Bill Weld: A libertarian Jed Bartlett?
This is the fourth piece in my series on the 2020 election.
The state of the race
As of this writing Bill Weld is the only Republican who has even formed an exploratory committee to challenge sitting president Donald Trump. At least two others remain in the media as potential challengers, but it remains to be seen if they’ve been dissuaded from a run, due to their party expressing “undivided support” for Trump.
Those other two candidates, briefly, are Governors John Kasich of Ohio and Larry Hogan of Maryland (Bob Corker, the former senator from Tennessee, is also still sometimes considered a possible contender). If any of these potential candidates do decide to run, their primary challenges will be written about here.
It remains the opinion of this amateur political historian that there are two ways to strengthen the chances of a political party winning the presidency. Firstly, the challenging party must have an open and robust primary, and secondly, in the case of an incumbency, the incumbent party must face a primary. It seems that the Republican party, in choosing to support Trump, despite the persistence of the Never Trump movement, is trying to nip any successful primary challenges in the bud.
The Democrats, for their part, are fulfilling the requirement of the open and robust primary, with 18 candidates in the race and one more expected to announce this weekend, the Democrats have, by my count, their widest field in modern history.
Tom Perez, the DNC chair, has tried to make access to the debates fair, trying to open up access to twenty candidates, and randomizing who gets on which stage. We’ll see how that plays out starting in June. The field, by my current count, could be as large as 27, so there still could be some candidates left off the debate stage, but it is a marked improvement over the 2016 rules (though, why not push it to 14/13 or create a third debate time slot?)
Now it’s a matter of what happens on the Republican side, and they’ve got pretty much everyone in line. Even those who might’ve though that Mitt Romney was running for senate to have a platform in which to run for president again seem to have been wrong. Senator Romney seems fine being a sometimes-Trump senator.
Where is Bill Weld?
This brings us back to Governor Bill Weld. The governor formed his exploratory committee two months ago, and has yet to formally announce his candidacy, but is expected to formalize his intentions one way or another this month. With 9 months until Iowa or New Hampshire, ten until Super Tuesday, and 16 months until the Republican National Convention, Weld may feel in no hurry to make his candidacy official.
Weld may also be attempting to raise his national Never-Trump profile before seeking the Libertarian presidential nomination in 13 months. As a Never-Trumper, Weld has a history of working with the most famous Never-Trump Republican, Mitt Romney. Weld was co-chairman of Romney’s 2008 campaign in New York State, and endorsed Romney in January 2007 and endorsed Romney again in 2012, after endorsing then-Senator Obama over Senator McCain in the 2008 general election.
Weld was the Libertarian vice presidential nominee in 2016, where he served on the ticket with Governor Gary Johnson, who himself, in 2012, sought the Libertarian nomination after failing to secure the Republican nomination. Before running as the Libertarian VP candidate, Weld endorsed Governor John Kasich in the 2016 Republican Primary. Kasich is another potential candidate who may primary Trump in 2020.
Weld, with minimal press coverage, and no support from the party he’s returned to, often polls at 10%, and has polled as high as 18%.
Who is Bill Weld?
Governor Weld served as governor of Massachusetts from 1991–1997, retiring before the end of his second term. He was preceded by Michael Dukakis and handed the office off to Paul Cellucci. From the time of Weld’s election, until Deval Patrick was elected in 2007, the Massachusetts governorship was held by Republicans, including, famously, Mitt Romney. The seat seems to attract so-called moderate Republicans such as Romney and Weld.
Weld has a pretty impressive record on LGBT rights, signing an executive order, the first of its kind, to recognize same-sex partnerships. Weld also signed a law giving legal rights to LGBT students whose harassment at school is ignored by school officials to bring lawsuits against their schools.
However, Weld also privatized many state services, something that he would likely wish to do as president.
Before serving as governor, Weld served two years as the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division under Ronald Reagan and Edwin Meese. Weld would eventually resign in protest from this position, in protest of improper conduct by Attorney General Meese (1).
Before that Weld served 5 years as the US Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, a seat which had been briefly held by one Robert Mueller.
Weld’s political instincts are precise. Watching him debate former university president John Silber during his first race for governor (and second race for elected office ever), is to see the brilliance of his political capability. Though his electoral career took a stumble in 1996 in a US Senate race against incumbent John Kerry, and was ultimately thwarted by by-then Republican Jesse Helms, who refused Weld a hearing for his nomination to serve as U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, Weld has not lost his ability to bitingly speak about his opponents. Reading about the behavior of Senator Helms, its no wonder that Weld would withdraw his name from consideration (2, 3).
Check out this MSNBC interview for another example of Weld’s rhetoric, “I do feel a responsibility to stand up to the president […] his [Trump’s] divisiveness, pettiness, vindictiveness, they’re really beyond the pale. And someone’s just gotta say enough.”
Weld, who sometimes is asked in interviews if he considered running as a Democrat, would likely not perform well in this particular Democratic field. Weld’s sell, of being fiscally conservative and socially liberal, catches the imagination of a certain swath of US voters, but generally seems in disfavor in both major parties currently. When asked whether or not he will run as a Libertarian if he’s unable to secure the Republican nomination, he generally seems to lean away from this option, while refusing to say whether he’ll endorse either the president or the eventual Democratic nominee.
In Weld’s 2006 run for Governor of New York, Weld, instead of being remembered as a popular governor of Massachusetts or as a partner at law or private equity firms, or for his time in the Reagan administration, was haunted by his chief executiveship of Decker College in Louisville, Kentucky. Decker was a for-profit trade school, that closed due to bankrupty and accreditation issues. Decker was one of 20 for-profit schools that Weld’s company, Leeds-Weld invested in (4, 5, 6). Weld is also a proponent of charter schools.
In the 2006 New York gubernatorial election, Weld had maybe his first interactions with capital “L” Libertarians, as they nominated him for Governor (7).
Going Forward
Weld’s New Hampshire strategy is going to be interesting to watch. Trump won New Hampshire in 2016 with only 35.2% of the vote, though in crowded fields it seems common to win with less than 40% of the vote. The most recent win over 40% was Senator McCain in 2000 with 48.53% of the vote.
Governor Weld is a libertarian Jed Bartlett, he’s the Republican that the narratives of John McCain and Mitt Romney’s nominations promised future voters in the wake of Reagan, Bush 41 and Bush 43. Weld is a potentially (and relatively) moderate voice whose political career has been shut down by conservatives like Jesse Helms and John Faso. That his own party shuts him out now is a testament to the dangerous, self-conscious, conservative nature of Trump’s Republican Party. One can only hope that the likes of John Kasich, Larry Hogan, Bob Corker and Mitt Romney join Weld, as candidates or as endorsers, in no half-hearted way.
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