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the new york times magazine
in this corner lowell weicker
december 15, 1991
LOWELL WEICKER TOOK A RARE day off from work this fall, a day
away from protesters hurling bottles at his head and placards
linking his name to Hitler's. It was a brief reprieve from the
political chaos of his benighted domain--from the Democrats who
detest him and the Republicans who think even less of him than
that.
Weicker took a trip to Washington to receive an honorary degree
from Gallaudet University, the school for the deaf he had supported
vigorously during his 18 years in the United States Senate. The
Connecticut Governor worked for hours on his speech, which he
envisioned as an advertisement for a life of public service, a
life much like his own.
With his hulking 6-foot-6-inch frame draped regally in a gray
gown with deep purple stripes, and his words inching slowly across
a giant movie screen behind him, Weicker spoke to his largely
deaf audience in a booming and indignant voice. "The 1980's
brought selfishness to new heights in America," he said,
twisting his hands violently as he spoke. "They preached
that you can get something for nothing, more services for less
taxes. Today we're picking up the refuse of that philosophy in
Connecticut. In Washington. In state capitols across the land.
Contrition? Forget it. Americans have forgotten the system that
is the envy of the world."
By now it had become clear that the Governor wasn't taking
a day off from work at all. He was there to speak to the people
of his own state, the voters who last year elected him as their
first independent governor since the Civil War, but had since
fought his pivotal income tax initiative with unparalleled hostility.
A few weeks earlier, Weicker had been denounced and spat upon
at the Capitol when at least 40,000 people came to Hartford for
the largest protest rally in the history of the state. At Gallaudet,
Weicker struck back. He told the students that he had "inherited
a trash of constituent neglect" when he took office and that
he was sick of politicians whose idea of leadership was to keep
a "dial tuned to talk radio and a 1-800 line to their pollster."
"Ours is a democracy," Weicker said, sadly shaking his head.
"If people are upset with the daily results, it is because they have
become absentee owners.
"Nowadays, it's hard just to get someone to drop their
bag of Doritos long enough to cross the street and vote."
The speech was a classic piece of Weicker performance art:
compelling, persuasive and condescending. Within hours,
politicians back in Hartford heard the message and responded with
the rage and venom that attach themselves to almost everything
Weicker does these days. But when the 60-year-old Governor read
the harsh reviews in the next day's papers, he just smiled and
shrugged.
"That was a good speech," he muttered with conviction,
as he waited with his wife, Claudia, at National Airport to board
his flight home. "That was one hell of a good speech."
NOBODY LIKES TO BE RIGHT-- or to fight about it-- more than
Lowell Weicker. For nearly 30 years, the mammoth patrician from
Greenwich has been viewed within the Republican Party and beyond
as a kind of rogue preppy, gratingly virtuous and eager to flaunt
his rectitude at every opportunity.
From his cherished committee seat at the Senate Watergate hearings,
where his repeated attacks on the Nixon White House turned him
into a cult hero among a generation that learned to loathe his
party, to his high-pitched crusade against Ronald Reagan's social
agenda, Weicker emerged as a Coriolanus in a Brooks Brothers suit,
a dangerously proud aristocrat-- long on integrity but short on
grace.
The last liberal Republican in the Senate before he abandoned
the party that abandoned him, Weicker doesn't just welcome trouble,
he's addicted to it. "I saw him on television with that mob
at the Capitol," says his friend Howard H. Baker Jr., the
former Senate Republican leader and White House chief of staff.
"I said to myself, 'That's the only man I ever met who would
strike a match to look into a gas tank.' "
Dancing through mine fields has long delighted Weicker, who
once referred to the Republican convention that nominated Ronald
Reagan to a second term as "an all-time disgrace" and
who calls President Bush's domestic policies "the mirror
of his predecessor, and that adds up to zero."
Weicker's candor rarely flags, even when it should. At a sensitive
moment earlier this year, for example, he told Connecticut Democratic
leaders that their alternative to his budget was "pitiful"
and suggested that they "pour it back into the horse."
Yet, even by the standards of a man who considers martyrs the
only heroes worth having (Albert Schweitzer and Mother Teresa
are his favorites), Lowell Weicker has clearly strolled into the
most incendiary battle of his life. After one of the most rancorous
tax fights in American history, Weicker finally jammed his 4.5
percent income tax package, which also included reductions in
sales and corporate taxes, through the Legislature in August.
