Lowell Palmer Weicker Jr. (born May 16, 1931) is an American politician who served as a U.S. Representative, U.S. Senator, and the 85th Governor of Connecticut. He unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for President in 1980. Though a member of the Republican Party during his time in Congress, he later left the Republican Party and became one of the few third party candidates to be elected to a state governorship in the United States in recent years, doing so on the ticket of A Connecticut Party.
The United States House of Representatives is the lower chamber of the United States Congress, the Senate being the upper chamber. Together they compose the legislature of the United States.
The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, which along with the United States House of Representatives—the lower chamber—comprises the legislature of the United States. The Senate chamber is located in the north wing of the Capitol, in Washington, D.C.
Connecticut is the southernmost state in the New England region of the United States. As of the 2010 Census, it has the highest per-capita income, Human Development Index (0.962), and median household income in the United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its capital is Hartford and its most populous city is Bridgeport. It is part of New England, although portions of it are often grouped with New York and New Jersey as the Tri-state area. The state is named for the Connecticut River which approximately bisects the state. The word "Connecticut" is derived from various anglicized spellings of an Algonquian word for "long tidal river".
Edward Robinson Squibb was a leading American inventor and manufacturer of pharmaceutics who founded E. R. Squibb and Sons, which eventually became part of the modern pharmaceutical giant Bristol-Myers Squibb.
The Lawrenceville School is a coeducational, independent college preparatory boarding school for students in ninth through twelfth grades as well as a post-graduate year. The school is located on 700 acres (280 ha) in the historic Lawrenceville section of Lawrence, in Mercer County, New Jersey, United States.
Yale University is a private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Founded in 1701, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nine Colonial Colleges chartered before the American Revolution.
Weicker served in the Connecticut State House of Representatives from 1962 to 1966 and as First Selectman of Greenwich, Connecticut before winning election to the U.S. House of Representatives, in 1968 as a Republican. Weicker only served one term in the House before being elected to the U.S. Senate in 1970. Weicker benefited from a split in the Democratic Party in that election. Two-term incumbent Thomas Dodd ran as an independent after losing the Democratic nomination to Joseph Duffey. Ultimately, Weicker won with 41.7 percent of the vote. Dodd finished third, with 266,500 votes–far exceeding Weicker's 86,600-vote margin over Duffey.
Greenwich is a town in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. As of the 2010 census, the town had a total population of 61,171. It is the 10th largest municipality in Connecticut.
Thomas Dodd may refer to:
Joseph Daniel Duffey is an American academic, educator and political appointee.
Weicker served in the U.S. Senate for three terms, from 1971 to 1989. He gained national attention for his service on the Senate Watergate Committee, where he became the first Republican senator to call for Richard Nixon's resignation.[5] He recalled: "People in Connecticut were very much behind President Nixon, like the rest of the country. They thought he could do no wrong, and when I was in Connecticut, I would get flipped the bird all the time, whether it was on the streets or in the car, for the role that I was playing. After Watergate was over, then the needle goes all the way the other way, and I’ve got huge favorability ratings."[6] Proving this, Weicker was convincingly reelected in 1976.
Richard Milhous Nixon was an American politician who served as the 37th president of the United States from 1969 to 1974. He had previously served as the 36th vice president of the United States from 1953 to 1961, and prior to that as both a U.S. representative and senator from California.
In 1980, he made an unsuccessful bid for the Republican nomination for President.[7]
Weicker was a liberal voice in an increasingly conservative Republican Party. For instance, in 1986, Americans for Democratic Action rated Weicker as by far the most liberal Republican in the Senate, and gave him a higher rating than Connecticut's other Senator, Democrat Chris Dodd.[8] He was critical of the increasing influence of the Christian right on the party; he described the separation of church and state as "this country's greatest contribution to world civilization",[9] and the party in 2012 as "swung off so far to the right that no moderate could’ve survived a primary."[6]
Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) (1947-present) is a liberal American political organization advocating progressive policies. ADA works for social and economic justice through lobbying, grassroots organizing, research, and supporting progressive candidates.
Christopher John Dodd is an American lobbyist, lawyer, and Democratic Party politician who served as a United States Senator from Connecticut for a thirty-year period from 1981 to 2011.
