Of all the governors I write about, this will be the most difficult chapter to put to paper. 

 Why?  Because Richard L. Thornburgh was a paradox…a man with impressive, yea impeccable public service credentials…yet a man whose private actions often belied the public image he presented. The late House Speaker, Matt Ryan, put it to me this way in that conversation we had about governors under whom he served.  “Thornburgh was one tough sunuvabitch when he wanted to be," Ryan said.  “I really liked him for that.  He had steel in his character.”  Ryan might call it “steel.”  Others thought of it more as meanness.   The bond that Matt Ryan formed with Richard Thornburgh through the years was very tight, tighter than many might have suspected.  The Governor delivered the eulogy at Ryan’s funeral in the year 2003.

Now let’s be absolutely clear:  I did not know…do not know…Richard Thornburgh personally.  He did not..does not…know me.  Then and now, if we passed on the street, he would have no idea who I was.  So the perceptions I have to share are, admittedly, entirely subjective on my part, framed primarily from contacts I had with his Administration from my vantagepoint on the minority staff of the Senate of Pennsylvania.  But the truth is, I saw contradictions in Richard Thornburgh that I unable to shake to this day.  He reminded me in many ways of Richard Nixon.  The principal difference was that Nixon was transparently insecure.  Richard Thornburgh, on the other hand, had the gravitas and the persona to keep his inner instincts largely hidden from public view. 

Publicly, he postured himself as a person of the highest integrity, someone far above the traditional give and take—some might call it the “scratch-my-back, I’ll-scratch-yours” approach--to politics and governing.  Lofty, to be sure.  The trouble was, in many ways, Richard Thornburgh, was as calculating, combative and cunning (in some ways much more so) than many of the very same politicians for whom he professed such disdain.  In the rough and tumble world of politics, that may not be a fault.  But in this case, it is a contradiction in style certainly worth noting.

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Thornburgh brought a prosecutor’s no-nonsense approach to the state politics, honed from his six  years (1969-1975) as a United States Attorney in Western Pennsylvania and from two years (1975-77) as Assistant United States Attorney General in charge of the Justice Department Criminal Division in Washington.  Thornburgh was a prosecutor to his core.  When he campaigned as the Republican nominee for Governor in 1978, he essentially asked the voters to send him to Harrisburg so he could clean the place up.  The Shapp Administration’s reputation for bad conduct if not actual misfeasance made it an ideal target for Thornburgh’s political pitch.  This is the way Professors Madonna and Young characterized the political environment in Pennsylvania at the time:

“No single issue…dominated a governor’s campaign the way in which political corruption did in 1978.  And never did the background of a candidate fit the issues of the moment better.  The Republican nominee in 1978 was Dick Thornburgh, who as U.S. Attorney in Western Pennsylvania, had won 40 convictions of politicians in both parties.  His campaign against corruption in state government was unrelenting…few could deny that political corruption was the dominant issue in 1978, and that Thornburgh’s credentials were impeccably suited to take advantage of the issue.”

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Governor Thornburgh brought a very basic approach to governance with him when he took his oath of office in 1978.  Essentially, his was a three-point plan:  1)—Manage the fiscal resources of the Commonwealth very conservatively;  2)--Pass the state budget on time; and, 3)--Stay out of trouble—political or otherwise—because this Administration would brook no misconduct on the part of those who represented it.  As principles go, these certainly would do fine.  But no one, even the most friendly of observers, could label them visionary or ambitious.  The Thornburgh Administration was true to itself during its eight-year run.  Governor Thornburgh ran a very tight fiscal ship; his state budgets were passed on time (an important flagship achievement for the Administration each year); and the Administration was relatively scandal free.    

The Governor’s mettle was tested sorely very soon after his inauguration.  Governors usually learn very quickly that they had better be prepared for the unexpected because adversity had a way of striking on very short notice in very strange ways.  Thornburgh’s first crisis certainly did.  A reactor malfunctioned at the Three-Mile Island nuclear power plant at Middletown, just a few miles away from the State Capital.  A threat of a nuclear meltdown…coincidentally, as the film “The China Syndrome” was playing to large audiences at movie theatres across the country at the time…was looming dangerously over the entire Central Pennsylvania region.  Thornburgh advised pregnant women to remain indoors as plant operators grappled unsuccessfully to bring the facility under control.  Ultimately, the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission had to be called in to direct the effort.  Dr. Harold Denton took operational control of the plant.  Denton’s calming presence, his constant visibility, the clarity with which he spoke at his daily media briefings and his confident demeanor had a great soothing effect on the region.  (I had occasion to meet him personally years later during a visit he made to the operations center of the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency during the Casey Administration.  I took advantage of the introduction to thank him personally for the air of reassurance he brought to a region where the fear of nuclear disaster was very real, indeed.)

