"1970, and the Connecticut U.S. Senatorial Campaign"

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Essay from Essex

“1970, and the Connecticut U.S. Senatorial Campaign”

March 27, 2021

 

“The 1970 election was a major turning point in Connecticut’s political history: not only

because of the candidates who were elected that year, but also because it marked the

decline of the power of the nominating convention, and the rise of the statewide primary.”

                                                                                                                                                The New York Times

                                                                                                                                                March 31, 2006

 

If a man is not liberal in his 20s, it means he is heartless; if he is not conservative when he reaches 40, it means he has no head. That sentiment has been attributed to many, including John Adams, the French historian Francois Guizot, Winston Churchill and my maternal grandfather. Assuming the statement is true (which I will not swear to), I exited my 20s like the final display of a 4^th of July fireworks.

 

I write of the 1970 U.S. Senatorial campaign in Connecticut. It was the recent obituary of Joseph Daniel Duffy that prompted these remembrances. Born in Hamilton, West Virginia on July 1, 1932, Joe Duffy came to Connecticut for graduate studies at Yale and a PhD in Theology from Hartford Seminary, where he stayed to teach and to become the founder and director of its Center for Urban Studies. As well, in 1970 he was national chairman of ADA (Americans for Democratic Action). He died on February 21^st of this year at a retirement community outside of Washington, DC.

 

In that 1970 U.S. Senatorial campaign, Duffy ran as the anti-war candidate, attracting noisy and energetic youth, one of whom was me. He also attracted such well-known people as Chester Bowles, Paul Newman, Larry Kudlow, John Podesta, Joe Lieberman and a Yale Law School student, Bill Clinton. Duffy was in the forefront of the Civil Rights movement, having organized Freedom Rides in the mid 1960s. He had led an anti-war delegation at the 1968 Democratic National Convention on behalf of Eugene McCarthy. Two years later, the anti-war movement was still going strong, even as the number of U.S. troops in Vietnam, since peaking in 1968, had been reduced by over 200,000 to 340,000, and while deaths – still at 6,173 – had declined by 37%, from a peak, also in 1968. Nevertheless, Civil Rights and Vietnam remained issues. 

 

In the summer of 1970, at age 29, I lived a Saturday Evening Post-cover-like life – married, the father of two, working for Merrill Lynch in New Haven, while living in a historic house in the small town (population 4,489) of Durham, Connecticut. I had been honorably discharged from the U.S. Army reserve two years earlier. While I had grown up in a Republican household, I was exploring political alternatives. A year before I had registered as a Democrat. In November of 1969, I was elected to the library board, receiving the fewest votes possible – my only experience with elective office. Amidst this milieu, the siren-like call of Joe Duffy’s message was intoxicating. A few friends and neighbors like Cheryl Mallinson, A. Reed Hayes, Helena and Keith Hutchison and I joined the campaign. We joined the Durham Democratic Town Committee. In early June, I was selected to be an alternate delegate to the state convention, which was held on June 27 in Hartford’s Bushnell Memorial Hall.

 

I, of course, had never been to a convention. Though seated in the balcony, I was mesmerized. The activity on the floor, the shouts and smoke were visible, audible and malodorous. It was democracy in action. When the marching, noise and haze abated, Alphonsus Donahue, a Stamford, Connecticut businessman, won the nomination. However, Joe Duffey and State Senator Edward Marcus received enough votes to force a primary, the first in Connecticut’s history. Thomas Dodd, a Democrat and existing U.S. Senator, had been censured by the Senate and opted to run as an Independent. Our small group in Durham had helped raise Duffey’s profile. We had canvassed our neighbors and printed flyers. We had met with him and his campaign manager Anne Wexler in our home. On one occasion, William Manchester, historian and writer-in-residence at Wesleyan, joined us. None of us had expected Duffey to get the Party’s nomination; we were hoping for a primary, and that we got. 

 

Then the work began. Between June 27^th and the August 19^th primary we were in overdrive. We travelled with Mr. Duffey (his opponents insisted on calling him Reverend) from Durham to myriad venues in other towns. At a fundraiser at the Griswold Inn in Essex, we met Paul Newman, marveling at how short he was and how blue were his eyes. On another occasion, also in Essex, we attended a fund raiser at the home of Chester Bowles, a former Connecticut Governor who had been Truman’s Ambassador to India and Kennedy’s Under Secretary of State. About a dozen of us were seated in Mr. Bowles’ living room. We were asked who would be willing to put up $500. There was no response. Finally, I said I would put up $250 if someone else would match me. Henry Pierce, then president of the Union Trust Company of New Haven agreed. (Incidentally, Henry Pierce was the father of Margot who had been my girlfriend during the summer of 1944, when we were both three.) 

