Ladonna Lee: she'll get it done - Eddie Mahe Co. president - Movers and Shakers

Whenever journalists try to write a story, the most crucial step of the composition is articulating the "hook," that part of the tale which creates a compelling reason to finish the story. Well, in writing about Ladonna Lee, president of the Eddie Mahe Company, this journalist found nothing so sensational the reader would be unable to break away. No, what was found was the story of a successful political operative who is roundly acclaimed for an atypical mixture of political savvy and class.

So if you're after a compelling melodrama, read no further, but if the career of a woman who has gained respect from both sides of the political aisle interests you, consider yourself hooked.

As a student at the University of Northern Colorado, Ladonna Lee worked her way through school, dismissing the banalities of popular campus upheaval. (She didn't bomb the ROTC building -- it's where she worked.)

Although she was born into politics as the daughter of a Colorado state legislator, she did not inherit a political career. Being one of eight children, many of them boys, Lee earned her stripes on her father's campaigns, later running the local county party office. She is an incurable realist who focuses on family and friends in her spare time, and shuns the average fiction novels in favor of practical and educational tomes.

In 1976, Lee was hired to serve as a field coordinator for the Republican National Committee. Upon her arrival she was told there would be no complaining about missing one's family, and all women carry their own luggage. This was to her liking because it meant she was hired to do her job, not to fill a quota. "She is strongly committed to the whole concept of equality with regards to pay and opportunity," partner Eddie Mahe says.

Her next professional move could have adversely affected her career. Instead of managing a congressional campaign (as she advises any aspiring consultant) she took a position as the political director for the John Connally for President campaign -- a campaign, she said, with everything but convention delegates. Shortly thereafter, she moved to the NRCC as the deputy political director, where she worked on hundreds of campaigns.

In 1981, Lee joined Mahe's company as it began to focus on corporate accounts. "In the reality of today's campaigns, you're pushed beyond the limit for three months in a way that tears up your body and your relationships, and then your company goes through a six or nine month dry spell," she said. "That's not the way to run a business." As is the trend for political consulting firms, Lee and Mahe "translate" their campaign skills for private business, and corporations are buying their pitch.

Be it a courtroom standoff, a merger/acquisition effort or a zoning battle, Lee builds a candidate styled campaign plan for an eclectic client list which includes luminaries like COMSAT, the Republican National Committee and World Cup USA 1994.

Although Lee admits the firm's focus on political campaigns has decreased, its importance has not. "Campaigns fundamentally keep your skills sharp, there is no better test ground," she insists. "The press is much more hostile or skeptical; your opponents are much more in play than they ever are in a corporate battle; and the technological applications are much more updated." Currently, she is leading U.S. Senator Conrad Burns (R-MT) 1994 re-election campaign.

In her role with the Eddie Mahe Company, Lee established herself as a political operator who takes a strategy and turns it into reality. As Mahe says, "If something impossible needs to get done by eight in the morning, Ladonna will get it done."

Several consultants described Lee as having qualities some consider rare in the consulting breed -- an innate sense of integrity and uncompromised principles. For Lee, these are grounded in a sense of self and family. Her goals are to spend more time with her 11 year-old daughter, Jessica, and to visit her grandfather's ranch more often. Regardless, Lee expects to hang her hat at the Eddie Mahe Company where she will undoubtedly continue to plow the fields of Republican politics and corporate issues management.

COPYRIGHT 1994 Campaigns & Elections, Inc.
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