Sen. Crawford practices what she teaches

Above: Bellevue Sen. Sue Crawford balances her family life with public service. She is pictured here in Kansas City with her sons, Nate and Phil, and her cousin, Megan.

Growing up with a brother, four sisters and one bathroom, Sen. Sue Crawford learned at a young age the power of negotiating and working with scarce resources.

She was raised on a farm in northwest Missouri, where her dad served on the local school board and he and her mom were active community volunteers.

The family did not own a TV but had multiple newspaper and news magazine subscriptions, Crawford said, so discussions at home ranged from issues of foreign policy, to farm policy to local school board politics.

So it is no surprise that Crawford went on to study public policy at Truman State University in Kirksville, MO. While working on her doctorate at Indiana University, she met Elinor Ostrom—a political scientist who was the first woman awarded a Nobel Prize in Economics. She said Ostrom taught her the importance of creative policy making and self-governance and became her mentor, eventually providing her encouragement to run for the Legislature.

Crawford’s husband, David, also is interested in politics. They were married on Jan. 20, 1992. The date was not intentionally political, she said; it was the only Saturday the Indiana Hoosiers had not scheduled a game. It was not until later that she realized her anniversary was on the same day as the U.S. Presidential Inauguration.

She and David moved to Bellevue in 1995 when she accepted a position as a political science professor at Creighton University. While most college curriculum focuses on national policy, Crawford said, she emphasizes the importance of state and local policy and requires students to track certain bills in the Unicameral.

But Crawford acknowledged that educating students about policy is very different from enacting it.

“Being in the Unicameral, you see the day-to-day details of how the institutions work and how important those details are, which you do not necessarily appreciate when you study it from afar,” she said.

Crawford said it will be a challenge to balance family life with her husband and two sons with teaching and being an effective citizen legislator. But she is up for the challenge and said she is grateful for her family and the support they and Creighton have given her.

Her youngest son, Phil, is in seventh grade. And her oldest son Nate—a junior in high school—was a volunteer on her legislative campaign.

“My sons really appreciate that it is important for me to be [in the Legislature],” she said.

“One reason that I went into teaching was because I have always had an interest in making sure citizens are engaged and people are involved in government directly. I am just practicing now what I have always preached.”