Richard Kimball

Kimball was born in Tucson, Arizona, in 1946.[1] Kimball attended the University of Arizona where he studied political science. He was a staff assistant to Congressman Morris Udall and worked as a press secretary for Senators Walter Mondale and Daniel Moynihan.[2]

In 1978, Kimball was elected to represent an area of Phoenix in the Arizona Senate. In the 1982 general election, Kimball was elected to a six-year term on the Arizona Corporation Commission for a six-year term. In January 1984, his fellow commission members elected him the chairman of the board.[1] In September 1985, Kimball resigned from his position as a member of the commission.[3] Governor Bruce Babbitt appointed Sharon Megdal, a member of the University of Arizona's economics faculty, to the seat.[4]

After the expected Democratic candidate, Governor Bruce Babbitt, declined to run in favor of a presidential campaign, Kimball was nominated as the Democratic candidate against then-Congressman John McCain for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Barry Goldwater.[5] His campaign was subject to negative press from The Arizona Republic and Phoenix Gazette. One Gazette columnist described him as displaying "terminal weirdness."[6] McCain ultimately won the election by a margin of over 20 percent.[7] Kimball later said: "I joke that John McCain entered the Senate over my dead political body. I think that's pretty accurate."[8]

Twenty years later, Kimball commented on the campaign to a reporter from the Arizona Daily Star: "I was enormously depressed — not because I lost. It was because I spent all my time collecting money." He said that he spent the following months after the election traveling through Mexico, and then left politics to start Project Vote Smart.[9]

He is currently the president emeritus of the organization Vote Smart,[10] formerly known as Project Vote Smart.[11]