Profile: Jeff Kaufmann’s ‘sense of pragmatism’

DES MOINES - After years of teaching history to community college students, Wilton Republican Jeff Kaufmann had a hand last November in helping make history in Iowa.

Kaufmann, 52, took the reins of the Republican Party of Iowa one year ago as its chairman and managed to turn an organization that was financially broke and politically splintered and turn it into a unified vote-producing juggernaut that produced Iowa's first-ever female U.S. senator and a sixth term for Gov. Terry Branstad that will make him the longest-serving governor in U.S. history.

Kaufmann, a professor and department chair who has taught history and government classes at Muscatine Community College since 1997, is no stranger to politics, having served four terms in the Iowa House before stepping down as the chamber's speaker pro tem in 2012 to serve as a Cedar County supervisor.

He also farms and has a penchant for looking after the state's pioneer cemeteries along with his duties of making sure Iowa's first-in-the-nation Republican precinct caucuses come off without a hitch next February for the 16-candidate field.

'Most of the kids, especially when I teach government, I don't think they fully realize that their teacher is the chair of a first-in-the nation state party,” Kaufmann said. 'I don't think they appreciate what I'm telling them sometimes.

'I don't think they fully realize that there are times when they hear things that would make national news, and I'll just throw it out there before it's even been reported.”

While gregarious, outspoken and frenetic at times, Kaufmann is viewed by his colleagues as someone who gets the job done without being self-serving or self-promoting in a field where such traits often are the norm rather than the exception.

'He's probably got several skill sets, but I believe the one that's doing the most good is quiet diplomacy. I would say that a result of the quiet diplomacy is we've got a more united party than we've had for a long time,” said U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, who's girding for a run at his sixth Senate term in 2016.

'I don't think people see him being state chairman for something he can get out of it. It's kind of a selfless leadership.”

Branstad added that Kaufmann has done 'a very commendable job” directing a party apparatus that produced 'phenomenal” results in 2014. A proactive leader, Kaufmann gets the party team fired up and motivated but is careful to stay neutral and do the right thing heading into a crowded 2016 caucus season, the governor noted.

'Sometimes it's like herding cats to try to keep everybody together, but I think he's done a good job of that and he's done it in a way that recognizes that the party chair is not a dictator but has to be responsive to the constituency,” Branstad said. 'He's not pursuing his own agenda. He's really trying to help the party, all the candidates, I think that's the role the party chair should play.”

Kaufmann's experience as an elected official has given him a unique perspective on what candidates and rank-and-file Republicans need from a state party. But he said being a political party chairman is harder and more frustrating than being a legislator because there is a finality to issues and an occasional 100 percent vote among lawmakers who have to learn to work together to get things accomplished.

'In this job, it's never ending. You never quite take care of all of the disgruntled,” he said. 'A lot of people that are activists who are heavily involved in the party have never been in a situation where they've had to work with the other party, have had to pass laws, have had to achieve consensus.

'Once you've lived that kind of life, I think there's still a sense of pragmatism in you that if you've never served in office that it's hard to appreciate.”

In a job that's a mix of political pit bull, cheerleader, fundraiser and bipartisan negotiator, Kaufmann said his most pleasant surprise in his new post has been working with his Democratic counterparts to ensure that Iowa maintains its leadoff spot in the national presidential selection process - a position that has been seriously challenged since some embarrassing missteps in Iowa's GOP balloting four years ago.

'I didn't realize how shaky our ground had become when I took over. That was a huge wake-up call my first trip to D.C. when I realized how much the other states wanted what we have and how much damage had been done nationally to our reputation by the previous folks,” said Kaufmann, who was part of the recent decision to scrub his party's traditional pre-caucus straw poll fundraiser that had been slated for August in Boone.

'Campaigns come and go, fundraising come and goes. This first-in-the-nation status, once it goes, it's gone,” he noted. 'I think we're getting ourselves back to the place where we need to be.”

One misnomer that has cropped up about Kaufmann after he made a joke about being stoked on caffeine is that he's a big coffee and soda drinker when the opposite is true, he said.

'My verbal outbursts are not chemically induced,” Kaufman insisted. 'I started throwing out the caffeine comments as a joke. Would you believe I don't drink caffeine? I actually drink un-caffeinated pop.

'I hate coffee, I hate tea. I actually don't drink caffeine. This thing has taken on a life of its own.”

What does get him stoked as he travels the state incessantly already having reached his yearly mileage cap with the arrival of July is 'the intensity and the fight.”

'I like that. I liked that when I was a legislator as long as everybody realizes that the fights are not personal - at least for me they're not,” Kaufmann said.

He noted he likes to take a 'macro” view and talk directly with people while employing that quiet diplomacy that Grassley talked about along the way.

'My lip is often bitten solidly, and I do a lot of talking to myself more than what I used to,” he said.