On Election Day, Three Udall Cousins Could Win Senate Seats

Mark Udall is a climber. The House Democrat from Colorado has scaled each of the state's "Fourteeners," the 54 majestic peaks that soar at least 14,000 feet. He's had his passport stamped in Nepal nine times, and although he failed to conquer Everest, he reached the pinnacle of the 28,169-foot Kanchenjunga, the third-tallest mountain on Earth.

Today, the lanky, 58-year-old lawmaker is attempting a new and challenging ascent—running for the U.S. Senate after nearly 10 years in the House. If he and two other men in Senate contests prevail on November 4, history books will be rewritten. The three of them are cousins, and their being elected would be a first for the world's most exclusive club.

Handicappers give Udall a slight edge in the Colorado race—or call it a tossup. To the south, in neighboring New Mexico, his first cousin and fellow Democrat Tom Udall, 60, is favored to win the seat. Both states are hard-fought turf at the presidential level. To the northwest in Oregon, the Udalls' second cousin, incumbent Sen. Gordon Smith, 56, is battling prevailing Democratic winds, but many think he'll stay on as the sole surviving Republican senator on the West Coast.

The cousins were born to a political dynasty rooted in the rugged terrain of the American West, each of them the son of a man who served in Washington. America, it's safe to say, has had a 232-year fascination with such families, from the Adamses to the Harrisons to the Kennedys to the Bushes, to name some. But historians point out that there have been only 10 known pairs of cousins who landed in the Senate, the last being Delaware's Henry and Thomas du Pont at the start of the last century. The du Ponts, though, like all but two of the pairs, did not serve simultaneously, according to the Senate Historical Office.

A famous political forebear, living or dead, certainly may help on Election Day, but a relative with lots of ink in Who's Who doesn't guarantee victory. Tom Udall can attest to that, since he faltered twice in House races before winning in 1998, the same year as Mark Udall.

Tom and Mark Udall are bound by more than bloodlines. These political allies, both liberals, are boyhood friends, climbing partners, graduates of Outward Bound, and environmentalists. Mark, who lives outside Boulder in Eldorado Springs, for years taught Outward Bound courses in Colorado. He was its statewide executive director for 10 years after that. Tom, who once scaled Mount McKinley, followed a more traditional path to Congress, serving first as an assistant federal prosecutor in New Mexico and, later, as the state's attorney general. Today the pair compares notes every day, if only by phone or E-mail. Sit down with them and get them talking, and they revert to calling the other by their nicknames: Marcus and Tomás. They tend to finish each other's sentences, sometimes with a laugh line.

In the genes. Asked about the Udall dynasty—a term the two scions dislike, thinking it suggestive of kings—Mark insists they are outliers in the current generation of Udalls for having pursued elected office, since most went into business or education. "Our brothers and sisters and cousins," Tom deadpans, "think we got the defective gene."

Their fathers, though, were plainly famous politicians, beginning in Arizona, where this storied Mormon family first made its name. Mark's dad is the late Morris "Mo" Udall, who held on to a House seat from Arizona for 30 years and made a serious bid for the White House in 1976. Before entering Congress, Mo was an Army officer, a pro basketball player (briefly), and a lawyer, all despite having lost an eye in childhood. He's chiefly remembered as an environmentalist whose achievements included designating millions of acres of federal land as wilderness. His wit was wicked. Once, he pointed out the difference between a political caucus and a cactus, observing that the plant has its pricks on the outside. He went on to pen a book, Too Funny to Be President.

Mo's brother—Tom's dad—is Stewart Udall, 88, who likewise was a forerunner in the conservation movement. Stewart spent six years in the House before he was tapped to run the Interior Department by President Kennedy. He stayed on through the Johnson administration. A lawyer, poet, and author, Stewart now is Tom's next-door neighbor in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains fringing Santa Fe, N.M.