Thornburgh, likewise, remained very visible during the crisis.  His demeanor also was critical to the preservation of order in a region that was in danger of moving almost daily to the edge of evacuation if not actual panic.  Half the families in the area (including the Carocci’s with their four young children) left for more distant locales until the crisis had passed.  But Governor Thornburgh kept a steady hand throughout.  It won him national acclaim when the crisis passed, and rightly so.  Actually, the Commonwealth’s strategy was essentially to stand by as events played out under the skillful guidance of Dr. Denton and his NRC colleagues.  But it was the right strategy for the moment, and the Governor carried his role off with aplomb.  It was, in my view, the high water mark of the Thornburgh Administration. 

If Richard Thornburgh played his TMI hand with great finesse, he painted a much different picture of himself on other issues and events with which I was personally familiar.  There we saw a man who could play inside, hardball politics with the best of them. 

…(An)other example…of the political side of Dick Thornburgh that he professed not to possess:  He was the only governor in the history of the Commonwealth, certainly modern Pennsylvania history, to hold political fund-raising events in the Governor’s Residence.  There’s just something unseemly about people being charged a price of a political ticket to visit and mingle with the Governor in the publicly funded Governor’s Residence.  Other Governors, of course, hosted their financial supporters at the residence in a variety of ways during their tenure.  But the attendees were not charged the price of a political contribution to be there.  The costs of those events were borne by the host’s personal or campaign funds.  Not so with the Thornburgh fund-raisers.  Several fund-raising events were held at the residence leading up to his re-election effort in 1982, and the Governor apparently had no qualms about the practice.  Once again…a strange contradiction for a man who relished in his political reputation as a non-political straight shooter.  Of course, the Thornburgh practice paled in comparison to the indefensible techniques Democratic President William Jefferson (just call me, “Bill”) Clinton employed years later with his fund-raising White House coffees and teas.  Clinton took the use of public perks as a political resource to a high art form.  But Dick Thornburgh went down the same path much earlier, just in tinier steps.

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As the 1982 gubernatorial election approached, the private Thornburgh was known only to a few.  The public Thornburgh was a presumptive favorite for re-election.  So much so that no Democrat of any stature came from the sidelines to challenge him.  The nomination went almost by default to a little known Democratic Congressman from Lycoming County, Allen Ertel.  Ertel had two qualities which recommended him above all others:  He was a winner in a Congressional District which traditionally voted Republican; and he really wanted to make the race.  When engaged, he was dogged in his pursuit of public office.  His tenacity as a candidate marked his successful race for Congress, and he was no less tenacious in his race for governor.  He had two major hurdles to surmount.  Politically, no one in the political and pundit community gave him a whisper of a chance to defeat Thornburgh.  Personally, he was not the easiest person to embrace.    

Yet, Thornburgh won re-election by a mere 100,400 votes.  Ertel was much more competitive than expected east of the Susquehanna River.  As the count moved westward, the race still was very much up for grabs.  The irony was that Ertel lost the election in the traditionally Democrat southwest, where his margins were much less than Democratic candidates usually recorded.  

For example:  Republican Thornburgh won Allegheny County with a Democratic registration margin of 293,000 by 6,500 votes.  That could be explained by Thornburgh’s Pittsburgh roots, perhaps.  What was not so easily explained were the vote totals in other southwestern counties. 

Cambria County had a 14,000 Democratic registration margin, but Ertel won the county by a mere 6,400 votes.  Fayette County had a 10,500 Democratic registration margin, but Thornburgh won the county by 4,400 votes.  Washington County, with 44,500 more registered Democrats than Republicans, went for Ertel by only 10,000 votes; and the crown jewel, Westmoreland County with 72,000 more registered Democrats voted Ertel by a paltry 4,800 votes. 

Lamented one Democratic Senator from southwest Pennsylvania, “If we had known he (Ertel) was going to be this close, we probably could have done something about it.”

That was probably an oversimplification, but, as I analyzed the results, a couple of factors did come into play in keeping the Thornburgh margin to such minimal dimensions.  The first was that the Governor was not as popular politically within his own party as conventional wisdom perceived him to be.  There was that certain arrogance to his Administration and his team, and that may have cost him internally.  Another was that the air of inevitably which pervaded the conventional thinking at the time might have prompted some Republican leaders to treat the election too casually.  Finally, some western Pennsylvania Democrats, thinking the election result was pre-ordained, may have cut their own deals, which they were prone to do when the occasion demanded.  But, margins aside, impressive or not, a win is a win and Thornburgh became the second Pennsylvania Governor in modern times to serve a second consecutive term. 

