By Tim Hrenchir
Topeka Capital-Journal (Kansas)
Copyright 2006 The Topeka Capital-Journal
Robert Beattie is no stranger to politics. The Wichita lawyer says he has been involved in campaigns as a volunteer or candidate in every election cycle since 1972. Three times, he has run for public office.
But as Beattie seeks this year’s Democratic Party nomination for secretary of state, he enjoys a new political asset — the name recognition that comes from having written a best-selling book.
Beattie, 50, is the author of “Nightmare in Wichita: The Hunt for the BTK Strangler,” which spent several weeks last year on the New York Times best-seller list. He hopes his newfound celebrity will help him make history by winning election as Kansas secretary of state. Kansans have elected a Democrat to that office only once, in 1948.
Beattie’s competition in his party’s Aug. 1 primary is state Sen. David Haley, 47, D-Kansas City, Kan. Haley represented the Democrats four years ago in the general election and lost by roughly a 2-to-1 margin to incumbent Ron Thornburgh, a Republican.
Beattie considered himself a Republican as he was growing up in Wichita, but he said that changed after Democrat George McGovern received almost all of the votes in a mock presidential election in 1972 at the high school Beattie attended.
Though incumbent Republican Richard Nixon won the national election, Beattie said the school vote prompted him to study politics more closely and realize his beliefs were more in line with the Democrats. He registered with that party upon reaching age 18 in 1974.
Rescue work
Beattie graduated from high school that year, worked as a machinist for Cessna, then attended Hutchinson Junior College in the spring of 1975 before starting a 15-year career in emergency services. He became an intake medic in the emergency room at Wichita’s Wesley Medical Center, then was a Wichita ambulance worker and firefighter.
“Over the course of my career as a firefighter-EMT, and as a medic in the ER at Wesley Medical Center, I responded to about 20,000 calls,” Beattie wrote on his campaign Web site. “I pulled a pilot from a crashed aircraft, rescued a man from a burning automobile and received a commendation for resuscitating a drowning child.”
Beattie then was employed in security and fire protection from 1984 to 1990 for Boeing. He served as interim fire department crew chief for Air Force One as the presidential jet underwent modifications at Boeing Military Airplane Co. and wrote a classified report — “Operation Falling Star” — about protecting national leaders aboard the plane.
Career change
Meanwhile, Beattie earned degrees from Wichita State University in 1986 with a major in natural sciences and mathematics, and from Wichita’s Friends University in 1989 in human resources management.
He also was active politically, mounting unsuccessful campaigns in 1979 and in 1985 for the Wichita City Commission. Beattie lost a run for the Kansas House of Representative in 1988 and served in 1990 as assistant campaign manager for Democrat Dick Williams’ failed bid to win the Senate seat of Kansas Republican Nancy Kassebaum.
Beattie left his job at Boeing in 1990 to attend Washburn Law School. He graduated in 1993 and worked for a Wichita law firm before going into private civil practice, taking mostly cases involving adoptions, immigration or civil rights.
“At one time all my clients were black women, either American women who had civil rights problems or African women who had immigration problems,” he said.
BTK
Beattie took on a new challenge in 1997 when he began teaching a political science course about the jury system at Wichita’s Newman University. In 1999, when Beattie suggested his class conduct a mock trial regarding Wichita’s BTK murders, he was surprised to see none of his students was familiar with the slayings. BTK killed 10 people in Wichita between 1974 and 1991, taunting police by sending messages in which he called himself BTK for “Bind, Torture and Kill.”
Beattie said his interest in BTK grew as he gathered facts about the killings to present to his students. A retired police officer who helped investigate the murders urged him to write a book about them.
Beattie put his law practice on hold to pursue that goal. He conducted more than 400 interviews while writing a manuscript he submitted to his publisher, New York City-based New American Library. The manuscript’s first and last line was, “He’s still out there.”
Meanwhile, BTK ended a long silence by sending a letter in March 2004 to the Wichita Eagle after it published an article about Beattie’s book project. In January 2005, a letter from BTK to Wichita’s KAKE-TV mentioned a package he left at a Home Depot store. Wichita police said evidence from a security videotape at the store led to the arrest the following month of Dennis Rader, who pleaded guilty to the killings.
Beattie quickly wrote a new ending for his book, which came out in March 2005. He promoted the book during various appearances on national TV. Beattie also received several honors for his role in coaxing BTK out of hiding.
The right to vote
With his name recognition growing, Democratic Party leaders sought to coax Beattie into running for public office.
Beattie said his decision to run for secretary of state — a job with more than 600 statutory duties that include overseeing elections and maintaining corporate records — was due in part to frustrations he felt as the number of polling places in Wichita was reduced from 292 in 2004 to 62 this year. Beattie expects the move to result in fewer people voting as lines at polling places become dramatically longer.
“Our election system is regressing, becoming more burdensome for citizens, raising questions about its reliability and trustworthiness, while in contrast I think our system should go forward, make it easier for citizens to vote and guarantee each citizen that their vote counts,” he wrote on his Web site.
Beattie also expresses concern that the incumbent, Thornburgh, invited then-Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris to Kansas in 2001 to receive an award linked to her work presiding over that state’s closely-contested 2000 presidential vote. That election ended with Republican George Bush winning the presidency over Democrat Al Gore.
Beattie said Thornburgh’s actions showed a partisanship that shouldn’t be present in a state’s chief election officer. He said he advocates removing the Kansas secretary of state’s duty as chief election officer and creating a nonpartisan office of state election commissioner.
Beattie stresses that he never considered the politics of the people he helped during his years as an ambulance worker and firefighter.
“I fought the fire, conducted the rescue or treated the person’s medical emergency without political consideration,” he said. “Our elections should be similarly nonpartisan.”
Beattie also advocates the passage of a state Constitutional amendment that would institute a system of “approval voting” in which voters — instead of casting a ballot for one person for each office — could vote for as many or as few candidates as they wish.
Beattie said political parties tend to oppose approval voting because its use increases the likelihood of an independent candidate being elected. But he said many scientific, mathematics and engineering organizations use approval voting and find it tends to cut down on negative campaigning.