Lowell Weicker, Senator and Governor of Maverick Connecticut, dies at age 92

Lowell P. Weicker Jr., a liberal Republican who gained a national reputation for his combative political independence — first as a young U.S. senator during the Watergate hearings and later as Connecticut’s third governor — died on Wednesday. He turned 92.

His family announced his death in a statement. The statement did not say where he died or name a cause.

Mr. Weicker was an obscure junior senator from Connecticut and a member of President Richard M. Nixon’s own party in 1973 when he took up an assignment on the Senate select committee investigating the Watergate affair – the break-in in the offices of the Democratic Party. opposition from a White House burglary team and the administration’s attempts to cover up the crime.

But after the televised committee hearings concluded, he was famous, demonized by some for the harshness of his attacks on Nixon, but branded a hero by others.

In a memorable moment, White House counsel John W. Dean sat in the witness box after revealing that Nixon had kept an “enemies list.” Mr. Weicker declared to enthusiastic applause:

“Let me get it straight because I have to have my partisan moment: Republicans don’t cover up; Republicans do not continue and threaten; Republicans don’t go ahead and commit illegal acts; and, God knows, Republicans don’t see their compatriots as enemies to be harassed.”

He later wrote in his autobiography, “Maverick: A Life in Politics”: “As a politician, I was not hurt by Watergate. I was made by it.”

For the admirers of Mr. Weicker, the Watergate hearings revealed a man willing to go against power, question authority, and follow his beliefs at any cost. To his critics, they transformed him into a contrarian with a robust ego who often went against the grain for the sake of the fight itself.

Indeed, through a 30-year career in public life, either serving in or representing Connecticut – as a state representative, as Greenwich’s first selectman (the equivalent of the mayor), as a one-time member of the U.S. House of Representatives , as a U.S. Senator for three terms and as Governor for four years – Mr. Weicker, a hulking presence at 6-foot-6, never seemed happier than when he was in the middle of a good slugfest.

In the Senate, where he served from 1971 to 1989, his best friend and mentor was New York Senator Jacob K. Javits, another liberal Republican. His enemy of choice, during many battles in the 1970s and 1980s, was also a Republican, North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms.

Attempts by social conservatives like Mr. Helms to advance their agenda — whether passing legislation on prayer in public schools or limiting abortion rights — particularly enraged Mr. the Christian right in his party as a serious threat. to his future.

“No greater mischief can be created than to combine the power of religion with the power of government,” he wrote in his autobiography. “History has shown us that time and time again.”

Mr. Weicker’s politics—he usually sided with the Democrats on social issues and the Republicans on taxes and spending—always made him an outsider, and in 1990, two years after he lost his Senate seat to Joseph I. Lieberman , he walked away from two-party politics completely.

His political comeback, running for governor of Connecticut, would make him what he had always been: an independent. He founded a third party – its official name was A Connecticut Party – and took office in 1991 in the trough of a national recession that had not spared his state. That year, he pushed through the introduction of an income tax—long a taboo in Connecticut—although he did not have the vote of a single member of his party in the state’s General Assembly.

“I saw myself as an outsider at times,” he wrote. “Independent, not afraid.”

Lowell Palmer Weicker Jr. was born in Paris on May 16, 1931, the son of the CEO of the pharmaceutical company Squibb. a grandfather, Theodor Weicker, a German immigrant, had founded the pharmaceutical company Merck & Company with George Merck and later bought Squibb & Sons with a partner.

Lowell Jr. attended the private Lawrenceville School in New Jersey and Yale University, graduating in 1953. After a two-year stint in the military, he enrolled at the University of Virginia Law School and received his degree in 1958. He served in the military Reserve until 1964.

Although he grew up privileged, Mr. Weicker often sided with the underdog in his later public life. He attributed some of his political views to his mother, Mary Hastings (Bickford) Weicker, a Democrat, but as much to his father, a Republican, who he said had taught him that luck and wealth were no excuse for looking down on those who had neither. (His parents later divorced and his mother remarried.)

As an overweight teen, Mr. Weicker said, he also learned early on that staying put and hitting back was probably his best strategy in life.

“A man has to learn one of two things,” he quoted a school coach as saying, run or fight. “One look at you and I suggest you learn to fight,” said the coach. The lesson lingered.

Gradually, Mr. Weicker a devoted operagoer – so much so that he accepted walk-on roles at the Connecticut Opera.

He was elected to the Connecticut General Assembly in 1962 and was Greenwich’s first selectman before winning seats in the U.S. House in 1968 and in the Senate two years later.

With his national prominence following the Watergate hearings, Mr. Weicker announced his candidacy for the 1980 Republican presidential nomination in March 1979. But within two months the campaign collapsed, after a poll in his home state put him in third place behind Ronald Reagan and former President Gerald R. Ford.

Mr. Weicker retired from public life in 1995, after one term as governor. That same year, he published his autobiography, written with Barry Sussman, who, as an editor at The Washington Post, had helped direct coverage of Watergate. Mr. Weicker then served as founder and president of the Trust for America’s Health, a nonprofit organization dedicated to disease prevention, from 2001 to 2011.

He is survived by his wife, Claudia Weicker; his sons, Scot, Gray, Brian, Tre and Sonny; two stepsons, Mason and Andrew Ingram; 12 grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.

In the 2008 presidential election, Mr. Weicker Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee, and rejected self-proclaimed wayward Republicans John McCain and Sarah Palin. He also supported President Obama in 2012, arguing that his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, was too willing to adjust his positions to curry favor with the far right.

In his book, Mr. Weicker admitted that wayward politics offered him few allies. By the time he left the Senate, he wrote, he was few and far between in both parties.

To many voters back home, he might have come to seem almost too much the loner, fighting one-man battles. Mr. Lieberman neatly captured that image in a series of TV commercials that helped win tight elections. They depicted Mr. Weicker as a big lumbering bear who only came out of his cave to roar at the world.

In a 2012 interview with Connecticut magazine, Mr. Weicker was asked which was more difficult: being a senator, being a governor or being retired.

“I think I’ll probably retire,” he said. “To sit here and watch this world go by — and this world is struggling — and I can’t help it.”

Neil Vidor reporting contributed.