On October 8, 2025, Taxpayers for Common Sense honored longtime watchdog Keith Ashdown with the 2025 Mr. Smith Goes to Washington Award, celebrating a career defined by tenacity, curiosity, and an unwavering commitment to protecting the public purse.

Ashdown arrived at TCS in the late 1990s as Communications Director and quickly proved that beyond being an effective communicator, he had the instincts of a bloodhound for wasteful spending. He combed through dense budget line-items, agency records, and obscure committee reports, piecing together the stories behind the numbers. His work helped uncover the Gravina Access Project in Alaska which he dubbed a “Bridge to Nowhere.” At virtually the same time, he was leading investigator into a corruption scandal involving Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-CA). The now-infamous earmark coupled with scandal galvanized public outrage and set the stage for the 2006 earmark moratorium. He pioneered tools like real-time earmark trackers and interactive spending maps, giving lawmakers, journalists, and citizens the power to follow the money themselves. And he didn’t just expose waste—his investigations helped cancel or shrink projects that would have cost taxpayers billions.

Over the years, Ashdown built a reputation for nonpartisan credibility training scores of fiscal analysts in the intricacies of appropriations law. He could translate budget arcana into plain English for local reporters one day and navigate the halls of Congress the next, always with the same goal: making sure taxpayer dollars served the broad public interest, not narrow political agendas.

After leaving TCS in 2010, Ashdown took his watchdog work to Capitol Hill, serving as investigator for Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) and eventually staff director for the Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee. There, he strengthened investigations into pandemic-relief fraud, continued rooting out waste, and remained a steady voice for transparency and accountability.

Like Jimmy Stewart’s fictional senator, Ashdown has never backed down when powerful interests tried to raid the treasury. His career is a testament to the idea that facts, persistence, and optimism can still change the way Washington does business.