COEUR d'ALENE - In November 2010, Dirk Kempthorne fell off the public map.

He landed nicely on a private one.

The former Boise mayor, U.S. senator, Idaho governor and U.S. interior secretary is spending this weekend at The Coeur d'Alene Resort as president and chief executive officer of the American Council of Life Insurers. He's meeting with about 30 leaders of ACLI's prestigious Forum 500 insurance companies. How he got here - literally - makes for a good story.

"I guess this is another indicator of how much I love Idaho," he said in a phone interview from Washington, D.C., earlier this week. Kempthorne explained that instead of flying from the nation's capital to Spokane and making the short drive to his conference this weekend, he and Patricia, his wife, flew to Boise instead. Then they hit the road.

"I love that drive," he said. "It renews your spirit."

For Kempthorne, 62, the drive also renews his spirit for some of the most important legislation he ever guided as Idaho's governor.

To get here, the Kempthornes took advantage of roads and other infrastructure that are not just more expedient, but safer than they were before his controversial public-private "Connecting Idaho" project was approved by the Idaho Legislature in 2005. The former governor well remembers the contentiousness of that fight, when the Senate took two months to approve his GARVEE-funded proposal and the House took 10 days to kill it.

"I said at the time, my mother and father had raised me to believe and practice the Golden Rule," he said, "but apparently sometimes you need to just rule."

Putting dramatically improved infrastructure in place wasn't just a governor's legacy dream, either. Part of it was personal. Going back to his days as a political science student at the University of Idaho, Kempthorne was involved in a wintry one-car rollover on icy Highway 55 - an accident Kempthorne said could have easily ended tragically.

"The roads throughout the state, we know, have had very dangerous sections," he said. As governor, "I absolutely believed that we could do better.

"There was a backlog of projects that just were not being funded, and so I made a proposal for Connecting Idaho. Included in that was a vision that someday we'd be able to drive from the state capital to the Canadian border on four-lane divided highway," Kempthorne said.

But legislators weren't as clear on that vision as was the governor, so after the House rejected his plan, Kempthorne ruled: He promptly vetoed eight pieces of legislation.

He invited the press back the next day, when he pledged to veto eight more "until there is a greater spirit of cooperation."

That spirit quickly materialized.

"Within 24 hours," Kempthorne said, "the dead legislation was resurrected."

And lives have been saved.

"On these roads, bridges and interchanges that have been the focus of the GARVEE [Grant Anticipation Revenue Vehicle] program for nine years, where the volume of traffic has increased on these stretches of highway by 46 million miles driven annually, vehicle crashes are down significantly," Kempthorne told an enthusiastic crowd in Meridian on April 15.

Vehicle crashes are down 38 percent, he said, and injury crashes have fallen 51 percent.

"But this is the one that I am most proud of," he said. "Fatalities are down 89 percent."

In North Idaho, where the Kempthornes just drove from Worley into Coeur d'Alene, some of that Connecting Idaho investment was readily apparent as two lanes have expanded to four. But those aren't the big numbers he's focused on. Traffic volume here has increased 36 percent, Kempthorne said, but accidents have decreased 72 percent.

"I said this was about safety, and they now have empirical data that as ITD has said, is now saving on average 80 lives a year," Kempthorne told The Press. "The proof now exists. It was a vision, it was a theory but now we have the empirical data. We're also making connections throughout the state so that we can be a unified state, and that was my vision; that was my hope."

During his three years as interior secretary, Kempthorne logged several career highlights - and more than a few pure ironies. Example: "As secretary of the interior, I had more jurisdiction within the borders of Idaho than I did as governor," he said, noting that the feds control more Idaho land than does the state.

As interior secretary, Kempthorne also found a worthy teammate in another governor, California's Arnold Schwarzenegger, as the potential for massive fires threatened that state.

Kempthorne: "I remember the time I called him and said, 'Governor, I'm watching very closely that the Santa Ana winds are setting up in your state. So I have pre-deployed rolling stock and personnel. They are there and ready. If you have ignition and the winds begin to whip those into a terrible storm, we are ready to hit it.' And I said, 'Here's my personal cell phone number. If at any point you don't think you're getting the assets that you should be getting from us, you call me.' He said later at different press conferences, 'I never had to call the man.'"

Kempthorne said it was fun talking to The Governator - and noted with pride that "we both ride Harleys."

"I'd go to these press conferences out in California, where we'd be surrounded by the firefighters that were heroes in these efforts, and you arrive at these things with Arnold Schwarzenegger and at the time, he would suck the oxygen out of the air because he was Arnold Schwarzenegger. But I was wearing my Harley belt buckle and they would note that. Once they realized I also rode a Harley, I had a connection with a lot of folks."

These days, Kempthorne's main connection is with a lot of folks who help insure people's lives. He said the American Council of Life Insurers represents "mid-sized" companies with assets up to $2 billion. He said the job suits him perfectly.

"For me, it is an extension of what I did for 23 years in public service because my motivation for public service was to help people," Kempthorne said. "This industry exists - the life insurance industry exists - to help people. The issues we deal with, the policies, it continues to motivate me because I know we're doing good and it's a very noble industry."

For scale, Kempthorne noted that the amount of life insurance in force in the U.S. is $19.6 trillion.

"If you compare that with the U.S. economy, the GDP, which is at $18.6 trillion, it shows you how big this is," he said. "Also it's the No. 1 U.S. investor in corporate bonds.

"On average, it holds those investments for 17 years, so it's a significant source of capital for the well-being of the country. Included in that is infrastructure, and I'm trying to promote further investments by the companies into infrastructure which benefits states and cities."

Infrastructure like the improvements to U.S. 95 in North Idaho - infrastructure that saves lives.

As a former member of Congress, governor and cabinet member, Kempthorne has seen the need for fiscal responsibility from different perspectives. He's seeing it in yet another way now.

"We now have 10,000 baby boomers retiring every day for the next 16 years," he said. "When the last baby boomer is tucked into retirement in 2030, it's already predicted by the federal government that Social Security will not be able to support that without reform.

"So this industry is the private sector's augmentation to the government safety net. On average, those pre-retirees aged 50 to 64, half of them have 16 months of savings set aside for retirement, and yet they will live on average another 20 years. Social Security was never intended to be the sole source of anyone's retirement income.

"That's what motivates me. This is part of the solution so that people can live the rest of their lives in the dignity that they so richly deserve."

Kempthorne's public offices

n 1985: Elected mayor of Boise; served seven years

n 1993: Elected to U.S. Senate; served one term

n 1998: Elected governor of Idaho

n 2002: Re-elected governor of Idaho

n 2006: Appointed 49th Secretary of the Interior, under President George W. Bush