In Memoriam of Our Dear Friend, Congresswoman Helen Chenoweth-Hage

October 4, 2006

Shortly after the Republican takeover of the House in 1994, Richard Viguerie asked some of the newly elected freshman Congressmen to an off-the-record dinner near the Capitol. It gave some of us a chance to at least begin to get to know the newly arrived conservatives even before they were sworn in.

I was seated next to Helen Chenoweth, who had worked for Idaho Senator Steve Symms, served as Executive Director of the Idaho State GOP, and unseated an incumbent Democrat to help her party take over the Congress after forty years in the political desert. She was a delight and it became quickly apparent that she saw herself not just as a newly minted member of a Republican majority, but as a conservative activist who had been elected to shake things up.

We quickly became good friends and remained friends through her six years in Congress and after. She was smart, exuberant and principled. After she left Congress and married, she and her husband joined a number of us on a cruise co-sponsored by the NRA. It was obvious that having given so much of herself during her six years in Congress she was happy to continue doing what she could while truly enjoying her new life. Her husband’s death was a blow to her and her passing reminds all those who knew her that there have always been those among us and in Congress who fight the good fight not for the glory but to leave the world a better place than they found it. She did that and will be missed.

David Keene is the chairman of the American Conservative Union and a managing associate with the Carmen Group, a Washington, D.C.-based governmental-affairs firm.