7--The Final Year
All things considered…particularly in light of the ordeal he endured over the previous six months…Governor Robert P. Casey’s final year in office went about as hurdle free as he could have expected. His health and his stamina were improving steadily and he was dealing daily with the problems of governance that every governor encounters in the discharge of his duties. In short, Casey was back and he clearly was in charge. Of that, there was never any doubt! What tensions surfaced were largely political—political differences with half the House Democrats over his last budget; and political strains with the Democratic candidates for governor and U.S. Senator in the 1994 elections. This is how it all unfolded as I saw it and recall it.
The 1994-95 state budget, Casey’s eighth and last submission, was problematic almost from the moment it was presented. And the problem was with the House Democrats. Casey was always cautious…conservative, some Democrats complained…in his spending initiatives. From the first day of his first term, he was determined to avoid encumbrances in one budget that would add significant spending on to succeeding budgets. His commitment to social programs…particularly those in the area of women and children services…never wavered. But neither did it set spending floors that would cause subsequent budgets to soar. Except for the unforgettable anomaly in 1991, all prior Casey budgets fit that mold and this last one wasn’t going to deviate.
That did not sit well with the House Democratic leadership and half their caucus. I suspect they thought the Governor’s spending wasn’t “Democratic” enough for the 1994 election cycle. But Casey wasn’t moved by their opposition. Instead, he instructed Budget Secretary Mike Hershock to work as cooperatively as necessary with legislative Republicans in both the House and Senate to arrive at a consensus as early as possible...but a consensus that was consistent with the primary thrust of his budget submission, which was to combine controlled spending geared to targeted objectives with one last round of tax cuts to lessen the impact of the levies imposed in 1991.
Half the Democratic caucus in the House agreed with Governor Casey. With that bloc of Democrats in hand, and the Republican legislative leaders on board, the budget was passed on time and with little fuss. For a chief executive who had been so badly debilitated only six months earlier, that was no small feat. In December of 1994, just a month and one-half before his term was to end, Governor Casey’s mid-year budget could report the Administration would leave office with a projected half-billion surplus to hand over to his successor. The recovery from the dark days of 1991 was complete.
When it came to the politics of the last year of the second term…well, that was another matter. it shouldn’t have been surprising that political problems began to surface early in the 1994 election year. What was surprising, perhaps, was with whom the strains occurred: First with his lieutenant governor, Mark Singel, and, later, with his good friend and U.S. Senator, Harris Wofford. Let’s stipulate for the record right here: I was not always privy to the Governor’s inner most political thought processes; nor did I ask him directly about them. Didn’t think it was my business, frankly. But I had a fairly up-close-and-personal view of the sequence of events and this is how I saw them play out over the course of the year.
First, the case of Mark Singel. The lieutenant governor had a host of admirable traits to bring to the political process. He was bright, likeable, articulate, energetic; he had a relish for public service and he was thoughtful in the way he went about public policymaking. Most important, perhaps, he thought of politics more as a vocation rather than an avocation..a real love for the game and the playing of it...If Mark had one consistent shortcoming, in the view of those who watched him through the years, it was that he just could not seem to contain himself in his zeal to establish and build his own political identity. In spite of Casey’s repeated admonition…”Like it or not, we’re joined at the hip”…Mark set out early in the second term to move on his political ambitions. In the process, his public pronouncements on more than one occasion put him at odds with the Administration and the Governor he served…The tensions that began to build never quite dissipated and the result was that Governor never did offer Lieutenant Governor Singel more than tepid support in his 1994 campaign to succeed him. He never was publicly critical of his lieutenant governor; but neither was he active nor vocal on his behalf. Congressman Tom Ridge, the Republican nominee, and his staff were quick to grasp the electoral value of Casey’s idleness. With the exception of one early slip related to job creation in Pennsylvania…which drew a sharp rebuke from the Governor…they made certain they said or did nothing directly or indirectly critical of the Governor that would energize him on Singel’s behalf. Ridge won by some 235,000 votes. Many Democratic loyalists blamed Casey for the defeat. My own view is even Casey’s active support would not have turned 235,000 votes around. 5,000?…40,000?…maybe; but 235,000? No way.
