Principled aide was a force in politics
Keith Wade's crusading campaign for student president at the University of Houston is what first caught legendary U.S. Rep. Mickey Leland's eye. Wade sought the position after a white student told him a black person couldn’t win.
Wade was soft-spoken but principled. He won people over with what friends described as a disarming charm. And his great political talent, they said, was in building coalitions. He did not ruffle feathers; he brought people together.
For his college campaign, he tapped a white student from a popular sorority to join his ticket, widening his reach and winning to become the first black president. He soon would deploy that coalition-building prowess in Leland’s office, as district director, and then was behind the scenes for just about every big name in Houston politics for four decades — mayors Annise Parker and Sylvester Turner, longtime state senator and now Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis, and U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, among others.
“No one (in the public) ever
heard of Keith until he died,” said longtime and client Jolanda Jones, a former HISD trustee and City Council member. “But everyone on the inside knew who Keith was. If you were in the annals of power, or if you wanted to be a player in politics, and you did your homework, you knew you had to call Keith Wade.”
Wade, 65, died Thursday of COVID-19, according to the officials he helped elect. He is survived by three adult children. Jones said he was selfless even in suffering, saying he did not want to use a test or take a hospital bed that somebody else needed more.
The news of his death elicited praise and tributes from many corners of Houston politics. Turner said he was a tireless advocate for labor and the disenfranchised, and the mayor called him “a friend and a brother.”
“This loss cuts deep,” said Ellis. “Houston has lost a quiet champion, and I’ve lost a dear friend.”
Wade was born in 1955 and spent his first nine years in the segregated south. His mother taught English in El Campo schools, and his father worked several jobs. A minister uncle would often bring him to civil rights marches and rallies outside Texas.
He would become a behindthe-scenes mover, but it almost was not that way. In 1983, Leland was trying to find someone to run for a district seat on Houston’s City Council. He told Ellis, his chief of staff at the time, to give Wade a call. Ellis said he tried every number he had, but he could not reach him.
The next day, Leland asked Ellis if he would run. He did, and won, catapulting his decadeslong career at City Hall, the Texas Senate and now Commissioners
Court. He said every time he told that story on the stump — including as recently as this year — Wade would joke: You never called me.
“I owe whatever political opportunities I’ve had… because I couldn’t find Keith in 1983,” Ellis said.
Wade, however, relished being behind the scenes, slightly removed from public scrutiny while still exerting influence with public officials. And he was the go-to guy, Ellis said.
Leland was drawn to his ability to disarm people, Ellis said. Wade could deliver bad news without setting someone off. He would set them at ease, and he always was kind.
“What I used to tell people all the time was: ‘He’s the antidote to cynicism in politics,’” said Grant Martin, a San Franciscobased political strategist who worked with Wade on numerous Houston campaigns. “In the middle of a crisis, he’s the calm voice. Whenever you want to stick it to your opponent, he’s the guy that makes you take the long view. Somehow he managed to keep that lack of cynicism his whole life in one of the most cynical businesses there is.”
Martin said Wade often would say he came from the Mickey Leland school of politics, forever seeking common ground, consensus.
On high-profile campaigns, Wade would try to frame them in the larger picture, Martin said. He would tell dozens of campaign staffers gathered before the launch of a chaotic mayoral campaign stories about how his mother would go shopping and would not be allowed to try on a dress because the store managers thought they would not be able to sell clothes worn by a black woman.
“He thought of it in terms of the long struggle,” Martin said. “Not the battle, like, ‘I’m going to go in and win this election.’ It was always the longer struggle.”
And that talent to disarm prevailed.
He was the go-to guy, for instance, when Parker or Turner sought endorsements from groups who felt the candidate had not heeded their advice or backed their picks for city board appointments.
“He wasn’t a deal-cutter. It wasn’t like he would say, ‘I’ll get you the next three appointments you want if you endorse the mayor,’” Martin said. “It was, ‘Let me explain to you why this happened and let me understand what you want out of your city government and see if we can make that happen.’”
Jones, the former council member known for what she called her often aggressive positioning, said that was the case with her, too. Wade, she said, was the only one who could get her to slow down, or stop, when she wanted to fight. He was an influential person in her life, and her son was one of may children who saw him as a father, she said. She called him her “Yoda.”
He would deploy colorful analogies to convince Jones of a new approach. He once told her she wanted politics to be like a speed boat, but it actually was a barge — it could not change on a dime. Or, that she was a car on the German Autobahn and politics was happening on the sidewalk. She needed to be more careful, he said, or she would run everybody over.
“He knew he had to nuance some of my bull-you-over instincts,” she said. “He was like my emergency brake.”
Jones said he lived the proverb: “It takes a village to raise a child.” He had a village of likeminded people, Jones said, and he was the glue that held it together.
“Keith was just like this silent mover, shaker, creator of coalitions, that helped the least, the last and the lost,” she said.