Ray Strother is unwinding these days at his mountainside retreat in Montana after decades of hubbub in Washington as one of the country’s leading political consultants.
A Northwestern alumnus, Strother has received the school’s most prestigious honors, including the ultimate tribute of induction into the Long Purple Line Hall of Distinction.
Now he has been selected for the new Distinguished Communications Professional Award that recognizes alumni in journalism-related fields.
Strother will be one of the first two recipients of the award. He will accept it at Homecoming and might recall that Northwestern officials have not always held him in such high esteem.
Growing up in Port Arthur, Tex., Strother had never heard of Northwestern and couldn’t envision his folks having enough money to send him to college.
Strother spent most of his time in high school reading and running track. An uncle used to bring Ray’s family classic books from a used bookstore. Ray read them repeatedly and still has the volumes in his library.
He competed in the mile run and finished high in some small meets. In others, he was applauded just for reaching the finish line after most other runners had crossed it.
Strother was working on a road crew the summer after high school and was surprised to get a letter from Northwestern track coach Walter Ledet offering him a scholarship.
Ray accepted it and trained hard but didn’t win many races. He found a different niche, though, when NSU journalism professor John Merrill noticed his writing skills.
In an editorial for the school paper, Strother criticized college president Dr. John Kyser for inviting an ultra-conservative speaker to campus.
Strother said, “The president called me in, said he was not happy having me there and told me to be gone by Friday.”
Broke and newly married, Strother got help from Merrill to get in LSU. Ray became editor of the LSU student newspaper and went to work for the Associated Press after graduation.
He covered politics and was assigned to long-shot candidate John McKeithen in the 1964 governor’s race. “They gave me the losers,” Strother said.
But McKeithen won and helped lure Ray into full-time political consulting with public relations guru Gus Weill.
Strother ran Mary Evelyn Parker’s successful campaign for state treasurer and handled congressional and statewide races for numerous other candidates.
He soared to prominence as a political strategist in 1980 in U.S. Sen. Russell Long’s landslide win over Woody Jenkins.
Long had not been seriously challenged during three decades in the Senate, but word surfaced that Jenkins was planning a slick 30-minute documentary to muster support.
Weill gave Strother a tight deadline to create a documentary for Long. He got a crew together in New York, worked day and night and produced a political masterpiece.
That attracted interest from Washington political powers and more campaign job offers than he could handle.
He worked for senators, representatives and governors, including Bill Clinton. Clinton wanted Strother to run his presidential campaign, but Ray says Hillary overruled him.
Colorado Senator Gary Hart was not making much of a ripple in his 1988 run for president until he brought Ray on board. He became the frontrunner but dropped out amidst a sex scandal.
After years at the cutting edge of political consulting, Strother eased into speaking, writing and teaching engagements.
He was a teaching fellow at Harvard and later held the Wise Chair in Journalism for years at Northwestern.
That position, funded by long-time Louisiana newspaper publisher Gen. Erbon Wise and his wife Marie, was the first academic chair at the university.
Wise, who scribbled a $400,000 check with a ballpoint pen to get matching funds to create the $1 million chair, will join Strother as the first recipients of the new journalism honor.
Strother calls his time teaching at Northwestern “the best thing I ever did” even if he was kicked out of school as a student.
REPRINTED FROM THE NATCHITOCHES TIMES