Curt Bramble: Finding Common Ground

By Greg Jarrard

          With so much political hot air floating around these days, there’s one state senator who’s not afraid to make use of it: Provo State Senator Curt Bramble. As a licensed hot-air balloon pilot, he likes the view up there. How he actually arrived at a position of leadership in the State Senate — he’s the majority leader — is another story.

          Bramble describes his decision to run for public office as “a moment of weakness.”  An old friend (and recently elected Utah Republican Party chairman), Stan Lockhart, did some arm-twisting on the Provo CPA and tax advisor, trying to convince him that his expertise was needed on Utah’s Capitol Hill. Lockhart was just returning the favor — Bramble was a strong supporter of Lockhart when he ran for a political office. You could say he was just getting even.

          At any rate, at the 1996 Utah County Convention, the former Notre Dame wrestler and BYU yell leader found himself just a half dozen votes short of getting the Republican nomination for Senate District 16. He had former Congressman Howard Nielsen in a “full Nelson,” nearly pinned to the mat and grasping for air. Bramble would face the older gentleman in a primary. But he wasn’t worried. Later that political season when Nielsen dusted off his political signs and started campaigning in earnest, Bramble was still confident. A Chicago-born grappler who went to Notre Dame on a Navy scholarship, Bramble was always up for a good fight. However, on Primary Election Night, 1996, Curt Bramble learned an important lesson from a seasoned political veteran.

          “Even after the early returns showed Howard up 60-40, I was convinced we would win in the end. But, we didn’t. Late that night, I drove around and collected my yard signs and dropped them at the city dump. As far as I was concerned, my one shot at political office was gone. I fought the good fight, did my best but now it was over. At least that’s what I thought then. I didn’t count on Howard Nielsen becoming not just a friend but a mentor,” Bramble recalls.

          Not only did Nielsen treat his political opponent with great respect, but four years later when the elder statesman decided not to run again, he helped coax Bramble back into the political arena, supporting Bramble to fill his seat.

          “In an era of political destruction and personal attack, Howard Nielsen taught me my first key political lesson: the importance of respecting others and viewing them as principled people with convictions from whom you can always learn something. I’ve taken that lesson and tried to put it into practice now that I am in the public arena,” Bramble explains.

          “If you try to see an issue from the other guy’s point of view, you can usually find some common ground; just because you are on opposite sides of a particular issue or cause doesn’t mean you are adversaries, that you have to be opposed on everything. If you try, you can find areas of agreement.”

          An example of how he tried to put this principle into practice is the agreement he helped craft for the new 4th Congressional District. Congress came up with its own plan — a statewide district to avoid “Republican gerrymandering.” But, state Senate and House leaders didn’t like that precedent-setting move and under the leadership of Bramble and others were determined to find a compromise that everyone could live with.

          “With the cooperation of House leadership, we came up with a plan after getting a consensus with our minority counterparts without polarizing members and without pushing through a partisan program [that Congress would reject]. We wanted to have a deal on board in case Congress actually passed and the president signed the bill,” Bramble recalls.

          Reflecting on his six-plus years in the state Senate, Bramble not only credits his success to the mentoring of Howard Nielsen but also to a job he used to put himself through college:

          “I sold used cars. And I learned early on that I didn’t try to push an over-the-hill blue Toyota off on someone because we had to get rid of it. I was successful because I understood that my job was to solve my customers’ transportation problems. That same principle applies to politics.”

          As a tax litigator as well as accountant, he uses those skills to helps clients make peace with the tax collector.

          “It’s all about finding common ground,” he notes. “And, it requires you to identify early the deal-breakers. Then you can reach a pragmatic solution. There’s an ongoing debate in politics about principles vs. pragmatics. I am one who believes in incrementalism. You can’t generally get what you want all at once. You get it piece by piece. We haven’t dismantled the welfare state all at once — just one piece at a time.”

          He provides a case in point: the state driver’s privilege card.