 

That summer of 1970 also included the Powder Ridge Rock Festival. It was held on the Powder Ridge ski slope in Middlefield (population 4,132 in 1970), a rural town adjacent to Durham. This was to be Connecticut’s answer to Woodstock and lasted from July 31 to August 2. Student unrest was persistent. Body bags from Vietnam were returning every day, and the shootings at Kent State had occurred less than three months earlier. However, the town fathers of Middlefield cancelled the event, so most musicians did not show, but between 30,000 and 50,000 young people did. Accurate descriptions of all that happened were unclear at the time and have been lost in the fog of time. However, from the vantage of fifty years, an article in Connecticut Magazine noted: “Certain things are indisputable facts. Drugs were plentiful. Clothes were scarce.” My wife Caroline, sensibly, had gone to Rumson with our two young children, leaving me with friends to witness the scene. We spent a couple of hours one evening wandering the fields, and I can attest to the accuracy of the magazine’s report. 

 

But the Democratic primary was our focus. Besides raising money, we knocked on doors, sent out flyers, and wrote letters to editors, all in support of Joe Duffy. Al Donahue, who was backed by the Democrat machine, was a wealthy businessman from Fairfield County – the “zipper king,” as I recall. A naturally gregarious and confident man, he dressed nattily, in sharp suits and French cuffs – a contrast to many of the residents of the farming community of Durham. Joe Duffy was a man of middling height, slightly balding at age 38 and of a serious, quiet demeanor, dressed in rumpled suits and sober ties. The primary was held on August 19. When the votes were tallied, Duffey won 43.55% of the votes; Donahue, 36.81%, and State Senator Edward Marcus, 19.64%. We were ready for Weicker, or thought we were. 

 

Once Joe Duffey won the primary, he became the Democratic Party’s nominee. But, given his progressive opinions, he was viewed skeptically by many in the Party’s hierarchy. About a week after the primary, I attended a six-person meeting in Middletown with John Bailey, a sixty-five-year-old, tough-talking Harvard Law School graduate who had been chairman of the Democratic National Committee during Kennedy’s campaign in 1960, the landslide victory by Lyndon Johnson in 1964, and the hapless Democratic convention in Chicago in 1968. This was my first (and only) meeting with a political “boss.” Bailey, a Roman Catholic looked at Joe Duffey, the young Methodist minister his party had chosen, and assured him that if he ran hard and kept to the Party’s script, he would not have to worry about a future job. Back-office promises and smoke-filled rooms were eye-opening to this politically naïve twenty-nine-year-old.

 

Thinking back, I suspect too much of our energy had been used up in the primary. We rested too heavily on garlands we had then won. The November elections was a three-way race. Senator Thomas Dodd, who had come to fame during the post-World War II Nuremburg trials, ran as an Independent. He was the conservative. Republican Lowell Weicker was a thirty-nine-year-old first-term U.S. Representative and former First Selectman of Greenwich. He was the moderate. Joe Duffey was an untethered, progressive. As Duffey supporters, our concern was Weicker, though, in retrospect, we should have paid more attention to traditional Democrats, as Edward Marcus and other Party leaders threw their support to Dodd. There were two debates. A New York Times article, after the second debate, headlined: “Weicker Assails Two Rivals in Connecticut Senate-Race Debate.” In contrast, Duffey was a gentle man. The Times reporter wrote about Duffey: “…he avoided sharp counterattacks.” The job for me and my cohorts was to heckle Mr. Weicker, which we did. When election results were reported on the eve of November 3^rd, Lowell Weicker won with 41.74% of the vote. Duffey was second with 33.79%. And Thomas Dodd was third with 24.46%. Now, decades later, Mr. Weicker lives in Old Lyme with his wife Claudia. When I related my long-ago attempts to disrupt his speeches, he smiled.

 

The end of a campaign, like any intense effort, leaves one deflated, in need of something to fill the void. After the election, I happened to read Gary Wills’ book, Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man, which had been published a few months earlier. The book, one must remember, was written two years after Nixon’s election as President, ten years after his defeat by John Kennedy and eighteen years after being selected by Dwight Eisenhower to serve as Vice President. The book is less a biography and more of a reflection on the struggle that so many have, with competing values and aspirations, to determine what is right for themselves and their country. In 1963, Robert Frost starred in a documentary, “A Lover’s Quarrel with the World.” Nixon Agonistes can be seen as universal-man’s quarrel with his country and himself – a struggle to find clarity amid personal and national conflict. While events in the 1972 Presidential campaign relegated Nixon to the ashcan for political crooks, this book, in 1970, caused me to re-think my priorities, including those of a political nature – to use my head as well as my heart. 

 

Joe Duffey was a decent and honorable man, and, despite my political views having changed, I look back on those heady days in the summer of 1970 with pleasure. I am proud to have played a small role, even if not successful. I learned a great deal and met some wonderful people. There are times in our lives that stand out. That summer was one. While saddened by his death, thank you for letting me re-live his campaign.