But his painful victory may not hold. Last month, leaders of
both political parties convened a special session to try and dismantle
it. It looks like the champions of repeal have assembled enough
votes to dump the tax, but it appears far less certain they have
mustered the two-thirds majority required to overcome Weicker's
certain veto.
Whatever the result, voters in Connecticut make the anger of
their neighbors in New Jersey over Gov. James J. Florio's tax
initiatives seem muted. In fact, the withering assault on Weicker
has been watched with growing horror by governors across the country,
many of whom preside over far less prosperous states and face
even bleaker fiscal reckonings. In Tennessee, for example, the
Legislature has turned back initial attempts by Gov. Ned McWherter
to introduce an income tax. And in Florida, where chaos has descended
upon the state treasury, Gov. Lawton Chiles cut more than $1 billion
from a budget that was leaner than Weicker's will ever be. With
an eye on the furor up North, Chiles then embarked upon a relentless
campaign to convince voters that his way-- and Weicker's-- has
become inevitable. So far, the polls show, there have been few
takers.
For Weicker, it has been a lonely year. By continuing to insist
that only an income tax can relieve the financial despair of a
state reeling from its worst times since the Depression, the politician
who once promised the people of Connecticut he'd be "Nobody's
Man but Yours," has more recently become nobody's man but
his.
BEFORE SUNRISE ON A FRIGID MORNING late in October, Weicker
folds his lumbering frame into the back of his new Lincoln Town
Car. Surrounded by nervous state troopers who are with him always,
he hits the highway. Dressed in his usual uniform-- size 46XL
blue serge suit, pin-striped shirt with broad white collar-- the
Governor cranks up the Verdi as he cruises past steaming lakes
into a crimson dawn.
An opera fanatic, Weicker has convinced his drivers to suffer
through his obsession. Earlier this year, he made his musical
debut, playing an American naval officer in a Connecticut Opera
Company production of "Madame Butterfly." He was not
required-- or permitted-- to sing. But the husky baritone earned
a second chance a couple of weeks ago with a brief vocal role
in the company's winter production of "The Barber of Seville."
For fun, he even agreed to take a pie in the face, a scene not
originally included by Rossini in the 1816 libretto.
"If I didn't get the life I chose," Weicker says
without regret, "I would have wanted to star in the opera.
What could be better than to sing such wonderful solos?"
Today, Weicker is heading to Norwich, a devastated mill town
of 38,000 people not far from New London that has lost more jobs
in the last four years than it did during the Depression. All
along the banks of the once vibrant Thames River, low-slung brick
millworks stand vacant-- bleak and sooty monuments to the state's
harrowing industrial decline.
"The people who are so emotional about the income tax
should take a good long look at Norwich and places like it,"
says Richard H. Ayers, the chairman of Stanley Works, the giant
tool company that is among the oldest industrial manufacturers
in the state. Ayers has spoken out for years about the need to
lower the state's corporate tax rates, which had long been the
nation's highest.
"I can't imagine a business choosing to move here," he says.
Weicker has worked furiously to keep corporations from deserting,
cutting the state's 13.8 corporate tax surcharge to 10.5 percent
over the next two years and reducing sales taxes from 8 percent
to 6 percent. So far, however, success has been limited. In Norwich,
he will address the Southeastern Connecticut Chamber of Commerce,
arguably the most desperate group of business leaders in a state
that has seen 80,000 manufacturing jobs vanish in the past five
years, along with several leading corporations, among them United
Parcel Service and Saab. In addition, at least two Connecticut
companies born in the flinty tradition of the Yankee tinkerers,
Stanley and Hamilton Standard, have decided to make major expansions
elsewhere.
It is barely past 7 A.M. when the state car with the No. 1
license plates rolls past the local Wendy's and into the gates
of the Sheraton hotel. But it is not too early for the dozens
of protesters, dwarfed by a double-hitched 18-wheeler with "Impeach
Weicker" painted on its side in bright red letters the size
of a modest house. These days, wherever the Governor goes, pickets
get there first.
Weicker rubs his increasingly crumpled face to keep awake.