The split with U. S. Senator Wofford probably troubled the Governor even more than his differences with his lieutenant governor because their long bond was as much personal as it was political. In 1994, Wofford was a candidate for a full six-year term in the Senate. Casey had appointed Wofford three years earlier to fill the vacancy created by the tragic airplane crash which claimed the life of John Heinz. There’s no question Harris wanted the appointment very badly and informed the Governor as much. The Governor (reportedly) was reluctant initially because he believed Harris’ political philosophy might be too liberal for mainstream Pennsylvania. At one point in the appointment process, the Governor flirted with the possibility of naming Chrysler Chairman Lee Iacocca (a nationally renowned figure who had family roots in Allentown) to the vacancy…
…the Governor (ultimately) settled on Harris’ appointment. His conditions were two-fold, I was told: First Harris would bring Carville and crew on to manage his campaign for election; second, when the issue of abortion came up as it inevitably would, Harris would proclaim his support for the Pennsylvania Abortion Control Act, which already had its constitutionality upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. With those conditions in hand, Governor Casey personally saw to it that Harris was in a financial position to be competitive politically when he squared off with former Governor and U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh. He personally spent countless hours at a desk away from the State Capitol on the phone raising funds necessary for Harris to be viable. He probably scratched for money for Wofford harder and longer than he did for himself in his prior gubernatorial campaigns. In the end, he gave Wofford the financial and political wherewithal to wage a viable campaign against Thornburgh.
Casey’s differences with Wofford, not surprisingly, came over abortion. Despite his commitment to the Pennsylvania Abortion Control Act, Wofford’s position seemed to soften after he went to the nation’s capital. He seemed to swing closer to the Clinton pro-choice view. An abortion debate was underway in the U.S. Senate. Casey called Wofford personally to request him to support an anti-abortion amendment that was to be offered on the Senate floor by U.S. Senator Dan Coates, Republican from Indiana. The amendment, as I recall, was a provision similar to Pennsylvania law. It may have dealt with parental notification. The White House and the Senate Democratic hierarchy were opposed to the Coates amendment. Wofford told Casey he was opposed, as well.
As I heard the governor replay the conversation to a small group of his staff, he told Senator Wofford…not as a threat, rather as a fact of political life—that if he (Wofford) opposed the amendment, then he (Casey) could not campaign for him in the fall. Wofford held firm. It was an important political vote for Clinton. Wofford, when push came to shove, went with the President who charmed him and against the Governor who appointed him. So Casey sat out the Wofford campaign, as well. Wofford lost to Republican Congressman Rick Santorum by 75,000 votes. There is no doubt in my mind that Casey’s active stumping for Harris might have reversed that narrow margin. But it was Harris’ choice. In my judgment, his decision to support the Clinton position on abortion may have cost him his seat in the U.S. Senate. Casey’s critics within the Democratic Party accused him of treason. I believe it was more a matter of principle to the Governor. And I respected him for it.
One footnote on the Casey-Wofford relationship: I learned as this was being written that Harris paid Governor Casey one last visit before his death. If breaches between the two needed to be healed, they were, I was told.
With the elections over, the last month and one-half was spent working on the transition from a Casey to a Ridge Administration. Casey instructed his team to be as cooperative as possible. We were.
The inside joke in the Administration was that given the Governor’s zest for the job, the Casey Administration would not wind down; rather, the clock would simply run out. And the Governor proved us right, working right through his last day in office. His one final act, I must admit, was to dispense one last plate of largesse to his native region in Northeast Pennsylvania. He went to Scranton to present a development check for the city’s new downtown Mall. I accompanied him.
When he was elected in 1986, he proclaimed to those communities he believed had been largely ignored in the past by state government, “Now, it’s our turn!” He spent his first day in office in the small town of Monessen in southwestern Pennsylvania. He spent his last day in office in Scranton in Northeast Pennsylvania. There was a symmetry to his term as governor, and the visits on his first and last day as chief executive were as consistent as they were symbolic. Bob Casey, if he were nothing else, was true to his commitment to the forgotten communities of Pennsylvania and the people who called them home.
When we arrived back in Harrisburg, Casey went to the residence for his last night there. I dropped my state car off at the Capital Plaza. Our youngest son, Steve, picked me up and drove me home. I had a drink, probably two—rare for me on a Monday.
Inaugural morning (Tuesday), I went for a run at 7 AM. My “15 minutes in the sun”…the capstone of my capitol journey, so to speak…were over.