Weicker kept low profile during negotiation of revenue-sharing deal with Mashantuckets
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Jun. 29—Editor's note: In 2014, The Day interviewed Lowell Weicker Jr. about his role as one of three Republicans on the 1973 Senate Watergate Committee. Weicker was the panel's last surviving member when he spoke to Lisa McGinley about the lingering legacy of the coverup, saying President Nixon "took every aspect of the Constitution of the United States and trashed it." The video appears below.
New London ― A Watergate-era foil for Richard Nixon and the driving force behind Connecticut's 1991 enactment of a state income tax, former Gov. Lowell Weicker Jr., who died Wednesday at 92, kept an uncharacteristically low profile when it came to negotiating a revenue-sharing agreement with the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe.
Stan Twardy, Weicker's chief of staff from 1991 to 1993, recalled Thursday that Weicker sent him to negotiate with a lobbyist for the tribe, Charlie Duffy, who'd asked if the state would be interested in discussing sharing the slot-machine revenue the tribe's Foxwoods Resort Casino would generate.
"He said, 'Twardy, see if you can get a deal ― but you're on your own,'" said Twardy, an attorney with Day Pitney in Stamford.
The sides forged an agreement in which the tribe surrendered 25% of its slot-machine revenue to the state in exchange for the exclusive right to operate casino gambling in Connecticut, terms later extended to the Mohegan Tribe, which opened Mohegan Sun in 1996.
"I felt like I was in 'Mission: Impossible'," Twardy said, invoking a TV series that depicted spies whose superiors would disavow any knowledge of them if they were discovered. "At the time, others wanted casino gambling in the state ― Bridgeport, Hartford and elsewhere. ... If the state was seen negotiating with the Mashantuckets, it would have undercut (Weicker's) opposition to casinos."
"It was funny," Duffy said of reaching the agreement. "We went in to see the governor, sat down for a little and he said, 'OK.' That was it. He had been well prepared. He was not a big fan of gambling, but he saw the revenue and what the casino could mean as a huge generator of employment, too."
"What it came down to is he trusted Skip Hayward more than he trusted Donald Trump and Steve Wynn," Twardy said, referring to Richard "Skip" Hayward, the tribe's chairman at the time, and two big-name casino moguls who had designs on the state.
Morgan McGinley, retired editorial page editor of The Day, called the agreement "smart as hell."
In a phone interview, McGinley recalled that he met Weicker through Ken Grube, his predecessor as editorial page editor at The Day, who had covered Weicker for the Greenwich Time newspaper. Weicker served as a Republican state representative and Greenwich first selectman before serving one term in the U.S. House and three terms in the U.S. Senate.
McGinley said he tried without success to get Weicker to make a debate appearance in New London during his 1988 Senate race, which he lost to Democrat Joe Lieberman.
Two years later, when Weicker ran for governor on the A Connecticut Party ticket, McGinley made the same pitch.
"He said, 'I'd be glad to come down there,'" McGinley said. "He wised up."
McGinley said Jewish voters in the western part of the state largely abandoned Weicker in the 1988 election despite his record of having supported the Jewish community on most issues. Weicker took the snub in stride, McGinley said, never publicly complaining about it.
One day, McGinley's phone rang just as he walked into his office.
"'This is Lowell Weicker goddamit,' he starts screaming at me," McGinley said. "I said, 'wait a minute ...'"
Weicker launched headlong into a diatribe about a story that had appeared in the paper. When McGinley pointed out that the paper was The Hartford Courant, Weicker bellowed: "Well, you're probably going to run it."
"I said, 'Governor, do you remember we endorsed you for every higher political office you've ever run for?'" McGinley said. "He said, 'Oh yeah, you're right. You're the best damn paper in Connecticut.'"
"That story's so Weicker," McGinley said.
McGinley got to know Weicker well after McGinley retired in 2007. Weicker and his wife Claudia hosted dinners at their home, first in Essex and then Old Lyme, inviting McGinley and his wife, Lisa McGinley, a retired assistant managing editor of The Day who now serves on the paper's editorial board, and another couple.
"He had a reputation as a loudmouth, but they couldn't have been a more engaging couple at these dinners," McGinley said.
"He was really committed to government serving the people," he said. "He wasn't in office to make himself richer or benefit himself in some way. Truly, he was a servant of the people."
The Mashantucket Pequots issued a statement Thursday in which they expressed their sympathies to the Weicker family. It reads:
"Governor Lowell Weicker served an important role in negotiating the development of the first gaming revenue-sharing agreement established between a state and a Native American tribe. In 1993, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed by the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation and the State of Connecticut, which not only resulted in billions of dollars in revenue to the State, but also served as a template for many tribes to participate in gaming, a nationwide industry which today exceeds $39 billion in market value.
"We are grateful for Governor Weicker's leadership and recognition of the importance for negotiations between equal sovereign governments, demonstrating respect for our tribal sovereignty."
