79 JFK AND BEYOND

Shooting for Congress
A Former Assistant Coach with the Boston Celtics Jumps into Indiana Race

WHEN HE WAS FIVE YEARS OLD, Jon Jennings MPA 2001 memorized the names of every president of the United States. So it may not be surprising that he’d now run for Congress. What is surprising, however, is what happened in between.

Before entering the political arena, Jennings fulfilled the dream of many a kid from Indiana by making a living in the world of basketball — though not with his jump shot or rebounding abilities. First hired as a scout for the Indiana Pacers, he eventually became an assistant coach with the Boston Celtics, on the sidelines with future Hall of Famers Larry Bird, Robert Parish, and Kevin McHale. That may not be a prerequisite for political office, but it represents just one of the life experiences that make him qualified and ready, he says, to serve his home state in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Those experiences include a stint as a White House fellow in 1997, and in 1999, as acting assistant attorney general and principal deputy attorney general for the Office of Legislative Affairs in the Department of Justice. Before that, when he was a “bookish” assistant coach (as he was described by a Sports Illustrated writer), Jennings satisfied his interest in government by attending lectures and other public events at the Kennedy School. That wasn’t enough, however, and he became a student at the same time he served as the Celtics’s director of basketball development. A Kennedy School professor suggested he apply for the White House fellowship, and he credits his education at the school, which he began in 1996, with sparking his desire to pursue government service.

“When I went to the Kennedy School, it opened up a whole different experience for me,” says Jennings, “because the focus on public policy, the focus on good government, the focus on a lot of different things I learned both in the classroom and through my classmates from different countries really led me to have a much greater interest in my actually doing it.”

Jennings filed papers to run less than six months after the last congressional election, shortly after he returned to Indiana with his new wife, Amy Elsea, with whom he was reacquainted at their 20-year high school reunion. He longed to return to the familiar comforts of the Midwest, he says, and touts his allegiance to “Hoosier values” in his campaign material, highlighted by the story of his mother raising two children by herself while working the third shift at a local steel mill.

“We didn’t have two nickels to rub together at times, but she instilled in us a work ethic and a commitment to fairness for all people, which has allowed me to do the things I’ve done in my life already,” says Jennings.

Too often, he says, people willing to work cannot now find jobs in the district that pay enough to support a family. Their plight reflects a country moving in the wrong direction, according to Jennings, who focuses on job creation and economic development. He says he will help attract high tech, life sciences, nanotechnology, and other industries that will enrich the district, in contrast to his opponent, five-term incumbent John Hostettler, whom he calls “the most ineffective member
of Congress today” and rebukes for votes against funding Pell grants for college and child abuse programs. Jennings defeated a fellow Democrat in a primary earlier this year for the right to run in November against Hostettler, a Republican, and he believes he will win that race too. Despite the fact that Indiana is a reliable Republican state in the presidential elections, its voters often choose moderate or conservative Democrats in other elections, he says.

Many of those voters want to speak with him about the economy and the war in Iraq, which he criticizes as not part of the war on terror. But in the basketball hotbed of the nation, people also want to talk about his experience with the Celtics, for whom he still works as a Midwest collegiate scout. His campaign benefited from that experience financially when Bird, now the general manager of the Pacers, hosted a fundraiser for him. But Jennings benefited in other ways too. He points to Red Auerbach, the architect of the Celtics dynasty, as a role model who gave him a chance to grow in the organization and who offered lessons about life inside and outside of sports.

“Red Auerbach was the master at finding the right people and putting them in the right situations where they could flourish,” Jennings says. “He’s one of my personal heroes — not because of what he achieved on the basketball court, which is certainly legendary — but because of the way he treated his own people. He was intensely loyal. He believed in giving people opportunity.”

As assistant coach, Jennings was responsible for scouting opponents and devising the team’s game plan and defensive match-ups. And in that job, he says, he learned another lesson that will serve him well in politics: “You can’t be a phony. If I would have tried to tell Larry Bird how to shoot the ball, he would have completely tuned me out. But what I did was focus on what I was good at, and it also made the players’ experiences on the court a lot easier. I never pretended to be anything I’m not.”

After battling with the Lakers and meeting with the president in the oval office, he says he’s not intimidated by running against an incumbent member of Congress. “It’s hard for me to get awed by a lot of things anymore because of the great experiences I’ve had,” says Jennings. “I’ll be ready to be an effective congressman from day one.” — LR