Sen. John Heinz was one of the good guys

Sen. John Heinz (R-Pa.)



Copyright 1991 Newsday, Inc.
Newsday (New York)

April 5, 1991, Friday, CITY EDITION

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 38
LENGTH: 547 words
HEADLINE:
BYLINE: By Myron S. Waldman. WASHINGTON BUREAU
DATELINE: Washington
BODY:
He was one of the two richest members of the United States Senate and one of its most liberal Republicans.


They called him "John" or "Johnny," but his full name was Henry John Heinz III. His net worth has been estimated at $ 500 million, making him and Democrat Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia the wealthiest senators, and the mere threat of his millions had been enough to make his seat one of the safest in the Senate. It was a seat he held ever since 1976, moving up after a five-year career in the U.S. House, and spending $ 2.9 million of his own money for the promotion.


He fought for the environment, frequently working with his old prep school roommate, Sen. Tim Wirth (D-Colo.), but it was his stance as a protectionist in trade matters for which he was best known. "Buy America" was his battle cry, and he fought to the end of his life for U.S. products to be made available in foreign markets.
His was also a strong voice for the elderly - he had chaired the Senate Select Committee on Aging - and he always fought to protect the quality of medical care for those over 65 and to eliminate mandatory retirement on the basis of age.


He could be blunt in his outrage. When the Reagan administration cost-cutters proclaimed ketchup to be a vegetable, Heinz, who knew better than anyone else in Washington, got up on the Senate floor to declare it was merely a condiment.


In the Capitol yesterday, jammed with tourists but all but empty of lawmakers during the Easter recess, congressional assistants spoke in shock of his sudden death. "I sat next to him last week at a meeting with Secretary of Defense Cheney," recalled Rep. Peter Kostmayer (D-Pa.) in a telephone interview from Pennsylvania. It was a meeting, said Kostmayer, to fight to keep the Philadelphia Navy Yard open.


Heinz' plane crash came in the midst of a tour of the state, going from constituent meeting to constituent meeting. "He literally died in the midst of his duties," Kostmayer said. "He was an enormously popular senator in Pennsylvania. He was unbeatable."


Yet his influence and popularity were far greater in Pennsylvania than in Washington, D.C.


Pennsylvania politicians said that Heinz took over the state's Republican Party after the Republican governor, Dick Thornburgh, left and became the U.S. attorney general. "He was the peacemaker of the Republican Party," one state Democrat said. "Heinz was able to keep the conservatives at bay and the party in the mainstream." Now, the Democrat said, he expects the Pennsylvania Republicans to swing to the right.


Gov. Bob Casey, a Democrat, has 10 days to appoint a successor, who would have to run for election later this year, Democratic state operatives said. The victor of that election would have to run for a full term in 1994. But Casey wasn't talking about who he might name yesterday.
"The people of Pennsylvania have lost a great leader and the nation has lost a great senator," said President George Bush of the death of Heinz. He described Heinz as "a close friend of our family."

Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) said of Heinz: "If he was given much, he gave more. We will miss his high spirits and great good humor and great heart."
Heinz was 52. He is survived by his wife* and three children.

*Now married to Senator John Kerry (D-Ma)