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Thornburgh resigned the office of (U.S.) Attorney General in 1991 to return to Pennsylvania and seek the U.S. Senate seat left vacant with the tragic airplane death of incumbent Republican John Heinz.  Again, he was a preeminent favorite going into the race. 

Democratic Governor Robert P. Casey, after much deliberation and one brief flirtation with former Chrysler President Lee Iococca, had appointed Harris Wofford, his state Secretary of Labor and Industry, to fill the Heinz vacancy until a special election that Fall.  Harris Wofford was a right honorable gentleman of the first order, thoughtful and deeply committed to public service.  In the era of John F. Kennedy, Harris had earned an admirable record on civil rights with direct links to Martin Luther King.  He was an early proponent of the Peace Corps with a personal relationship to Sargent Shriver, the Kennedy brother-in-law who became the first Peace Corps director.  He was a college president (Bryn Mawr); served as Democratic State Chairman during the Casey run for governor in 1986; and then joined the Casey cabinet.  But, for all intents and purposes, he was an unknown political commodity.  When compared with the public credentials of Richard Thornburgh, Harris paled.  And he had never run for public office before. 

Thornburgh returned to Pennsylvania expecting a coronation.  Instead, he found an election.  Wofford proved much more formidable a candidate than even his most loyal supporters could have anticipated.  I remember a conversation Governor Casey had with James Carville, the political consultant who signed on at Casey’s insistence to direct the Wofford campaign, in the Governor’s hotel suite during a National Governor’s Association meeting in Seattle, WA.  “Harris is just about one of the nicest people I’ve ever met,” Carville told Casey as the campaign was underway.  “But he don’t know squat about politics and running for office.  I don’t know if we can make this work.”  Casey assured Carville he would do all in his power to help the Wofford candidacy, and he did. 

Carville and Wofford hooked on to health care as a focal issue for their campaign.  Harris appeared in one particularly poignant television commercial filmed in the corridor of a hospital.  In the ad, Harris said in America, we accept the fact that every person was entitled to his own lawyer.  Well, he added, he wanted to make certain every person also had access to his own doctor.  Send him to Washington, he urged, and reform of the national health care delivery system would be his highest priority.  It was a very, very powerful visual, and a very, very effective political message.  

Thornburgh, meanwhile, trumpeted his long and successful career in public service.  The principal theme of his campaign was that he was someone seasoned in public affairs, someone who had “walked the corridors of power” in Harrisburg and Washington.  It backfired.  Harris railed repeatedly against those insiders who had “walked the corridors of power” in the state and nation’s capitols, but in the process had lost touch with the needs and concerns of real people.  The attack was a nice complement to Harris’ populist views on health care and other issues, and it resonated with the electorate.

Still as the election approached, Thornburgh remained the favorite in the eyes of the press and the punditry class.  If a Wofford trend had developed, it was not detectable to even the most penetrating of political observers.  So what a surprise election night was to most everyone.  Early returns, as they arrived in the Wofford election suite, were most promising.  Harris Wofford was running particularly strong in the suburban counties around Philadelphia where Democrats seldom did well.  Casey took a phone call from Carville shortly after the polls closed and the first returns came in.  “Governor,” Carville reported, “we’re not only going to win; we’re going to kick his ass but good.”  Carville was right on the money.  The rout was on.  Wofford won by 339,000.  

It was one of the grand nights of my fleeting association with elective politics.  I had flown with Governor Casey to Philadelphia election night to await the returns.  I encountered Harris for a moment as he was making his way from his suite to claim victory.  Extending my hand, I said: 

“Congratulations, Senator.  This is one of those rare times in politics when the good guy really did win.”  It truly was.

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Richard Thornburgh went on in 1992-93 to serve as Under Secretary General at the United Nations for personnel, budget and finance matters.  It was the highest-ranking position any American ever held at the world organization.  Then, as an independent examiner for the Bankruptcy Court, he spent 15 months in 2002-2003 dissecting the illegal practices at WorldCom which culminated in the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history.  His public resume continues to build impressively, even to this day. 

Yet, the contradictions between the public Thornburgh and the private Thornburgh are impossible to shake.   A professional associate of mine of long standing told me he found Thornburgh to be one of the most easy conversationalists and as cordial and congenial a man as there was to have served in the Governor’s Office.  That may be true.  I certainly have no reason to doubt him.  Still there was a hidden dark side to the Thornburgh character that was troubling…So where does that leave us?  Those who want the Governor’s personal view on his political career should read his 2003 autobiography, “Where the Evidence Leads” (he still is very much a prosecutor to his core.)  To those allies of his out there who, no doubt, hold an entirely different view than I of the Governor, I say:  Step up and tell your story.  As for me, well, this is where I must come down on the man.