          “Before we passed this measure, illegal aliens had no problem getting a Utah State driver’s license. And once they had one, it was almost like they were suddenly legal. Hard-core opponents of illegal immigration accused us of caving in; we explained that it was a first step. Their argument was ‘it didn’t go far enough.’           When we asked them if they wanted to go back to issuing drivers’ licenses, they said ‘of course not.’  Politics is like football; every play that moves the ball downfield puts you that much closer to getting a score. Some people just don’t understand that. That’s not being unprincipled — it’s just being pragmatic.”

Bramble admits that his opponents accuse him of “building consensus on your terms.”

          “My answer is ‘no;’ I look for terms that are generally acceptable and try to avoid the deal-breakers. That’s how we get the votes we need to get legislation passed.”

          His path to leadership in the Utah Senate was not a straight one. Like the man in the Robert Frost poem who faced a road that “diverged in a wood, he took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”

          A girl he met in South Bend introduced him to two young men in dark suits that led him to make some changes in his life that his family disapproved of.  He was advised to “go to hell or go to Utah.” He chose Utah and enrolled at Brigham Young University where he switched from wrestling men — which was what he was doing at Notre Dame — to catching female cheerleaders; he became a yell leader. Then, he met a red-headed Provo girl by the name of Susan McKay, and the rest, as they say, is history.

          “I have been here ever since. I decided you could either live where you work or work where you live, and I chose the latter,” he advises others.

          Six kids and thirty-five years later, Curt Bramble is still here. He graduated from BYU in accounting and finance and then earned a masters degree in taxation and computers, skills he puts to use every day. He started and ran his own CPA firm, and then in 2001 after his election to the Senate, he merged with the firm of Gilbert & Stewart where he still practices his profession today when he’s not serving the constituents of Senate District 16 that encompasses much of the City of Provo.

          Since he first took the oath of office in January 2001, Sen. Bramble has had some notable successes, including the issue of term limits.

          “I took a stance against Utah term limits, which had been passed by the Legislature in the 1990s in response to several citizen initiatives, early in my political career,” Bramble recalls. There had been some groundswell of support for limiting the terms of elected office holders and the Legislature responded — those limits were to take effect in 2006. But, Bramble had other ideas.

          “The State Constitution has written into it specific qualifiers and disqualifiers for public office. In addition, we have these periodic checks called elections. In addition, state staff workers and judges have no such limits, so in my opinion, that puts the legislative branch at a disadvantage,” Bramble explains.

          “And if you note the Senate class of 2000 — the year I was elected — several of them are already gone. With a few exceptions, it was difficult to make the case that the Senate was dominated by the same people year after year.”

          Bramble’s leadership on this issue resulted in the repeal of term limits in 2003. Like term limits, all of the top issues that the Legislature handles every year are resolved only when there is consensus and compromise.

          “Telecommunications reform is another example,” Bramble says. The deregulating of Qwest and the accompanying regulatory and taxation issues were passed unanimously, Bramble notes, but only after “common ground was found.”

          Other sticky issues Bramble tackled include changes in emergency medical services and RDA (redevelopment agency) reform.

          “And like tax reform, these issues required studying what all sides were saying. I am convinced that if you don’t listen, how can you propose a settlement that people will accept? You can’t. It is essential to be effective in formulating public policy,” Bramble explains.

          The CPA, tax litigator and hot-air balloon pilot can speak from experience. And it doesn’t mean he is risk averse. He is also a sky diver.

          “You do have to be a little crazy to jump out of a perfectly good airplane,” he says describing his first sky-diving experience from an air-worthy 1943 era DC3.

          He understands how to adapt to wind conditions, temperature and other changes in the environment, whether it concerns skydiving, hot-air ballooning or the current political climate.

          And as Sen. Bramble explains with a smile, that’s not just a lot of hot air.

Greg Jarrard is a veteran ad man, writer and publisher best known for running paid ad campaigns for Republican candidates. His recent book, "A Jack Mormon's Travel Guide," is available at Deseret Book. He resides in South Jordan where he digs weeds and claims it is a garden.