Bill Weld

 ( 1945 Births ) 

In 1981, Weld was recommended to Ronald Reagan by Rudy Giuliani, then Associate U.S. Attorney General, for appointment as the U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts. During Weld's tenure, the Attorney General's office prosecuted some of New England's largest banks in cases involving money-laundering and other white-collar crimes. Weld expanded an ongoing public corruption investigation of the administration of Boston Mayor Kevin White. More than twenty city employees were indicted, pleaded guilty, or were convicted of a range of charges, including several key political supporters of the Mayor. In 1985, The Boston Globe said Weld "has been by far the most visible figure in the prosecution of financial institutions."

Weld gained national recognition in fighting public corruption: he won 109 convictions out of 111 cases.

In 1983, The Boston Globe stated: "The U.S. Attorney's office has not lost a single political corruption case since Weld took over, an achievement believed to be unparalleled in the various federal jurisdictions."

While serving as the Assistant Attorney General of the Justice Department Criminal Division, Weld wrote a memorandum in 1988 to the House Judiciary Committee that formally reviewed the recommendations of the House Select Committee on Assassinations final report and reported conclusions of active investigations on the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. In light of investigative reports from the FBI's Technical Services Division and the National Academy of Sciences Committee determining that "reliable acoustic data do not support a conclusion that there was a second gunman" in the Kennedy assassination, and that all investigative leads known to the Justice Department for both assassinations had been "exhaustively pursued", the Department concluded "that no persuasive evidence can be identified to support the theory of a conspiracy in either the assassination of President Kennedy or the assassination of Dr. King."

In March 1988, Weld resigned from the Justice Department, together with Deputy Attorney General Arnold Burns and four aides, in protest of improper conduct by Attorney General Edwin Meese. In July 1988, Weld and Burns jointly testified before Congress in favor of a potential prosecution of Edwin Meese for his personal financial conduct, following a report by a special prosecutor investigating Edwin Meese. Meese resigned from office in July 1988 shortly after Weld's and Burns's testimony.

Weld was a senior partner at Hale and Dorr from 1988 until 1990.

In the general election, he faced John Silber, the president of Boston University. Polls showed Weld anywhere from a statistical tie to trailing by as many as ten points. Voter dissatisfaction with the state's Democratic majority gave Weld support for his promises to reduce the state deficit, lower the unemployment rate, and cut taxes, while Silber's statements to the right of Weld on social issues caused many Democratic voters to vote for Weld. On November 6, 1990, he was elected as the 68th Governor of Massachusetts by 75,939 votes, to become the first Republican governor of Massachusetts since Francis W. Sargent left office in 1975. Governor Weld is generally considered to have been a moderate or liberal Republican governor. He is fiscally conservative and socially liberal.

The business community reacted strongly to Weld's leadership. In a 1994 survey of chief executives conducted by the Massachusetts High Technology Council, 83% of those polled rated the state's business climate as good or excellentup from 33% at the beginning of his term. Proponents might claim that Weld's leadership changed the minds of 50% of the CEOs surveyed while others would note the national economic trends or other factors might play a part. Weld also reaped the benefits of the 1990s' prosperity, as the state's unemployment rate fell by more than 3 percentage points during his first term, from 9.6% in 1991 to 6.4% in 1994. As a result, Weld received grades of A in 1992, B in 1994, and B in 1996 from the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, in their biennial Fiscal Policy Report Card on America's Governors. In 1993 he supported adoption of a gun control bill in Massachusetts that included limits on gun purchases under age 21, as well as prohibiting certain types of weapons, which was not ultimately passed. He has since renounced this proposal. "A personal message for Delegates to the Libertarian National Convention", Facebook.com. Weld is pro-choice and helped to introduce legislation to make it easier for women to access abortion procedures. As Governor, he supported gay rights. In 1992, he signed an executive order to recognize domestic partnership rights for same-sex couples. In 1993, he signed into law legislation protecting the rights of gay students. He also said he would recognize same-sex marriages that might be performed out of state following a court decision in Hawaii. Weld signed into law the Massachusetts Education Reform Act of 1993 that created the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) and the legal framework for charter schools in Massachusetts. During his term, he launched a successful effort to privatize many state's human services, laying off thousands of state employees. One of the social services Weld opposed and eventually ended was a program providing higher education to prison inmates. He also worked to expand Medicaid access by requesting more federal funding and, then, allowing more residents to qualify for the plan to both solve budget problems and increase access to health care in the state. After cutting state spending year-over-year for his first two years, the Republican Party lost its ability to sustain a veto in the legislature due to losses in the Massachusetts State Senate, forcing Weld to make greater concessions to Democratic legislators.

In 1994, Weld won re-election by 921,740 votes in the most one-sided gubernatorial contest in Massachusetts electoral history. Weld carried all but five towns in the whole state, even carrying Boston.

In 1995, Weld eulogized one of his longtime supporters, former Massachusetts House member Mary B. Newman, stating, "Mary Newman, for years the grande dame both of Cambridge and its Republican party, launched me in politics by serving as chair of my statewide campaign in 1978."" Mary Newman, 'fighting Quaker' of the Massachusetts GOP; at 86" (obituary). Boston, Massachusetts: The Boston Globe, December 9, 1995, p. 19.

Following his landslide victory as governor, Weld briefly considered running for the presidency in 1996. In 1996, after signing a conservation bill, he jumped fully clothed into the Charles River.