He is usually up at 5 A.M. and in the pool at the Jewish Community
Center a couple of miles from the mansion or on a nearby tennis
court soon after, but the hourlong ride from Hartford has made
him sleepy. This morning, after he speaks to 400 people, he will
meet with the editorial board of a local newspaper. But the real
purpose of his trip is to take the sagging pulse of the region,
check in with a few local allies and to perform a little politics.
Of the many common complaints about the Governor, none is as
prominent as the accusation that he puts himself above compromise,
that he is a man musclebound by morality.
"Did you know that the Lord speaks directly to Lowell
Weicker, and only to Lowell Weicker?" asks John F. Droney
Jr., the combative Democratic state chairman who helped Joseph
I. Lieberman upset Weicker in a 1988 Senate race so bitter and
humiliating that many believe Weicker ran for Governor largely
to avenge the loss.
"He is an intellectually superior man, but hubris killed
Greece, so don't you think it could harm him too?" Droney
asks without a trace of humor. "He could have done far more
for himself on the tax issue with a case of Budweiser and a couple
of bottles of Jack Daniel's than by setting himself up as a modern
day Charlemagne."
It is part of the usual assault on Weicker: a man of integrity,
but one who can't quite fathom the needs of the average person.
Droney and Carter Eskew, a Washington media consultant, relied
on that perception in 1988 to help Lieberman hand Weicker his
first electoral defeat. They portrayed him as a man willing to
go to the wall to protect a woman's right to choose abortion or
to prevent daily prayers from returning to public schools-- a
man whose commitment to the Constitution is unsurpassed, but also
one who has little patience for the minutiae of daily government.
"We beat him by showing what he was good at," Eskew
says. "Lieberman made the case that Weicker cares deeply
about issues, that he is a man of principle. But they are not
often principles shared by the majority of people. I think we
caught the beginning of the big fear that has enveloped the state.
People could see things were headed seriously in the wrong direction,
and they saw in Weicker a guy out here on his own, pursuing an
agenda that had nothing to do with them."
This view of Weicker is usually bolstered by references to
his background in Paris, on Park Avenue, at prep schools, Yale
University, the University of Virginia Law School and as an heir
to the Squibb pharmaceutical fortune.
Lowell P. Weicker Jr. grew up rich and has stayed that way--
although his actual earnings are often exaggerated. He says he
is worth little more than $1 million and makes less than $200,000
a year from his salary and other income. But he declines to release
complete 1990 income tax returns for himself and his third wife,
Claudia.
Weicker was born in Paris, where he lived until he was 5. Then
his family returned to New York. His father eventually become
the chief executive officer of Squibb, the company young Weicker's
grandfather helped found in a Brooklyn drugstore after coming
from Germany more than a century ago.
After earning gentleman's C's in school, Weicker started in
politics as a traditionally conservative Greenwich Republican,
like his taciturn father and much like two rich neighbors who
also went to Yale, George Bush and William F. Buckley Jr. But
by the time Weicker finished serving as First Selectman of
Greenwich in 1968, he had begun to look like a fun-house-mirror
version of a country club Republican, remaining conservative on
fiscal matters but straying wildly on social policy.
Weicker met his first wife, Bunny, while he was in college. They
had three boys, the youngest of whom is 25, before ending their
24-year marriage in 1977. With his second wife, Camille, Weicker
had two more boys, Sonny, a 13-year-old who has Down syndrome,
and Tre, 12. Although Weicker remains close with his first wife,
his marriage to Camille lasted only seven years and was, by all
accounts, unhappy for both of them. Claudia, Weicker's current
wife, has yet two more boys from a previous marriage. The youngest
four, all of whom live in Washington, see the Weickers on most
weekends and during vacations.
Weicker's wealth, it is often argued, has permitted him his
raging independence. His is the kind of life that works well in
the United States Senate, critics suggest, but not for the chief
executive of a state in crisis, a state that clearly needs all
hands linked together.
Yet, as he works his way through the cavernous hotel ballroom
in Norwich this morning, it is clear that the Governor thrives
on his position. The breakfast is like a flashback to the wedding
scene in "The Godfather," as first one local official and then
another find their way to Weicker's table seeking political favors.