The Christian right or the religious right are conservative Christian political factions that are characterized by their strong support of socially conservative policies. Christian conservatives principally seek to apply their understanding of the teachings of Christianity to politics and to public policy by proclaiming the value of those teachings or by seeking to use those teachings to influence law and public policy.
Weicker's tense relations with establishment Republicans may have roots in receiving strong support from Nixon in his 1970 Senate bid, support repaid in the eyes of his critics by a vehement attack on the White House while serving on the Watergate Committee. Later, his relations with the Bush family soured, and Prescott Bush Jr. (the brother of the then Vice President) made a short-lived bid against Weicker to gain the 1982 Republican Senate nomination.[12] His liberalism increasingly alienated Connecticut Republicans, particularly after an effort to prevent the nomination of conservatives to state office, which resulted in a poor showing during the 1986 local elections, and he was defeated in the 1988 Senate election by Joe Lieberman.[5][9] Lieberman benefited from the support of National Review publisher William F. Buckley Jr., and his brother, former New York Senator James Buckley; William Buckley ran columns in support of Lieberman and circulated bumper stickers with the slogan, "Does Lowell Weicker Make You Sick?".[9]
Governor
Weicker's political career appeared to be over after his 1988 defeat, and he became a professor at the George Washington University Law School. However, he entered the 1990 gubernatorial election as the candidate of A Connecticut Party, running as a good government candidate[13] and drawing on his coalition of liberal Republicans, moderate Democrats, and independent voters.[9] The early 1990s recession had hit Connecticut hard, worsened by the fall in revenues from traditional sources such as sales tax and corporation tax, and exacerbating the state's inequality and crime rates.[14] Connecticut politics had a tradition at the time of opposition to a state income tax — one had been implemented in 1971 but rescinded after six weeks under public pressure.[15][9] Weicker initially campaigned on a platform of solving Connecticut's fiscal crisis without implementing an income tax. He won in a three-way race with Republican John G. Rowland and Democrat Bruce Morrison, taking 40% of the vote against Rowland's 37% and Morrison's 20%. Weicker lost Fairfield and New Haven County counties to Rowland, but won eastern Connecticut, drawing especially strong support from the Hartford metro area, where he had been strongly endorsed by the Hartford Courant and by many state employee labor unions. The Los Angeles Times wrote that support from Democrats was credited for Weicker's victory, reflected in Morrison's third-place finish.[5]
After taking office, with a projected $2.4 billion deficit,[16][14] Weicker reversed himself and pushed for the adoption of an income tax, a move that was severely unpopular.[14][9] He stated, "My policy when I came in was no income tax, but that fell apart on the rocks of fiscal fact."[17] Weicker vetoed three budgets that did not contain an income tax, and forced a partial government shutdown, before the General Assembly narrowly passed it in 1991.[15] The 1991 budget set the income tax rate at 6%,[18] lowered the sales tax from 8% to 6% while expanding its base, reduced the corporate tax to 10.5% over two years, and eliminated taxes on capital gains, interest, and dividends.[15][16] It also included $1.2 billion in line-by-line budget cuts,[17] including the elimination of state aid to private and parochial schools, but held the line on social programs.[9] His drastic measures provoked controversy.[14] A huge protest rally in Hartford attracted some 40,000 participants, some of whom cursed at and spat at Governor Weicker.[9][13] The Assembly attempted to pass a measure repealing the broad-based income tax, which he vetoed, and the override of a veto fell one vote short.
