2009 Public Officials of the Year

Interview

Q&A: Phyllis Kahn

Phyllis Kahn (full profile) was elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives in 1972. She's passed dozens of laws including such milestones as the 1975 Clean Indoor Air Act, the nation's first law to mandate non-smoking sections in public places. When she's not making laws, Kahn plays ice hockey, bakes pies, runs marathons and raises chickens. Governing Staff Writer Zach Patton talked with Kahn about how experiencing gender discrimination inspired her to run for public office and what she's done in the 36 years since. Here is an abridged and edited version of the interview:

You're from Brooklyn. How did you wind up in Minneapolis?

As a card-carrying member of a nuclear family: My husband got a job here and we moved. I became a research associate in the department of genetics and cell biology at the University of Minnesota. I was working on problems involving DNA and bacteria and viruses and so forth. I started that in about 1965.

Then in the late '60s and early '70s, the women's movement took hold in Minnesota. And I sort of looked up and looked at my position, and I saw it was well below all of the other people who had the same background, or even less of a background.

The other people being men?

Yes. So I raised questions about it and tried to get on a tenure-track appointment schedule. I filed a discrimination complaint against the university when that didn't work. Not surprisingly, my situation went from bad to worse.

I also was founder of the National Organization for Women's branch here, and then a friend of mine had started lobbying in the legislative session [on women's issues]. I remember she walked into my lab and said, "I've just found out how to lobby at the legislature. There's something we have to work on. You have to come with me."

And I said, "Well, I'm doing this experiment." And she said, "You can do your experiments at night."

It was probably the first time I had ever been in any state capitol, and I just got fascinated by the process. We worked on three issues, one of which passed: the Childcare Facility Act.

So how exactly did you decide to run for office?

I was doing sort of difficult electron microscopy work, and I was in the darkroom working. I had this perfect sample in front of me, and there was a knock on the door from the professor. I had a grant from the American Cancer Society, and I had just finished doing the work for the renewal. Anyway, this person knocks on the door and he says, "The dean wants to talk to you." So I went to the dean's office, and he said — the renewal I had applied for was for two years. The dean told me he had rewritten my application so that it was only for one year, because, since I had filed my discrimination complaint, it wasn't clear what my status was going to be. So that was the moment I just decided, "I'm not going to do this anymore. I'm going to face these guys across a legislative table."

How has your science background played into your career as a legislator?

In two ways. One, if you look over the list of issues I've worked on, I've pulled out a lot of legislative issues with science components. They're the things that don't get a lot of publicity. One of the things I've recently been involved in is a study of privacy laws for genetic testing and a study of handling genetic material at all levels.

I've also served on a lot of committees and groups with the American Association for the Advancement of Science. I always used to say, if they'd put me on a committee — a woman with a science background, and an elected official from the Midwest — they could go back to their set of scientists from both coasts and say they'd balanced the committee.

What other issues have you focused on?

I'm continually working on health issues, even though I'm not on any of the health committees. Most recently, I've been working on requiring hospitals to report on infection rates and looking at controlling that.

One of the things I think has governed my career has been issues with technology and the state's use of technology. And that was actually started in my first year in the legislature, by a letter from a constituent complaining about a computer acquisition that was being done in the education system.

So then I kind of worked consistently on trying to get better systems of technology going in the state. And I'm still working on that now. I think we've gotten good support now in the executive agencies, but in times of budget problems it then becomes more difficult. I chair the committee on state government finance, and I've been trying to get more total control of the appropriations process for information systems. But there are a lot of turf fights involved in that. So it hasn't been fully successful.

There was one point in the budget process last year where the highly knowledgeable, highly respected chair of the Senate committee on health and human services tried to eliminate all of the projected money in the budget for information systems, and put it in, you know, sick children or seniors or something like that. Fortunately, that didn't go through. But that is the attitude that you face in the legislature, that in a time of crisis there are much more important things to take care of than information systems. And then to argue how important those systems are makes you feel like a hard-hearted nerd. So it's an uphill battle.

But I always point out that my interest in technology is on an academic, governmental level. When I got a brand-new BlackBerry, I was very dependent on my 13-year-old granddaughter to point out where all the buttons are.

One of your first legislative accomplishments was the Clean Indoor Air Act, one of the first laws anywhere in the world that banned smoking in some public places.

Someone in my district had come to me about the issue of second-hand smoke and the problems related to it. So we drew up a bill to do it. I first put it in during my freshman session, and it was killed in the House.

The second year, there were these kind of serendipitous things that happened. I went to the Rules Committee. And the speaker of the House — who was a chain smoker — as I was presenting my bill to the Rules Committee, he was sitting with a cigarette, blowing smoke rings across the table. The biggest front-page story in one of the papers the next day was "She Huffs and He Puffs." The response to that was just horrendous, just outrage on all sides. So he became a co-author of the Clean Indoor Air Act.

The smartest thing we did with that bill was that we made a general principle that forbade smoking everywhere unless it was specifically allowed. Every law before that had just this increasing list of places where smoking wasn't allowed. So that was enormously powerful. And it seemed reasonable to people, because it didn't call for a banning of cigarettes. It just called for non-smoking areas in various places.

Aren't you the longest-serving member in the state House right now?

Well, there were three of us who were elected at the same time, in 1972. One moved to the Senate, so we don't count her. And the other House member claims that he's the longest-serving member since his name is Carlson, and they do the roll in alphabetical order. So "Carlson" came in before "Kahn."

I hear you raise chickens.

Yes. It's actually a chicken cooperative, which is the only thing that makes it possible for urban chickens. We have three or four families, and we have 30 chickens and 10 ducks and three geese. We live in kind of an interesting area — it's the only inhabited island in the Mississippi River. It's actually part of downtown, but it almost looks like a rural setting in the center of the city.

I won't go into the cost — by the time you've built a coop and done all that sort of thing — what the cost of an egg is. But fresh eggs are really, really good!

You're a marathon runner, too?

Yes. I'm actually signed up to run two marathons this year. I'm running the New York marathon, which is nice because it's not time-limited. And the other one I'm running is the Twin Cities marathon.

And is it true that you have the best running time of anyone in the legislature?

Yes, I do! And I keep teasing my colleagues who run marathons that they could take it down anytime they want. As marathons go, my time isn't that great. I didn't start running until I was in my 40s. My best time is like 3:17. But it's safe so far.

Talk about your award-winning homemade pies.

This year, for the first time in many, I didn't enter anything in the state fair. I just ran out of time. But last year, I won first prize for something I didn't even believe in, which is a "guilt-free" cheesecake. And I won second prize for a couple of years for my industrial-strength chocolate pie.

During your career, you've advocated for some rather unpopular ideas, such as lowering the voting age to 12.

I sponsored a bill to give 12-year-olds the right to vote, on the grounds that government pamphlets are written at a sixth-grade level. I mean, we let 16-year-olds drive, and a careless driver can do a lot more harm than a careless vote. I've also pushed to lower the drinking age to 18, because of the university in my district and in regards to binge drinking. And extending drinking hours is something I've worked on for years. Traffic density decreases after midnight, so it's actually safer for drunk drivers to be out later.

These are just some of the things you can work on if you're not too worried about taking yourself too seriously and not concerned about what people think of you. You have to be unafraid of people making fun of you.