Representative Jim Kolbe, 64, now serving his eleventh and final term in the House of Representatives, was the first Republican elected to represent southern Arizona. He completed an MBA at Stanford in 1967 and then served in the United States Navy during the Vietnam War, before serving as Arizona State Senator from 1976-82.

For Kolbe, his strongest memory of Stanford was his first day on campus.

“I had not been on the Stanford campus before. I had applied to Stanford for my undergraduate degree, been accepted, but then chose to go to Northwestern for my B.A.,” Kolbe said. “So arriving at Stanford on a perfect September Saturday with a football game in the afternoon brought a huge dawning realization to me: I had spent four years in the Chicago climate when I could have been at Stanford all that time!”

Kolbe recalled taking advantage of campus life, so much so that he deemed graduating his greatest achievement at The Farm.

“I had such a good time and was so active in so many activities that I proudly say I graduated from the Stanford GSB in the top 95 percent of my class,” Kolbe said.

Kolbe’s introduction to public service was as a page for Senator Barry Goldwater, the 1964 Republican nominee for president and long-time Arizona senator. His experiences at the University solidified his interest in both public service and the political arena, since he was involved with campus politics and in Ronald Reagan’s first campaign for governor in 1966.

Kolbe left the University with “nothing but great memories.”

“Stanford was a very important formative part of my younger life,” he said. “When I go back now, I long wistfully for the days when there were actually citrus orchards in Mountain View and Sunnyvale.”

During his final term in the House, Kolbe said his main priority was getting his Foreign Operations Appropriation enacted into law.

Analysts expect Kolbe’s seat to fall into Democratic hands after next Tuesday’s election. The twilight of Kolbe’s career has been dimmed by the firestorm over the Mark Foley scandal. Kolbe was chair of the page board in 2000 and has said he passed on to the House Clerk reports of Foley’s advances on pages.

Kolbe is one of only a few MBAs in Congress. He was a classmate of the current GSB dean Robert Joss.

“My fellow members of Congress think I’m nuts to have an MBA from Stanford and not be out using it to make money,” Kolbe joked during a 2002 visit to campus. “I’m proud of the degree and I use the skills I learned in business school, but it didn’t create a fast track to Washington.”