As the Udall family patriarch, Stewart keeps up with the three Senate races and other national affairs, though his eyes are failing from macular degeneration. "He's writing an op-ed right now," Tom speculates.

Stewart, in a separate interview, says he and his kinsmen were motivated not by money but by service. "We were taught, if you were elected to a public office, you were a public servant. I thought I had the best job in the country, because I was giving service to the people."

He and other Udalls trace their values to David King Udall (1851–1938), a Mormon bishop who at the behest of the church hierarchy led pioneering families from Kanab, Utah, to St. Johns, Ariz., about 130 years ago. A polygamist, he took three wives and had 11 children who survived into adulthood, ensuring a family tree whose roots run broad and deep. He served in the Arizona Territorial Legislature from 1899 to 1900, setting the stage for more than a dozen Udall family members who later held federal, state, or local office. That streak gave birth to the family's tongue-in-cheek slogan: "Vote for the Udall nearest you."

"Legacy of public service." David King Udall is the great-grandfather of all three cousin-candidates. In Tucson, Ariz., Elma Udall, 90, one of his granddaughters—and the self-described "family genealogist, historian, and spinster"—says the Udalls' traditions arose from the ethos of the old Mormon West. "If you wanted a better church, a better school, a better community, a better anything," she says, "then you didn't sit on the sidelines and complain."

Generations later, Mark and Tom share an axiom. "We don't trade on what we haven't earned" is how Mark puts it, "but we build on what we've been given, which is a legacy of public service."

Their cousin Smith, a two-term senator from Oregon, is a lawyer and the owner of Smith Frozen Foods, a large processing company that is based in Weston, Ore., and is known for its peas, corn, and carrots. Like his Udall cousins, he grew up surrounded by politicians, many from the Republican branches of the family tree. His father was an Agriculture Department official for President Eisenhower. His grandfather, one of two Udalls to serve as chief justice of the Arizona Supreme Court, once took him as a child for lunch in the U.S. Capitol. Smith will never forget the setting (the venerable Senate Dining Room) or the host (Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona). By 1964, when Smith was 12, he was sweeping floors at Goldwater's presidential campaign headquarters in the nation's capital. Forty-four years later, it's Smith who takes meals in the clubby setting, joined a few times a year by Mark and Tom.

Smith, a moderate Republican in a state tinted blue, has taken pains to portray himself as someone who works with Democrats. During this year's campaign, he even has run ads touting legislative work with the Democrats' 2008 presidential candidate, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, and their 2004 nominee, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts.

Smith, so far, hasn't aired ads celebrating his familial ties to the Udalls, though in an interview he calls their relationship "warm," "brotherly," and "fun." "They always try to work me on environmental issues," he adds, "and I work on them on tax issues." The trio has not gathered for a Senate Dining Room lunch for months, though. "We haven't had one this year," Smith says, "because all three of us are so busy."

All told, the legacy, extending as it does through six generations in five western states, has led the family to be called the "Kennedys of the West." That, however, is too facile. Says political scientist John Straayer of Colorado State University: "It's not like the Kennedy phenomenon when it goes on and on and on, and there's huge national exposure, but Udall is a respected name, very clearly, and, particularly among those who are sensitive to environmental and conservation concerns, the name resonates."

The two contests with Udalls on the ballot are opening up because of retirements. Tom Udall is running against a GOP House colleague, Steve Pearce, and Mark Udall is up against a former House colleague, Republican Bob Schaffer. In Oregon, Smith faces a challenge from the Democratic speaker of the Oregon House of Representatives, Jeff Merkley.

None of the rivals—neither Pearce nor Schaffer nor Merkley—professes worry about the Udall name, history, or fundraising prowess. Schaffer puts it this way: "I'm just running against Mark." In New Mexico, Pearce observes that even the state's Democrats "don't go along with the idea that people have an inherited position." And in Oregon, Merkley says he welcomes the cousins, if only two of them. "The only Udall cousins we want to see in the Senate," he says, "are actually named Udall."