Thu, Jun 15, 2000 (9:39 a.m.)

Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun.

Editor's note: Mike O'Callaghan has been out of the governor's office and in the newspaper business for over 20 years. But in all that time, he has never left politics. At least, he has never given up on the idea of public service. There is still no one I know who gives more of his time to help those in need, or those who don't think they need, than Mike. And it is all done quietly because that's the way Mike likes it.

Recently, Nevada's former governor returned to a place he has always loved -- Idaho -- to pursue an area of policy that has always interested him -- public lands. In doing so, he caught the attention of Idaho Statesman columnist Dan Popkey, who summed up the Mike we all know and love in just one column, which carried the headline "O'Callaghan is one of rare breed of gutsy politicians." Since Mike would never let this see the light of day in the Sun, I am taking a great risk by republishing it. I commend it to all Nevadans who know him and, especially, to those who have never had that great privilege.

Dan Popkey's column follows:

Mike O'Callaghan, one of the great characters of Western politics, was back in Idaho last week.

For me, the visit by the former governor of Nevada -- a graduate of Boise Junior College and the University of Idaho -- was a bittersweet reminder that political courage has gone out of style.

Western giants like Sens. Mike Mansfield of Montana, Mark Hatfield of Oregon, Scoop Jackson of Washington, Paul Laxalt of Nevada and Frank Church of Idaho, and Govs. Tom McCall of Oregon and Cecil Andrus of Idaho, are retired or dead.

They've been replaced by blow-dried, finger-to-the-wind politicians who can't see beyond their next election and won't make a decision absent a nod from the pollsters.

O'Callaghan, governor from 1971 to 1979, has a bellyful of the guts so scarce these days. He tackled the regionalism that crippled higher education in Nevada and established a funding scheme that serves the fastest-growing college and university system in the country; took one of the first steps to protect Lake Tahoe as a national treasure; and reformed an antiquated state social services system.

O'Callaghan, whose parents are buried in St. Maries, was in Boise for the Andrus Center for Public Policy's conference on public lands. He urged getting everybody to the table, but said policymakers must make tough decisions without fear.

"You can't make policy by everybody sitting down and agreeing," he said. "You not only listen to the middle of the road, but the extremists. Then, we can have disagreements, but we need a method to agree to disagree -- pleasantly."

A former boxer and ironworker at Anderson Ranch Dam, O'Callaghan is a veteran of the Marines, Air Force and Army. He lost his left leg to an 82 mm mortar shell in Korea in 1953. In Nevada, folks call the Democrat "Iron Mike."

"He's one of the Real McCoys," said University of Nevada political scientist Robert Dickens. "There aren't many like him coming along." Dickens remembers an encounter with O'Callaghan in the 1970s, when the governor was refusing to expand a welfare program. O'Callaghan invited protesters to the governor's mansion for dinner.

Expecting a nice spread, the critics were instead served surplus government commodities. "It was presented well," recalled Dickens, "but it was still a school lunch."

The Guv sat halfway up an elaborate staircase, the dissidents below him, and firmly explained his decision. "He did know how to take command and control," said Dickens.

Wildly popular as governor, he was loved for his earthiness. The night he was first elected, he took on all comers in an arm-wrestling contest at a tavern, beating every opponent.

In 1972, he was in Boise campaigning for then-Attorney General Tony Park's bid for the Senate. O'Callaghan wanted to see his old boxing mentor, Al Berro, and went searching for him in a bar.

"He walked in and yelled, 'Timber!' " signaling he'd get the next round, Park recalled. "Here are the governor of Nevada and the attorney general of Idaho and we're buying drinks for the house at a sleazy bar."

When he left the governorship, O'Callaghan could easily have been elected to the U.S. Senate, but chose to get into the newspaper business. He publishes two weeklies and is chairman of the board, executive editor and a columnist at the Las Vegas Sun.

Awarded the Bronze and Silver stars, O'Callaghan, 70, is still displaying his courage. He is on a team appointed by Defense Secretary William Cohen to investigate the alleged slaughter of Korean villagers by U.S. soldiers at No Gun Ri in 1950. Since 1985 he has volunteered for the Israeli Army three weeks a year, working as a tank mechanic.

He also was an election observer in Nicaragua in 1990 and 1996 and at the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma last year for Jimmy Carter's think tank.

Gordon Streeb, a former ambassador to Zambia and official at The Carter Center, said he chose O'Callaghan for the Cherokee job for his prestige and experience. "His views added credibility to the report and reassured voters of the outcome," Streeb said.

All this started in Moscow, Idaho, where O'Callaghan and Chuck McDevitt -- who went on to become chief justice of the Idaho Supreme Court -- were elected student vice president and president on a reform ticket. They boosted student power in U of I policymaking, helped remodel and win management control of the Student Union and enlarged housing for married students. O'Callaghan is in the Alumni Hall of Fame.

Jim Lynch, who met O'Callaghan at the U of I and is now a lawyer in Boise, put it well. "He's the kind of guy you can go camping in the rain with. He's entertaining, dependable and bluntly honest."

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