Meet Kyle Usrey
Independent Candidate for 5th Congressional District in Washington
Kyle Usrey (Us-ree) was born in Worland, Wyoming and grew up in Boulder, Colorado in the '60s and early '70s, and lived to tell about it...barely! Boulder was considered the Berkeley of the Rockies, quite countercultural with a big illegal drug problem, extending down into even the elementary schools. A small Southern Baptist Church on the edge of town, where his mother and grandmother taught Sunday School and his grandfather was a deacon, provided a safe haven, Biblical education, and the comforting love of God through a vibrant congregation. Accepting Christ as his Savior at a young age, he stood out as a leader, but also was different from many of his classmates in school. Graduating as the valedictorian from one of the biggest high schools in the State, he was a very good student and star athlete.
He paid for his own way to college (with some scholarships), then to graduate school, and law school. He held jobs as a grave digger, process server of legal documents, and assistant to the county coroner. He eventually became the mail boy and a check-filer for a small bank, then worked his way up to bank teller, a job that he held for several years as he worked his way through school.
After finishing his MBA at the top of his class, he was selected to a prestigious executive management program with GTE, working and living in several cities to develop his skills as a manager and executive. He then went to law school where he graduated in the top 10% of his enrolled class, and after graduation he took two prestigious federal judicial clerkships. He worked for large and medium-size law firms, doing among other cases toxic tort litigation developing his skills as a trial lawyer. He later went to work as corporate counsel and manager for big corporations, non-profits, and some NGOs.
He and his wife, Trisa, responded to a call to become Christian missionaries in China (as professors at one of the leading universities in that country). That work changed their lives and changed their theology. Their students still remain in touch and treat them as surrogate parents and grandparents for their children. He began to work in various locations in China in summers as a 'foreign expert' in international business, law, and ethics. He wrote a seminal textbook on International Business Law, published by Shanghai Press (twice) in both Chinese and English in the 1990s. He and his wife have travelled extensively as consultants in a number of countries, including advising some national governments. They worked and lived in several countries on six continents, gaining a worldview that is both complex and nuanced, but concrete in its Western foundations.
Over the last twenty-five years, Usrey has continued to practice law, mostly for the working and middle class in areas of small business development, human resources, intellectual property, real estate, wills, trusts and estates, environmental/natural resources, and tax law...as well as international public and private law. His days of trial law have passed, thankfully! At one point in time while at Whitworth, he was nominated by Governor Gregoire, and served as the only At-Large member of a quasi-judicial panel -- Executive Ethics Commission, staffed by an attorney from the Washington Attorney General's Office, with rule-making powers, hearing cases brought for violations of a special code of conduct law.
Usrey became a professor (teaching Constitutional Law, State and Local Government Law, Business Law, Organizational Behavior, Economics, Politics, Ethics, and International Business), quickly becoming dean for several colleges and universities, including the Charter Dean of the School of Global Commerce and Management at Whitworth for six years, before rising to Associate Dean, then Dean of a College, Vice President of Academics, Chief Legal Counsel, and then President...in places as diverse as Lithuania, Australia, China, and the USA.
His interest in politics was kindled by working on Capitol Hill in Washington DC during the early days of the Reagan Administration. He witnessed a revolution by the Republicans to gain control over government spending, and a new approach in dealing with China and the USSR. He met his mentor, US Senator from Colorado, William ("Bill") L. Armstrong, a tremendous Christian and fiscal conservative who hired him with a 'lifetime contract.' Usrey has been a Republican and a Democrat at various times in his adult life, but the extremism characterized by both parties recently has encouraged him to step into the breach by focusing on the unrepresented middle in politics -- to address a crisis in America that is tearing our country apart. His skills in consensus-building while remaining true to the values of hard work, respect, righteousness without judgmentalism, and the confrontation of evil while speaking truth to power, have held him in good stead in collaborating with people in all sorts of venues, from varied backgrounds, and many frameworks.
He no longer speaks Chinese nor Spanish, but is a big fan of that global game -- basketball. He has served on many non-profit boards, while sharing a passion for fly fishing (with a 9' 5 weight Winston) and fly tying with a number of people, including the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. He is a hacker in golf, thankfully retired from running in several 10Ks and Bloomsday. He is the owner of six rifles and shotguns (including his pride and joy -- a 'Trapdoor' Springfield rifle -- used as a buffalo gun from the late 1800s) They consider South Australia as their second home. Usrey is a Cowboy Poet, memorializing his father's heritage. He and his wife are active in service in their local church.