Weicker earned lasting criticism for his implementation of the income tax; the conservative Yankee Institute, which claimed in August 2006 that after fifteen years the income tax had failed to achieve its stated goals.[19] However, he earned national attention for his leadership on the issue, receiving the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation's Profiles in Courage award for taking an unpopular stand, then holding firm.[20] Within two years, the state's budget was in surplus and he was well-regarded among voters.[9] In retirement, he commented, "You've had 19 years to repeal it, and all you've done is spend it."[11][6]
Weicker did not seek re-election as governor in 1994. His last year in office was marked by a controversy over the firing of the state commissioner of motor vehicles, Louis Goldberg.[13] In 2000, he endorsed Senator Bill Bradley (D-NJ) for President. In 2004, Weicker supported former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean's (D-VT) presidential bid. He expressed sympathy for the budget struggles of Governor Dannel Malloy, drawing a parallel with his own efforts to remedy a fiscal crisis.[11][6]
In his book Independent Nation (2004), political analyst John Avlon describes Weicker as a radical centrist governor and thinker.[21]
Lowell Weicker was said to be considering a rematch against Senator Joe Lieberman in the 2006 election cycle. He objected to Lieberman's support for the Iraq War and noted in a New York Times article published on December 6, 2005, "If he's out there scot-free and nobody will do it [run against Senator Lieberman], I'd have to give serious thought to doing it myself, and I don't want to do it." [citation needed]
The Lieberman campaign released an ad that borrowed from one aired during the 1988 Senate race, which depicted Weicker as a hibernating bear ignoring his Senate duties except at election time. In the 2006 ad, Weicker reappeared as a wounded bear while Lieberman's Democratic challenger, Ned Lamont, was depicted as a bear cub sent and directed by Weicker. On June 18, 2006, Weicker held a fundraiser for Lamont and described himself as an "anti-war activist." (Lamont won the primary, but Lieberman, running as an independent with heavy Republican support, maintained his seat in the general election.)[22]
Other activities
In 1996, Weicker joined the Board of Directors for Compuware[23] and still holds this position. In 1999, Weicker became a member of the Board of Directors for the World Wrestling Federation (now known as WWE), and held this position until 2011.[24]
Weicker served from 2001–2011 as President of the Board of Directors of Trust for America's Health, a Washington, DC-based non-profit, non-partisan health policy research organization, and formerly a member of the Board of Directors of United States Tobacco. Since 2003, Weicker has served on the board of Medallion Financial Corp., a lender to purchasers of taxi medallions in leading cities across the U.S. He was named to the board through his personal and business relationship with Andrew M. Murstein, president of Medallion.[25]
During the 2016 Republican primaries, Weicker wrote an editorial in the Hartford Courant, in which he criticised the repudiation of Rockefeller Republicans, the party's alienation of various population groups, and its obstructionist stance in Congress. He stated that the selection of Donald Trump as their presidential candidate "will complete their slow and steady descent into irrelevance."[26]
Joseph Isadore Lieberman is an American politician, lobbyist and attorney who served as a United States Senator from Connecticut from 1989 to 2013. A former member of the Democratic Party, he was its nominee for Vice President of the United States in the 2000 election. During his final term in office he was officially listed as an independent Democrat and caucused with and chaired committees for the Democratic Party.
The 2006 United States Senate elections were held on November 7, 2006, with all 33 Class 1 Senate seats being contested. The term of office for those elected in 2006 ran from January 3, 2007, to January 3, 2013. Prior to the election, the Republican Party controlled 55 of the 100 Senate seats.
William Atchison O'Neill was an American politician and member of the Democratic Party who served as the 84th Governor of Connecticut from 1980 to 1991. He was the second longest-serving governor in Connecticut history, with 10 years in office.
Eunice Barnard Strong Groark was an American politician who became the first elected female lieutenant governor of Connecticut in 1990. Groark ran on a ticket with Lowell Weicker. They were both members of A Connecticut Party. The Weicker/Groark ticket won with 41 percent of the vote.
The 1968 United States House of Representatives elections were elections for the United States House of Representatives in 1968 which coincided with Richard M. Nixon's election as President. Nixon's narrow victory yielded only limited gains for his Republican Party, which picked up a net of five seats from the Democratic Party. The Democrats retained a majority in the House.
The Connecticut House of Representatives is the lower house in the Connecticut General Assembly, the state legislature of the US state of Connecticut. The house is composed of 151 members representing an equal number of districts, with each constituency containing nearly 22,600 residents. Representatives are elected to two-year terms with no term limits. The House convenes within the Connecticut State Capitol in Hartford.
John Moran Bailey was an American politician who played a major role in promoting the New Deal coalition of the Democratic Party and its liberal policy positions.
Edward Miner Lamont Jr. is an American businessman and politician serving as the 89th Governor of Connecticut since January 9, 2019. A member of the Democratic Party, he won the 2018 gubernatorial election, defeating Republican Bob Stefanowski and independent Oz Griebel.
