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http://blog.oregonlive.com/mapesonpolitics/2010/07/keisling_is_back_in_public_sec.html

In 1999, Oregon Secretary of State Phil Keisling stepped off the fast political track.

The Portland Democrat announced he was leaving his post to explore life in the private sector.  He held out the possibility that he would run for governor in 2002, but a candidacy never materialized and he spent nearly a decade working at a local high-tech company.

Keisling, a former journalist with a knack for the iconoclastic idea, stayed in the public eye by trying to push Oregon toward adopting a non-partisan primary system he said would bring politicians back to the center.  Washington and California have now both adopted the idea, but when Keisling put a non-partisan primary initiative on the 2008 ballot, Oregon voters overwhelmingly rejected it.

Now, at 55, Keisling is back in the public sector as the director of the Center for Public Service at the Hatfield School of Government at Portland State University.  In part, he'll be working with government agencies and political leaders around the state trying to figure out how they can partner with PSU on research and training programs.

You might see this as a good stepping stone to a second political career.  Not surprisingly, with just a few days into his new job, Keisling isn't seeing it that way.

"This is absolutely not a move back to elective office," he says.  "I seriously doubt I'll ever run for elective office again."

Keisling says he doesn't regret leaving politics in 1999, which allowed him to spend more time with his wife and two children.  "Best decision I ever made," he says.  And he's realistic about the difficulty of trying to mount a statewide race given how many years he's been out of office.

And he didn't wind up with riches in the private sector that gave him a big pile of money to launch back into politics (unlike, say, Maria Cantwell, who used a break from politics to make millions of dollars from RealNetworks that she then plowed into a race for the U.S. Senate).

Of course, Keisling doesn't rule out elective politics. And he says that he intends to continue speaking out on issues that interest him.  "I would have never gone near this job if it didn't allow contribute in that way," he says.

In particular, he says he isn't giving up on the idea of non-partisan primaries.  He blames his big loss on a bad ballot title, and he figures that Oregonians may well warm to the idea after seeing how it works in the neighboring states to the south and north.