David A. Keene, longtime board member and former President of the NRA, head of the American Conservative Union, Opinion Editor of The Washington Times, and one of CHQ’s oldest friends, passed away over the weekend. In his generation of the conservative movement few could match the breadth and depth of Mr. Keene’s contribution to conservative politics and policy.
When Mr. Keene was appointed Opinion Editor of the Washinton Times, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich observed that, “David Keene has been a major voice defining conservatism in America for the last generation.”
And Newt was not exaggerating.
Mr. Keene’s first contributions to the movement were as chapter leader and eventually national chairman of Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) while at the University of Wisconsin in the 1960s. He later came to Washington as an assistant to Vice President Spiro Agnew during the Nixon administration, and then in the 1970s as executive assistant to Senator James L. Buckley.
A campaign consultant or advisor to countless national, state and local campaigns, Mr. Keene served as the southern regional coordinator for Ronald Reagan's 1976 bid for the Republican presidential nomination and national political director for George H. W. Bush's 1980 presidential campaign. He advised Senator Robert Dole's 1988 and 1996 presidential campaigns. In 2007 he endorsed Mitt Romney for president and was an advisor to his second run for president.
An author, columnist and fixture on national television, Mr. Keene championed conservative causes for more than five decades while offering advice to Republican presidents and countless candidates.
Despite having suffered a stroke, David Keene’s enthusiasm for conservative politics led him to spend two and a half hours on camera recounting for our history of the conservative movement project recounting the personalities, campaigns, and turning points that shaped the modern conservative movement.
Politico's Andy Barr once commented that Mr. Keene was "counted as one of the few men with both the ear of Republican presidents and an ability to influence the grassroots.” However, in tendering the compliment, he seemed to miss the fact that David Keene’s influence was built by an entrepreneurial spirit that prompted him to found or help organize numerous conservative activist and policy organizations.
In 2007, Mr. Keene co-founded the American Freedom Agenda (AFA), which described itself as "a coalition established to restore checks and balances and civil liberties protections under assault by the executive branch." He also co-chaired the Constitution Project's Liberty and Security Committee. Keene was an early critic of the Patriot Act, and in a somewhat unlikely partnership worked with the American Civil Liberties Union to limit the effects of the act.
Mr. Keene, along with CHQ Chairman Richard Viguerie, was a founding member of Right on Crime, a conservative criminal justice reform group and in another unlikely collaboration with the American Civil Liberties Union led a campaign to reform the Prison Litigation Reform Act.
Keene also co-chaired the Constitution Project's "Liberty & Security" initiative with David Cole of the ACLU that has since 9/11 critiqued government security and surveillance measures in terms of their impact on individual privacy and constitutional rights.
Faith and Freedom Coalition President Ralph Reed once said of David Keene, “David Keene has been one of the most important conservative entrepreneurs, thinkers, and strategists in the United States for over forty years... [with a] commitment to principle and a rare understanding of how to advance a conservative agenda.”
As John Gizzi of NewsMax put it so well, the news Sunday that, at age 81, David Keene had died struck deeply among activists on the right. Few people had witnessed as much of the modern conservative movement as Keene.
To those who knew him — or simply crossed paths with him — David Keene was a man of deep conviction who understood how to turn conservative ideas into political action. His passing leaves a large gap in our movement and reinforces the urgency we face in finding and bringing forward a new generation of principled and effective conservative leaders.
