By John Minnis
Legal News
Former Michigan Attorney General Frank J. Kelley’s gravesite and marker are located on picturesque Mackinac Island, right next to the late U.S. Sen. Philip Hart’s. But, borrowing a quip from Mark Twain, reports of his death are greatly exaggerated.
Kelley is alive and well and still opinionating. He celebrated his 86th birthday on Dec. 31, 2010.
“I have a plot right next to his (Hart’s),” says Kelley during an interview at his own firm, Kelley Crawford, just a 100-yard dash from the Michigan Capitol Building in Lansing. “I just told them make sure it’s smaller than Phil’s.”
Following retirement on his 74th birthday, Dec. 31, 1998, after 37 years as attorney general, Kelley founded his own law and lobbying firm with two partners—William R. Ralls, who left the firm to move to Arizona, and Dennis O. Cawthorne, former Republican caucus leader in the Michigan House who has since been twice named Michigan’s single most effective lobbyist.
Kelley, however, is not a registered lobbyist and is winding down his practice, having sold his shares to his younger partners.
He still comes into the office dispensing wisdom every day except for wintering in Florida with his second wife and two grown daughters from his first marriage who live there year-round. His son lives in Lansing.
On this day, he is lunching with the driver of failed Democratic gubernatorial candidate Virg Bernero.
“If he had won, he would be on top of the world,” Kelley shrugs of Bernero’s election fate.
Kelley knows something about winning. As attorney general, he won 10 elections, including one by a million votes. He has the distinction of being the “youngest” and “oldest” attorney general in Michigan history and the longest-serving state attorney general in the U.S.
As a young city attorney in Alpena, Kelley was pegged in 1961 as attorney general by an equally young governor, John Swainson. He replaced Paul L. Adams, who joined the Michigan Supreme Court.
Shortly before his father’s death and just a couple of years out of the University of Detroit School of Law, Kelley went to Alpena to start a practice. He had read a book about a small-town lawyer and thought it sounded like a good idea.
Out of 19 attorneys in Alpena County at the time, Kelley was the only Democrat. But that didn’t hurt the young attorney’s business.
“All my clients were Republicans,” he recalls. “We talked about anything but politics. If you (the client) are in trouble, you don’t ask the attorney’s politics.”
These same Alpena Republicans asked Kelley to be city attorney.
“‘You just take care of the law,’” Kelley recalls the Republican city leaders telling him. “‘We’ll take care of the politics, and we’ll get along fine.’ I had good training in a small town working for Republicans.”
While on his deathbed, Kelly’s father, Frank E., gave his son his blessing to move to Alpena, but still the father’s heart must have been broken. The senior Kelley was influential in Wayne County politics. He ran a Grand River saloon that was known as the county’s unofficial Democratic headquarters.
The elder Kelley seconded President Harry Truman’s nomination at the 1948 convention and was chairman of the Wayne County Board of Institutions. It is from his father that Kelley inherited a strong desire for government service.
Once attorney general, Kelley issued more than 3,000 AG Opinions, nearly 100 a year, since 1963, the farthest back the searchable online database goes. Since Kelley left office 12 years ago, his successors—Jennifer Granholm and Mike Cox—issued some 244 AG Opinions, about 20 a year.
Ahead of his time—and before Ralph Nader was even out of law school—Kelley was the first to create a consumer protection division in the AG office.
He was also the first to create an environmental division and was the first to get a multi-million environmental settlement.
“In 1962, you would have never heard the words ‘consumer protection,’” Kelley says. “Before that there were isolated cases.”
He recalls one senator calling that “consumer protection stuff” “Communist activity.”
Except when he was pressured into an unsuccessful run for the U.S. Senate in 1972 against Republican incumbent Robert P. Griffin, Kelley never sought another office.
“I wanted to make a career out of attorney general,” he says. “People who want to use offices as stepping stones, you have to watch out for them.”
During his tenure as AG, Kelley worked with (or against) five governors, three of whom were Republicans: George Romney, William Milliken and John Engler, the last of whom he got along with as long as “we didn’t talk politics.” Besides Swainson, the only other Democratic governor during Kelley’s tenure was James Blanchard, whom Kelley had hired into the AG office right out of law school. They remain friends and confidants to this day.
Since leaving public service and starting his own firm, Kelley has had some big-name clients, including Marge Schott when she sold the Cincinatti Reds and Ford Motor Co. when it went through the Bronco rollover problems. Other clients include DTE, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, and the Detroit Pistons, which presented Kelley with his own named jersey.
“I represent companies that have problems with government,” Kelley says. “I’m certainly not anti-business.”
When asked how long he plans to keep coming into the office, Kelley responds, “As long as my feeble mind is feebly working.”
One political appointment Kelley continues to cherish is his seat on the Mackinac Island State Park Commission.
“Engler had to have a Democrat on the board,” Kelley recalls, “so he gave it to me.”
In 2007, Granholm named Kelley chairman of the commission, replacing his Republican partner, Cawthorne. The position gives Kelley plenty of opportunity to check out his eternal resting place, which suits Michigan’s “Eternal General” just fine.
Everything important in Kelley’s life seems to happen on his birthday, Dec. 31. Just as Mark Twain came into this world and left it with Halley’s Comet, so will Kelley most likely make his final trip to Mackinac Island one Dec. 31 — after many more years opinionating.
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