When the news came Sunday night that Barbara Keating died at 82 following a stroke, there was sadness among conservatives on both the East and West Coasts.
As the U.S. Senate nominee of the insurgent New York Conservative Party in 1974, Keating, a widow and mother of five, impressed audiences with her speaking style and no-holds-barred conservative stands on issues.
On a shoe-string budget and with an almost exclusively volunteer campaign, she drew 16% of the vote and held veteran liberal GOP Sen. Jacob Javits to a career-low 45% in his reelection.
By 1992, having relocated to Northern California and known as Barbara Keating-Edh, she had married Swedish-born businessman Lennarth Edh, she carried the Republican banner in the 25th Assembly District. In a heartbreakingly close contest, 51.5% to 48.5%, Keating-Edh lost to liberal Democrat Margaret Snyder.
Wherever she lived, Barbara Keating seem to find a cause and motivate others to join it through her infectious personality, high energy level, and insistence on learning everything there was to know about an issue.
When U.S. Marine Corps Major Daniel J. Keating was shipped to Vietnam in August, 1967, wife Barbara became head of the household of five children aged two to seven in Mamaroneck (Westchester County), New York. She soon grew upset that the teachers in public schools her children attended were denouncing the government, denigrating soldiers in Vietnam, and being disrespectful to the flag.
Keating put her thoughts in a letter to the Mamoroneck Daily News, which ran it as an op-ed. Almost overnight, she was recruited for a new group called the “Honor America Committee of Westchester County.” Its mission was to see the Pledge of Allegiance was recited and the Stars and Stripes hung at schools throughout the county.
The young mother’s speeches at American Legion and Veterans of Foreign War halls and work on behalf of “Honor America” took on new and special meaning on May 22, 1969. That was the day her husband Daniel was killed while on patrol at Hue, Vietnam.
Keating registered with the fledgling Conservative Party in 1970, the year James Buckley was elected U.S. senator on its ballot line, and three years later, she joined the Executive Committee of the Westchester County Conservative Party.
Asked to speak on America’s fighting men and returning POWs at the statewide Conservative Party dinner in October of 1973, Keating, wrote George Marlin in his history of the party entitled “Fighting the Good Fight,” “was up against such notable speakers as Bill and James Buckley. [But] her comments electrified the crowd.”
Keating — who had never been to college — found herself inundated with speaking invitations to Conservative Party events throughout the Empire State. When party leaders Serf Maltese and Dan Mahoney suggested she run for the U.S. Senate, “she thought they were joking,” recalled Marlin. Soon, however, Keating agreed to run on the condition she would bone up on the issues before her candidacy was announced.
“Serf Maltese loaned Barbara a decade’s worth of bound copies of the conservative news weekly ‘Human Events,’ and she went to work,” wrote Marlin. Keating would recall how “I compiled articles and essays on all the current domestic, defense and foreign policy issues and studied them for several weeks.”
Having forced herself into the first televised debate between Republican Javits and Democrat Ramsey Clark, Keating not only held her own in confrontations but frequently came off the winner. She was proudly pro-life, charged that Clark “was used by North Vietnamese Communists for their own propaganda purposes,” and called Javits’ visit to Castro’s Cuba “one of the most disgraceful episodes in the recent history of American foreign policy.”
Driving rental cars that often broke down and staying in cheap hotels, Keating attracted volunteers and swatches of small donations with her forceful speeches and warm personality. Many liked the idea of an attractive young mother of five running for the Senate.
“She is a beautiful woman, so that right away she violates a New York taboo, which steadfastly refuses to put beautiful women on the ballot, preferring [New York Democratic Rep.] Bella Abzug,” wrote William F. Buckley.
Keating didn’t win, but her strong 16% showing seemed a sure sign she’d be heard from again. Sen. Buckley hired her for his New York staff, where she dealt with senior citizens’ issues and emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union.
In 1977, Keating founded Consumer Alert, a pro-free market organization that promoted competitive enterprise and safe technology through science. She championed nuclear power and challenged such liberal consumer advocates as Ralph Nader and Joan Claybrook on mandated airbags in autos and spoke nationwide.
It was at one of her speeches that Barbara met Len Edh, then head of the California-based Walther Electric Company. The two were married and Barbara Keating-Edh settled in the Golden State.
She headed President Reagan’s transition team for the Consumer Product Safety Commission and recommended its abolition. She also ran the local office of Catholic Charities and assisted in the relocation of Indonesian refugees to Stanislaus County.
Whether active in Republican politics, serving on the board of the American Conservative Union, or involved in the schools of her children and stepchildren, Barbara Keating remained what she was most of her life: a believer in issues and causes, with the moxie and energy to advance them.
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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