There are senior citizen centers to open and casino operators
to train. Roads need repair and there is talk of a new bridge.
Dutifully, he takes notes on each request, referring people--
always by first name-- to the right member of his staff.
"We want people to come back downtown," a local member
of the General Assembly says abruptly, without the usual small
talk. "We want a state office building in Norwich."
The Governor swallows hard and begins to play with his wire-rim
glasses. This is a man who stood by him on the tough series of
income tax votes, and Weicker knows that, with the repeal effort
likely to gather momentum in the special session, he'll need this
Assemblyman more in the future. Hard as the tax initiative has
been on Weicker, it has been even harder on some of the legislators
who backed him. One had a bullet fired through her window, while
others felt compelled to toss their legislative license plates
in the trash.
Finally, after delivering the gentlest reminder that the income
tax was designed to make ambitions like Norwich's come true, Weicker
promises to do all he can to help. As he talks, Weicker becomes
enthusiastic about redevelopment in an area where unemployment
has rarely been higher, largely because of all the jobs lost in
manufacturing and the defense industries. Not until the conversation
turns to financing new sewer lines does Weicker walk away.
THE TRADITIONAL vision of Connecticut can be found in a Currier
and Ives print. The state has always evoked images of wealth and
privilege: a place of ancestral summer homes and black-tie
weekends, for Henry Fonda in "The Lady Eve," Katharine Hepburn
in "Bringing Up Baby" or Barbara Stanwyck in "Christmas in
Connecticut." Even now, the state retains the highest per capita
income in the country, although much of that wealth belongs to
the residents of Fairfield County, a natural extension of the Upper
East Side that somehow broke off and found its way into another state.
But Connecticut, which has nearly 3.3 million residents, has
never been just a playground for rich people. Its cities stoked
the industrial growth of the nation, turning out everything from
brass clocks in Waterbury to nautical instruments in New London,
from the Wiffle Ball in Shelton to the Colt revolver in Hartford.
And when Ronald Reagan rolled into office, the boom was on again,
with the state's two largest employers, United Technologies and
Electric Boat, becoming major beneficiaries of the decade of defense.
They weren't the only ones that prospered. While manufacturing
jobs had been sliding away for decades, real estate, banking and
insurance companies more than made up for the loss. As profits
soared, the tax structure-- based entirely on sales and business
revenues-- delivered bigger than a lucky trip to Vegas.
When the stock market crashed in 1987, however, so did
Connecticut's house of cards. Corporate profits went into free fall.
Tax revenues have fallen by more than 10 percent a year. One of
the most inflated real-estate markets in the nation disintegrated,
and Connecticut's banks, holding billions of dollars worth of mortgages
few could afford, began to cave under their own weight like a black
hole. The state's biggest cities-- Hartford, New Haven and Waterbury--
all stumbled toward economic collapse. This spring, Bridgeport
became the first major city in the nation to declare bankruptcy.
By 1988, the year Weicker lost his Senate seat, the deficit
was more than $150 million. Former Gov. William A. O'Neill, like
so many of the Democrats who ran the state for years before him,
refused to consider an income tax, and in 1989 he was forced to
find nearly $1 billion in new revenues. A state already writhing
in economic withdrawal was left with the highest sales and corporate
tax rates in America.
No one knows whether Connecticut has hit bottom, and if not,
when it will. This year, the state's banks have reported the highest
percentage of bad loans in the nation, and the Federal Government
has seized 13 of them with assets worth more than $12 billion.
The desperate economy dominated last year's gubernatorial campaign.
As one of only 10 states without an income tax, Connecticut finally
appeared ready to adopt a logical alternative. Because income
taxes are not dependent solely upon the vagaries of consumer spending,
they generate a far more stable stream of revenues than any sales
tax.
"The state budget was a true catastrophe and everybody
knew it," says Jerome P. Brown, president of District 1199
of the New England Health Care Employees Union, which provided
critical support for Weicker during last year's race against two
members of the House, Republican John G. Rowland, a conservative
who declared war on taxes, and Bruce A. Morrison, a Democrat who
suggested putting the income tax issue to a referendum.
Weicker, edging his way up the middle, said he would consider
all options. As he has so often in the past, he sold himself as
a man so completely disgusted by politics as usual that he created
"A Connecticut Party" as a new vehicle for his independence.