The 2006 United States Senate election in Connecticut was held November 7, 2006. Incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman lost the August 8 Democratic primary to Ned Lamont, but then formed his own third party and won a fourth term in the general election. Lieberman and Lamont both faced Alan Schlesinger, a Republican.
A Connecticut Party was a political party formed by former Republican Senator and gubernatorial candidate Lowell P. Weicker, Jr. in 1990. Weicker subsequently won the 1990 gubernatorial election and served a single term as Governor of Connecticut. The party was intentionally named in a manner so as to fall first, alphabetically, on the ballot.
Connecticut for Lieberman was a Connecticut political party created by twenty-five supporters of Senator Joe Lieberman. The party was created to enable Lieberman to run for re-election following his defeat in the 2006 Connecticut Democratic primary. In the succeeding general election, Lieberman received 49.7% of the vote, defeating Democrat Ned Lamont and Republican Alan Schlesinger.
Anthony John "Toby" Moffett, Jr. is a former American politician from the state of Connecticut. A Democrat, Moffett served in the United States House of Representatives as the member from Connecticut's 6th congressional district from 1975 to 1983. Moffett is currently the chairman of The Moffett Group, a government relations and strategic consulting firm in Washington, DC.
William E. Curry Jr. has been a two-time Democratic nominee for Governor of Connecticut and a White House advisor in the administration of Bill Clinton.
The Connecticut Republican Party is the Connecticut affiliate of the U.S. Republican Party. J.R. Romano, a Derby resident and campaign organizer, is the party chairman, elected June 23, 2015. Prior to his election as chairman, Romano managed the campaigns of New Britain Mayor Erin Stewart and Trumbull First Selectman Timothy Herbst in his run for State Treasurer.
The 2010 United States Senate election in Connecticut was a midterm election which took place on November 2, 2010 to decide a Class III Senator from the State of Connecticut to join the 112th United States Congress. Incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator Christopher Dodd suffered from dropping approval ratings in the past few years due to major controversies, leading him to announce in January 2010 that he would retire, instead of seeking a sixth term. As Dodd was a Democrat, Richard Blumenthal, incumbent State Attorney General, announced on the same day that he would run for Dodd's seat. The Connecticut Democratic Party nominated Blumenthal on May 21. Businesswoman Linda McMahon won the state party's nominating convention and the August 10 Republican primary to become the Republican candidate.
The 1988 United States Senate election in Connecticut took place on November 8, 1988. Incumbent Republican U.S. Senator Lowell P. Weicker Jr. ran for re-election to a fourth term, but was defeated by Democrat Joe Lieberman, the Connecticut Attorney General and eventual 2000 nominee for Vice President of the United States who would remain in office until 2013, when he retired.
The 1982 United States Senate election in Connecticut took place on November 2, 1982. Incumbent Republican U.S. Senator Lowell P. Weicker, Jr. won re-election to a third term. As of 2019, this is the last Senate election in Connecticut won by a Republican.
The 1976 United States Senate election in Connecticut took place on November 2, 1976. Incumbent Republican U.S. Senator Lowell Weicker Jr. won re-election to a second term.
Joe Markley is an American politician who was a member of the Connecticut State Senator representing the 16th State Senate District from 2011 to 2019. A native of Southington, Connecticut, he was first elected to the State Senate in 1984 at the age of 27, serving only one term. He returned to the chamber in 2010 at the age of 53. He was the Republican Nominee for Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut in 2018, losing to Susan Bysiewicz.
Robert Vincent Stefanowski is an American business executive who ran for Governor of Connecticut in 2018 on the Republican ticket with Joe Markley. He lost to Democrat Ned Lamont and running mate Susan Bysiewicz on November 7, 2018.
↑ Avlon, John (2004). Independent Nation: How the Vital Center Is Changing American Politics. Harmony Books / Random House, pp. 177-93 ("Radical Centrists"). ISBN978-1-4000-5023-9.
Barone, Michael, et al. The Almanac of American Politics 1976: The Senators, the Representatives and the Governors: Their Records and Election Results, Their States and Districts (1975); new editions every 2 years through the 1996 editions cover his political career
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