Darrell Manning, who died last month at 94, was smack in the middle of Idaho’s hot and pivotal politics of the 60s. He served four terms as a Democratic state representative from Bannock County, and rose to Democratic House caucus leader, which you do only if you take party loyalty seriously. He was also the Democratic nominee for the U.S. House in 1968, losing to Republican Orval Hansen.
By any reasonable definition, Manning was a partisan politician, albeit lacking the hard edge. Hansen, who defeated him in 1968, described the campaign in his memoir: “On occasion we made joint appearances in the campaign. They were always polite and friendly, to the disappointment of some who wanted to see more of a fight.” Hansen and Manning had been and remained friends.
In the nearly half-century since he became known as something different: A man trusted by people from all over, a leader whose ability to work in government at times was the difference that sometimes kept pieces of Idaho government from flying apart. For decades, he was, as people have often described him, Idaho’s Mr. Fixit.
His days as a partisan have been all but forgotten. It turned out his major work in government was just beginning.
One big part of it started back in 1955, when he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force. Combining that with his service in the Idaho National Guard, where for a decade he was adjutant general, he never entirely left. He piloted scores of different types of aircraft, but his impact on the development and structure of Idaho’s in-state military operations over a period of decades was profound.
But that was only part of it.
When Cecil Andrus was elected governor in 1970, he looked around for people to populate his new administration, and quickly seized on the Pocatello Democrat he had worked with in the legislature, Darrell Manning. Well aware of his Air Force background, the new governor named him director of the Idaho Department of Aeronautics - and later, when that agency was merged into a new Idaho Transportation Department, he made him director there too.
In these roles, Manning became known for an unusual capacity for getting along with people -- hardly anyone seemed to have anything negative to say about him -- but also as an unusually adept solver of problems, handled in ways that tended to ruffle remarkably few feathers, filling the roles of manager and leader equally well.
Little wonder that he served in state offices in all of Andrus’ terms, or those of fellow Democrat John Evans (like Manning a southeast Idahoan). But Republican Governors Phil Batt, Dirk Kempthorne and C.L. “Butch” Otter made heavy use of his services too, often bringing him in to manage agencies -- a lot of them over the years -- which had problems, reasonably confident he could solve them. Which he generally did.
In today’s overheated politics, people and careers like that seem almost hard to imagine, and to the cynics among us sound like fantasy. But Manning was real, and so was the example he set.
I interviewed him from time to time during his state executive years, but in the last couple of decades I saw him mainly at a Boise morning coffee group of political, legal, journalistic and other such folk. (Manning would opt for a Diet Coke.) He was sociable but not especially talkative, and rarely spoke much about himself. You wouldn’t listen to him for the cutting jab or the witty rejoinder, because he didn’t go in for much of that.
But when he spoke, everyone at the table listened. He spoke the truth, and he spoke with respect for other people.
If you want to know the secret of Manning’s management style- what kept him in favor with so many different kinds of political people over so many years- that might have been it.