U.S. Attorney
By Ellen F. Harris
Photograph by Scott Rovak
Catherine Hanaway knows about power—she has made a study of it since high school. She was the first woman to become speaker of the Missouri House of Representatives and is now the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, the federal boss of bosses in this half of the state. But she does not stand on ceremony.
“She’s made it a point to visit every prosecuting attorney in her district. This is a first in at least 20 years for a U.S. attorney to do that,” says longtime Cape Girardeau County Prosecuting Attorney H. Morley Swingle, a Republican. “Her approach is as a prosecutor’s prosecutor rather than a politician.”
Yet her approach is politically savvy. At 43, Hanaway knows that the secret to real power is not to impress but to listen. Doing so also makes her less intimidating—and fits comfortably with her small-town roots in Nebraska and Iowa. She comes to the lobby of the office to greet you herself, and once inside her office, she parks herself on the sofa and opens up as if you’re an old friend.
Do you prefer being U.S. attorney to being speaker of the House? What I like about this position is the linear focus: You put the bad guys in jail. In the Legislature, you talk about Medicaid funding, then the state bird, then highway funds …
You’re said to fit in with career prosecutors here, yet you don’t have a criminal-law background. You get things done by persuading people, not by cracking heads. You can’t lead by telling people what to do, or they won’t do anything beyond that.
Yet you’ve been characterized in Jeff City as tough. I think that meant that when we made a decision in caucus, we stuck to it.
Was it difficult dealing with the good ol’ boys in the House? There were times when it was frustrating. When I was minority leader, two of those good ol’ boys came to me one night at 11 to talk about using the Rainy Day Fund. They tried to use the full force of their experience to tell me why. I looked at them and said, “Gentlemen, if you hadn’t treated me like I was scum on the bottom of your shoes for the last three years, I might find your argument more persuasive.” They left.
Do you think such stories keep women out of power positions? I think it’s difficult to find young women willing to give a life of public service and have a family. There aren’t many young women in Missouri politics. I thought that once term limits kicked in, there’d be more.
Do you think women are ambivalent about power? No. I think they’re ambivalent about priorities, torn between home and the workplace. [Hanaway and her husband have a daughter, 8, and a son, 4. As speaker, she took her then-infant daughter with her to Jefferson City.]
Did you want to be a lawyer as a child? My first goal was to become a print journalist. I had a great desire to know what’s going on and to be in the thick of things. I think the first step to having power is to know how things work.
Then you switched your dream to broadcast journalism? I wanted to be Mary Tyler Moore. Then I wanted to be Murphy Brown. Then I realized I was more like Lou Grant, all rumpled around the edges but big-hearted—although I did not want to be Lou Grant.
You changed your mind in college? I interviewed all the women anchors in the Omaha market, and almost all of them cried when we talked about work and family. I have stressful hours now, but I have control of them.
As a conservative Republican, how do you get along with the Democrats? Audrey Fleissig [a former U.S. attorney here, now a federal magistrate judge] has mentored me in this job, even though we are 180 degrees apart politically. Jennifer Joyce [the St. Louis circuit attorney] has been one of my closest friends, and she’s one of the people I most respect in public service. Jennifer makes a lot of tough calls. She asks herself, irrespective of public opinion and pressure, “What is the right thing?”—and then she does it.
You’re also a successful protégée of Sen. Kit Bond’s; he influenced your appointment as U.S. attorney. Sen. Bond has mentored many of his former staffers. When I ran for state rep, he helped me win. When he chaired the Bush campaign in 2000, he picked me as executive director. That led to my colleagues thinking I was credible—and when the Republicans became the majority, I was elected speaker.
You’ve said, “This job is like a milk jug. It comes with an expiration date.” Where will you go next? I’ve always had an interest in public policy, in making where I live better. I can’t see myself as an academic, and neither can my college professors. [Laughs.] I’d like to run for office again. I miss the rough-and-tumble of politics.
Some politicos think you’ll run for attorney general in ’08, setting you up to run for Bond’s Senate seat when he retires in ’10. As U.S. attorney, I cannot be political. You cannot be in this job and file for office. [Pause.] I haven’t made any decisions about what I’ll do next. I’ve chosen to devote myself completely to being U.S. attorney.
