Leslie Meek: A spouse who stands on her own two feet

At her recent 20-year college reunion in Nashville, Leslie Meek was pleasantly surprised with how good it was to see her old classmates. “They know you,” she says, explaining the nuances of personality that don’t change and memories of her time at the historically black Fisk University.

Shocking perhaps to others, but not to her, few classmates brought up her husband, Rep. Kendrick Meek (D-Fla.). Only one classmate remarked on it; he said he was proud of her husband.

Unlike the typical congressional spouse, Meek does not flaunt her husband’s job. It’s just there, part of the picture.  
“It’s not the center of our world, it’s what he does for a living,” Meek says over a beautiful lunch of crab cake salad and iced tea at B. Smith’s.

She has her own life and opinions and her own job as a D.C. administrative law judge hearing workman’s compensation cases.  

But Meek is also involved in her husband’s world. She chairs the Congressional Black Caucus Spouses (a post to which she was elected, beating out another spouse whom she won’t name).

She makes it plain she adores her husband — wait until you hear how they met — and she loves their life on Capitol Hill, except for the fanfare of the reception circuit and luncheons they must attend.

“This is the beginning of our third term,” she says confidently, adding, “It’s a wonderful opportunity.”

Leslie Meek leads the CBC spouses in charitable causes such as raising funds for black students to go to college or to pursue graduate and doctoral degrees — they’ve raised $9 million since 1988 — and feeding the homeless.

When Don Imus, the radio shock jock, recently came under fire, the CBC spouses wrote to the networks denouncing him. “I thought it was horrible,” she said. “He absolutely had to be terminated and they took too long in terminating him. I don’t think much of America understood why it hurt so much. It was wrong. It was disgusting.”

But back to her own life. She doesn’t attend every event her husband asks her to, because “you don’t feel like smiling. That’s torture. You might not feel like shaking 50 hands. He likes it when I go, but when I don’t feel like going, I don’t go.”

Meek is from Brooklyn, but prefers Miami to Washington, citing sunshine and the smell of the ocean. She also misses her trees. “We have two mango trees in the yard that are blooming as we speak,” she says wistfully.

Leslie watches out for her husband’s interests; she once called his office to tell his staff that there was too much on his plate. “But it wasn’t their fault,” she says. “You know who is responsible for that agenda.”

She adds, “I gotta have something when I retire. I don’t want this shriveled-up congressman.”

What does she like best about congressional life? The family retreats where she can watch her children interact with other congressional kids who readily understand their life; spending time exploring history — as she says, “I love being able to walk through the Capitol by myself and look at the frescoes and the statues. That history makes me float.”

She seeks advice from other spouses such as Alma Rangel, wife of House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.). She laughs about Alma being so old-school sophisticated that “you almost sit up straighter when you talk to her
on the phone.”

Meek, a former Miami prosecutor, is eloquent and elegant. She’s careful about what she says but is also so down-to-earth that she does not seem to be going through a set of talking points.

She wears a brown suit, pink blouse, three-stranded pearl necklace and large white ring. She fusses over having her picture taken, saying she doesn’t want to look goofy. The more she relaxes, she insists, the goofier she looks.
Not so.

She sips her tea and talks about people’s misperceptions about the life of a Congress member. A teacher at her daughter’s school once asked whether she would be taking “the private jet” to be at the president’s State of the Union speech.

“People assume it’s a glamorous life of cooks and chauffeurs. It’s not. You have two light bills, two mortgages. It gets intense sometimes, but it’s doable, we make it work.”  

At the same time, she says, “My husband is not home in the evening.”

They make that work, too.

“I’d love to have a job where I’m like, ‘Oh, dear, come by the pool, we’re having mint juleps,’ but that’s not how it is,” she says. “It just may be that I’m a very adaptable person. You’re constantly making adjustments. I don’t view this as a burden.”

With two children, Kendrick Jr., 10, and Lauren, 12, the couple tries to lead as normal an existence as possible. Sometimes it is possible.

Meek recounts phone calls Kendrick Jr. made to the congressman’s cell phone early on. He’d sneak off into a closet and whisper sadly into the phone, “I miss you, Dad! When are you coming home?”  

The congressman phoned, worried how his job was affecting their son. His wife assured him he was playing and trying to manipulate his father’s feelings. “It was all a game to him,” she says.

Leslie’s adjustment to her husband’s job was easier. “I’m pretty open to things,” she says. “For me, you keep an open mind and whatever comes, comes.”

She recalls the time her husband traveled to Iraq. She didn’t want him to go, but understood the necessity. While her husband was away she was driving with her children and heard a radio report that a Humvee ferrying lawmakers had
overturned. She panicked and phoned the chief of staff, who assured her that Rep. Meek was not on board.

Meek watches her husband’s floor speeches, but sometimes has to turn them off. “Sometimes it gets too intense for me,” she says. “He’s blinking too much or [I’m thinking], ‘What’s he saying?’”

Meek spent her youth in Chicago. After Fisk, she went to law school at Case Western Reserve University.

Then, in 1990, she went to Miami to interview with then-Attorney General Janet Reno for a job as assistant state attorney.
Reno asked Meek who her hero was. Her answer: “I don’t have heroes. I don’t believe in heroes.”

Next question: What would Meek do if she were asked to prosecute a person she knew was innocent? Meek replied, “I can’t do it.” And what if she’d lose her job? “Well, I’d have to lose my job.”

Meek was hired.

Shortly thereafter, she met her husband, the lead DUI trooper she occasionally worked with while prosecuting some of his cases. One day a judge introduced them in the hallway and insisted that they go to lunch. Meek wanted nothing to do with him romantically and especially did not appreciate that he carried a gun; it scared her and made her uneasy. A bailiff nudged her and told her his mother, former Democratic Rep. Carrie Meek, was a politician, insinuating that Kendrick was a good catch.

Leslie Meek still wasn’t interested. He phoned and they talked for two hours. “I liked him,” she says. “I thought, ‘This is a good guy.’”

Dinner followed at the News Café in South Beach. Four months later the couple were engaged to marry. “He’s a sweetheart,” she says. “He’s an absolute good guy.”

He also taught her how to shoot a gun. “I got certified,” she says. “I’m actually pretty good at it.”

When it comes to her husband’s job, she says what she thinks and lobbies him like anyone else, but she doesn’t allow the dealings of a day in Congress to monopolize their home:

 “People who don’t know me say, ‘Oh, what does your husband think about X, Y and Z?’ We don’t talk about it when he gets home. There are other things in life that are important.”