Nevertheless, Rowland portrayed Weicker as the tax man.
Connecticut has always had a fiery antipathy to any notion of
income tax. In 1971, when one was passed in the dead of night,
the state revolted and the law was repealed within weeks. That
killed the issue for a generation.
Starting with a big lead, Weicker refused to rule out a tax
during the campaign, but insisted all along that he didn't want
one. As the race drew to its close, polls showed Rowland within
reach of a victory nobody thought was possible. It began to seem
as if Weicker's humiliation of 1988 was about to repeat itself--
another insurmountable lead lost, a final disgrace to bring a
long career to a poignant end.
Two weeks before the election, with his lead slipping fast,
this Weicker ad appeared on Connecticut television stations: "I'm
Lowell Weicker with a message for John Rowland," he proclaimed
in his most gladiatorial voice. "Don't speak for me, John Rowland.
Stop distorting facts and scaring people with misquotes and
half-truths. Long before your negative ads, I was opposed
to a state income tax. The people of Connecticut and I know it
would be like pouring gasoline on the fires of recession. And
nobody's for that."
The commercial convinced many of those vehemently opposed to
taxes that a vote for Weicker was safe. He ended up winning by
three percentage points, carrying only 40 percent of the vote.
Weicker then stunned income tax opponents by selecting as his
budget director William J. Cibes Jr., a Democrat and the state's
most visible income tax advocate. Within a month of the Governor's
inauguration, the state deficit had ballooned to nearly $2.7 billion
in a $7.8 billion budget, proportionately the largest in the country.
After much reflection, prolonged discussion with his advisers
and what he describes as a period of "praying for another way,"
Weicker decided that if Connecticut were going to survive, it would
have to accept an income tax.
From the start, editorial boards, academics and many public-policy
experts have backed Weicker. So, for the most part, have business
and labor. But Connecticut's Democratic Senators-- Lieberman and
Weicker's friend Christopher J. Dodd-- have each denounced the
tax, mindful of the near defeat suffered by Senator Bill Bradley
of New Jersey last year after he'd tacitly supported Florio's tax
reforms. Weicker and the Legislature have each been battered
in the polls, with 70 percent of those surveyed this fall saying
they were either "very angry" or "displeased" with the tax. Even
among those who clearly benefit from Weicker's tax program--
the poor, who will pay nothing, and the lower middle class, who
stand to gain most from lower sales taxes-- support has been scarce.
Yet Weicker insists that even after making more than $1.2
billion in cuts to essential services, he had no other choice. "I
worked my butt off to keep an income tax out of this state,"
he says. "I don't like it. I didn't want it. But I'll tell you, the
facts were so loud I couldn't shut them off. There was no
other way."
Maybe not, but Weicker's apparent reversal has infuriated the
people who elected him-- many of whom feel betrayed. "Well,
he took a pledge and he broke it," says Stanley Greenberg, the
Washington-based Democratic pollster who worked on Morrison's
campaign. "There is an arrogance about Lowell Weicker that
you tolerate because that arrogance is associated with his absolute
commitment to principle. He made a pact with the devil to get
elected and it worked."
"I never made any damn pledge," Weicker says. "But even if I
had, I would have broken it."
STATE REPUBLICANS have been known to scour local highway maps
searching for the spot on the road to Hartford where, as a young
man, Lowell Weicker became a liberal. Weicker doesn't shrink from
the L-word, just as he doesn't hesitate to call Teddy Kennedy
"one of the two or three best Senators I have ever known"
or to refer to Richard Nixon as "a small man who wanted to
take the country and the Constitution into the sewer."
Weicker was honored when William F. Buckley Jr. and his family
organized a 1988 effort called BuckPac, which was dedicated to
ridding the Senate of him. Picking one of the many issues on which
they have always been on opposite sides of the trenches, BuckPac
sold bumper stickers that said, "Don't Abort Your Child (He May Grow
Up to Vote Against Weicker)."
"Buckley constantly suggests that I am some kind of traitor
to my class," Weicker says now. "I think the truth is just the
opposite. What a horrid, callous man! To have so much and give
so little. He is an embarrassment to the background we both
come from."
