Gannett Capital Bureau

BATON ROUGE - The people on the wrong end of former state Legislative Auditor Dan Kyle's investigations weren't too fond of him. But among his students here at LSU, he was one of the most popular professors on campus.

The difference is that Kyle, now a candidate for insurance commissioner, never sought to be popular with the people he audited and says if he's elected, he wouldn't be too popular with insurance companies seeking rate increases without proper justification.

Baton Rouge attorney Roger Harris, who had Kyle as a teacher and adviser at LSU 20 years ago, said "he seemed to always have time to listen. He was a good teacher, down to earth and related well with students, and he really cared."

Kyle was voted most popular professor at least five times during his tenure at LSU, Harris said. It didn't hurt his popularity that he had an end-of-year party at his house for his students and that he had a sense of humor.

"If you really didn't know the answer to a question on a test and you wrote a joke, he might give you partial credit," Harris said.

Kyle resigned his associate professor of accounting position in 1989 after 22 years to become legislative auditor, a post that for years had focused on forcing state and local agencies to clean up their activities but was seldom high profile.

When he took over, however, Kyle focused on corruption in state and local positions and his investigations resulted in numerous high-profile indictments and convictions. Kyle has often been criticized for politicizing the position, but he has consistently argued that his audits helped clean up Louisiana government.

Kyle's pastor, First United Methodist Church Minister the Rev. Chris Andrews, describes him as "a fine man who made a reputation trying to right wrongs as legislative auditor. He takes pride, justifiably, in his integrity and trying to follow the letter of the law."

The 66-year-old, who resigned the legislative auditor's job this year to run for office, is seeking his first elected position but it's not his first campaign. He started out running for governor but found he couldn't raise the kind of money needed for such a race.

He decided to seek office because "as auditor, you see things after they've happened. I felt that by getting into an administrative position, you can more define policy and prevent things from happening," he said. "I consider it moving from the back of the line up to the front of the line and trying to stop some of the stuff that goes on in government."

And while campaigning can be stressful at time, he said he "would not trade the experience for anything. I do not regret quitting my job. I do not regret running for governor and I do not regret running for insurance commissioner."

Prior to the campaign interrupting his daily schedule, "I liked to walk, jog and work out at the gym three days a week," he said. "I play a little tennis. I'm not as good as my wife and that's why I don't play more than I do."

Kyle finds it relaxing to work in his yard and to "piddle around the house. I'm kind of a handyman, having grown up in construction."

It was not an easy childhood for Kyle or his three brothers who all worked after their father died when Kyle was 14.

Their work helped support their mother and three sisters and to pay for Kyle and a brother's way through college. He delivered newspapers, bagged groceries, sold shoes, worked in slaughterhouses and learned to lay brick when he joined a construction company run by his older two brothers and a brother-in-law.

"They did not have a college education and they wanted me to get one," he said. "They thought if I saw how hard work was, it would make me want to get an education - and it did."

It also worked on his twin brother who teaches at the University of Houston. Both became accounting professors.

Kyle laid the brick floors, porches and sidewalks at his Baton Rouge home "but that was 16 years ago. I was a bit younger then. I can still show you how, if you want to learn. You notice I said 'show' you."

He and his wife Connie, who will celebrate their 40th anniversary in January, have two grown sons, each of whom has a daughter.

Kyle admits that around the girls, "I'm a softy. People don't see me that way. They see me as an auditor, but I'm not that way at all."

"In that unlikely event" that he loses the race, Kyle said he has numerous work options in the private sector. "Retirement just doesn't fit me yet."