Heritage Foundation President Jim DeMint today issued the following comments on the death of Kate O’Beirne:
With the death yesterday of Kate O’Beirne, the conservative movement lost one of its wittiest, warmest and wisest voices.
After serving admirably as our deputy director of domestic policy studies, in 1989 she stepped up to the challenge of trying to keep Washington on a conservative track in the post Reagan era. Heading up our congressional relations team, her command of research findings—delivered with conviction, humanity and charm--helped lawmakers see their way clear to rejecting numerous Big Government proposals.
She also was adept at identifying new ways to help lawmakers articulate—and hold fast to—policy solutions based on conservative principles. For example, in 1994, she came up with the idea of preparing a briefing book for congressional candidates—one that would provide them with the core facts and arguments undergirding conservative solutions for a wide variety of policy problems.
Issues ‘94 became a policy bible for dozens of conservative candidates that year—Fred Thompson, during his successful run for the Senate that year, like to open the book and read from it to reporters. And most of those dozens found their way into office.
That same year, Heritage held our first orientation meeting for freshmen members of Congress—another brainchild of Kate’s. Offered as a conservative alternative to Harvard’s long-running orientation conference, the new program drew 60 new members of Congress, forcing Harvard to cancel its program for the first time in 22 years.
Kate’s legacy at Heritage continues to this day. We’re still putting out candidate briefing books and holding orientation sessions to help Congressional newcomers navigate their way through the ongoing policy battles in Washington. She will be sorely missed by all who knew her, and never forgotten here at Heritage.
Her friends and admirers at Heritage send our prayers to her husband, Jim, and her sons, Phillip and John, and their families.