Weicker has probably been called a maverick more than any living
politician. The word, and the image of him as a rambunctious loner--
a kind of feral child who doesn't play well with others-- fits
him well. Many people who know him trace his yearning for lonely
celebrity to Watergate, when he first felt the glorious freedom
of being shunned. Others say his contrarian gift is the legacy
of a lifelong effort to prove to his father that he was unique.
Weicker doesn't go in for heavy analysis, though. Psychology makes
him laugh.
"I love it when they try to figure out my problem," he says,
stretching out the last word for what seems like a minute. "I don't
have mystical secrets."
People have strained to figure out Weicker's maddening disaffection
with the G.O.P. since the mid-70's. Predictably, the questions
drive him up the wall. "Everyone always asks why didn't I
just switch parties, why am I not a Democrat, if I couldn't get
along with the Republicans? It was constantly said during and
after Watergate that the reason why he acted as he did is he is
really a Democrat in Republican clothing."
When he gets excited, Weicker shifts frequently from the first
to the third person. "I always bridled at that," he
says, calming down. "I was a damn good Republican.
It was the party that changed, not me."
The Governor's eyes still shine when he talks about the Republicans
he used to call his colleagues in the Senate.
"They were great men," he says, reeling off a list of the Grand Old
Party's legendary liberals--all gone. "Javits was the greatest. He had
the most influence on my life with his total commitment to social
concerns.
"And there was Cliff Case of New Jersey and Ed Brooke
of Massachusetts. Chuck Percy from Illinois. Mac Mathias of Maryland.
Jim Pearson of Kansas and Mark Hatfield of Oregon. It was a great
core of moderate Republicans. They had brains in their head."
Thrilled to be among them, Weicker watched in horror as, slowly,
the New Right rose from the ashes of the Goldwater wing of the
party. He grew weary of the excessive civility of his old colleagues,
none of whom was willing to "bare-knuckle it with the bad
guys."
So Lowell Weicker became the Republican Rambo, a guerrilla
warrior who used every rule in the Senate to tie the body in knots.
His ability to filibuster was matched only by that of his principal
nemesis, Jesse Helms of North Carolina. Weicker went through aides
like water and had few friends in the Senate.
Reveling in his outlaw status, Weicker stared down the tanks
of the Reagan Revolution. As the White House worked ceaselessly
to eliminate funds for school lunch programs, community health
care centers, child vaccines and dozens of other social programs,
Weicker usually managed to keep a finger in the dike. When AIDS
was a word few Senators would even utter, Weicker regularly demanded
more Federal money to fight it.
"I used to call him in every now and then," recalls
a chuckling Howard Baker, "and say, 'Now, Lowell, you can
only be a moral giant once this week.' "
IT IS EARLY ON THE Saturday morning after Weicker's inflammatory
speech at Gallaudet. He is easily the biggest man at Bradley
International Airport in Hartford, and as he and his wife and their
state police escort sweep through the nearly empty terminal,
all heads turn.
The security detail assigned to Weicker tightens up. Over the
last few months, the officers have become increasingly worried
about his safety. But Weicker, carrying a suit bag from a Greenwich
men's store, seems oblivious.
The state car is waiting out front to take the couple home
to the Governor's mansion, where they will host a wedding reception
later that afternoon for a close friend.
After everyone piles into the car, Weicker's driver gingerly
passes him the morning's Hartford Courant, with the latest poll
results from the University of Connecticut Institute for Social
Inquiry.
"Weicker Popularity Plummets to New Low," the headline
screams. The story says that one out of every two residents of
the state believes Weicker is doing a "poor" job, the
worst showing for any politician in the history of the poll.
Weicker has been talking a lot lately about smelling the flowers
and watching sunsets. He says he has had a "wretched"
year and would have to be crazy to seek "this or any other
office again."
Yet it pains him that he has been able to do nothing to implement
health care reforms or to help the state's faltering cities. Despite
the polls, Lowell Weicker still considers himself the best in his business.
I don't doubt myself on that count," he says curtly. "Never have."
Settling into the back seat of the Town Car, Weicker loosens
his tie, giggles and castes a gleeful look at his wife.
"Look at that, Claudia," he says, practically singing. "We
continue to go down in the polls. I guess we'll just have to
keep suffering."
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