political science, 1983 Political experience: Worked as legislative aide for military and defense issues for Republican Sen. Slade Gorton. He later worked as Gorton's chief of staff. Elected office: None Business experience: CEO of Safeco Insurance, 2001-2005; executive at CNA Insurance, 1995-2001 Marital status: Married to wife, Gaelynn. The couple have two sons, Gates, 10, and Marco, 7. McGavick also has a son, Jack, 18, from his previous marriage. Residence: Shoreline Paul Sand: 253-597-8872 [email protected] Copyright (c) 2006, The News Tribune, Tacoma, Wash. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News. For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. |