Word: resnek
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Dates: during 1983-1983
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...women. Nevertheless. Heckler has been trying since 1979, hop-scotching on issues like the Squeal Rule, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), and the effects of Reagan's budget cuts on women, and doing what political writer Charles Pierce of the Boston Phoenix calls "the abortion tapdance." According to Joshua Resnek, her former campaign press secretary. Margaret Heckler put Pierce at the top of her list of reporters not to be talked to--right after Chris Black, the Boston Globe reporter who gave the world the scoop about Heckler's face lift...
...Massachusetts Women's Political Caucus, of which Heckler had been a founding member, threw its support behind McCarthy. In fact, none of the major women's organizations backed Heckler--a bit of a blow to a woman who always tried to present herself as a feminist standard bearer. Resnek says of his experience during the 1982 campaign. "There I was trying to sensitize myself to women's issues, working for a real live woman boss, and women hated...
...platform did not include an endorsement of the ERA. Now what was Margaret Heckler, highest ranking Republican woman in the House, doing during that convention? Some insiders suggest that Heckler made a trade with the president--no fuss about the ERA in exchange for a woman Supreme Court justice. Resnek doesn't buy that line. "At that level of politics," he says, "no deals are made--at least not with those on the periphery, and she's always been on the periphery." Nevertheless, Heckler did make quite a lot of noise about Sandra Day O'Connor's appointment...
...champion of any cause," Resnek says. "Nothing will be spontaneous with her--not women's rights, not men's rights. Reagan appointed a good soldier. She'll look up to him as her leader. If he asked her to jump out a window, she probably would...
...wasn't unlike Heckler to go with the flow." Resnek says. "Waffling was the basis of her career...she was interested in her political survival." Heckler managed to appear to be against the budget, while actually helping to pass it--that is, until Barney Frank called her bluff. As Pierce says, "Heckler's strategy was always something like 'for my own survival I will adopt this position for a while and drop it when people forget about it. 'But with unemployment as high as it is in Fall River, people don't forget about Ergonomics." He adds, "Margaret was straddling...