“As a newspaperman on Capitol Hill (1962-1964) I was in my 20’s and Thurmond was in his 60’s. Now I’m in my 60’s and head of a national senior citizens group and he’s still going strong.” — Jim Martin, President, 60 Plus Association

Washington, DC — Sen. Strom Thurmond (R- South Carolina) has been named a “Senior Solon of the Century” by a national seniors organization, the 60 Plus Association.

“This is a very special award for a very special senior citizen,” said Martin, President of the 60 Plus Association, which has 500,000 members nationwide. “The term ‘been there, done that’ aptly describes Sen. Thurmond’s lifetime of public service as teacher, lawyer, circuit court judge, World War II Army officer, governor, presidential candidate and U.S. Senator.”

At 94, Thurmond became the oldest senator. On May 25 1997, he became the longest-serving member of the Senate, surpassing the record 41 years, 9 months and 30 days by Sen. Carl Hayden (D-Arizona). December 5th marks another milestone in Senator Thurmond’s storied career. He’s 100 and he’s truly ‘history still standing’.

Martin said he first met Sen. Thurmond when Martin covered Congress from 1962 to 1964 for news outlets in Georgia, Florida, North Carolina and South Carolina, including the Columbia State, Augusta Chronicle and Anderson Independent in South Carolina, as a newspaperman with Sims News Bureau, owned by Edward Sims of Orangeburg.

Martin said he and Lee Bandy, now political columnist for the Columbia State, worked for Sims’ Washington bureau in those early days. Martin later worked for Rep. Edward J. Gurney (R-Florida) who ran successfully for the Senate in 1968.

“Senator Thurmond campaigned for Rep. Gurney in 1968 and Floridians constantly told Thurmond they had voted for him for president in 1948,” said Martin. “A young campaign aide to the ‘68 Gurney Senate race was a 21 year-old, fresh out of Yale, named George W. Bush, now President Bush,” Martin noted.

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Heritage Duo had right stuff

by Scott Galupo

Hugh Newton and Herb Berkowitz still don’t mind being called “flacks,” something else that set them apart in a town that often takes itself too seriously. The two gregarious mainstays of the Heritage Foundation are departing the conservative think tank, breaking up a 30-year public relations team that helped ensure that conservatism was taken seriously.

They mastered the art of PR, with a Washington twist: They pushed policy ideas with a personal touch to a group — journalists — that isn’t famous for congenially rubbing elbows with conservatives.  “If we could sum up our operating philosophy,” Mr. Berkowitz says in a vaguely Bostonian brogue, “it’s that we can disagree without being disagreeable.”

Mr. Berkowitz, 57, who ran Heritage’s PR and communications shop for 25 years, is moving at the end of the month to Wilmington, N.C., where he will contribute in a scaled-back capacity while he and wife Jean escape the Washington political whirl.

Mr. Newton, who turns 72 next week, has cut back to managing a few accounts as Heritage’s public relations counsel through his Alexandria firm, Hugh C. Newton & Associates. He and wife Joanne intend to remain in the area.  “It’s the essence of a good PR guy to be able to trust him as a man,” says Richard Aregood, editorial page editor of the Newark (N.J.) Star Ledger and self-described Humphrey Democrat. “They were able to have a conversation that’s beyond the usual swapping of ideological folklore. There’s nobody better than those guys.”

“It was a pleasure to deal with them,” says syndicated columnist Phillip Terzian of the Providence (R.I.) Journal, who looked to Heritage’s stable of writers and analysts when he commissioned columns for the Los Angeles Times op-ed page in the mid-1980s. “They weren’t the standard whining, griping conservatives.”

But what Mr. Terzian recalls most fondly are those “summer cruises” on the Chesapeake Bay that Mr. Newton skippered beginning in the early ’80s on his 32-foot powerboat, Esprit Noir (Black Ghost), which he sold last spring. “I grew up on the Hudson and always wanted to have my own boat,” says Mr. Newton, who bought the craft in 1978. “In terms of entertaining the media, I have found it’s one of the great techniques of PR.”

These were long weekend jaunts for the boys only, not policy powwows, and they left Mr. Terzian glad to “return to civilization.”

“Many world problems were solved,” jokes Phil Kent, president of Southeastern Legal Foundation, an Atlanta-based public-interest law firm, who first met the Heritage duo while an editorial writer at the Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle.

“I would call them pioneers,” Mr. Kent says. “They have an incredible network of not just conservatives but of hundreds of leading journalists and writers.”  A brainy band of “movement conservatives” was busy in the trenches, plotting, well before an insurgent Ronald Reagan nearly defeated incumbent Gerald Ford for the Republican presidential nomination in 1976.

Conservative activist Paul Weyrich founded the Heritage Foundation in 1973 to promote and pursue goals such as limited government, free enterprise and traditional American values. Conservatism then came off as something of a dissident movement; the Republican Party establishment seemed reconciled to the existence of the Soviet Union and activist government at home.

The job of Mr. Berkowitz and Mr. Newton was to spread the conservative gospel to editors and reporters across the country while homing in on Washington with a barrage of reports, news releases and policy seminars. With a conservative in the White House and Republicans in control of the Senate after the 1980 elections, the duo had to recalibrate their pitch.

“It changed the dynamic from that of a sellers’ market to a buyers’ market,” Mr. Berkowitz says of the Reagan Revolution. “We no longer had to sell as hard. They were coming to us.”

The attraction was an annual Heritage report, “Mandate for Leadership,” the basis for many of Mr. Reagan’s reform proposals, including cutting taxes and revitalizing national defense. The team selectively leaked it to editors, now a common strategy. As more conservatives won office through the ’80s and into the ’90s, the pair kept networking and forging relationships — as often as not, at pubs and parties. “Everyone is so serious now,” Mr. Berkowitz laments, recalling many a beery evening.

The two honed their craft at the National Right to Work Committee (NRWC), formed in 1955 to lobby the federal government and state legislatures to eradicate compulsory union membership. Mr. Newton arrived at the NRWC in 1964, after writing speeches for corporate executives. “I wanted to work for something I believed in,” he says.
Mr. Berkowitz came aboard in 1972 after a colleague at the American Trucking Associations turned down a job offer from the NRWC. Itching for new thrills, he called Mr. Newton, and they’ve worked in tandem ever since. Both had useful experience in journalism, Mr. Newton as a reporter for the Danville (Va.) Bee in the mid-1950s and Mr. Berkowitz as a writer for magazines and trade journals.

A brush with communism drew Mr. Newton to politics. Born in Westchester County, N.Y., and a graduate of Washington and Lee University, he served as an Air Force clerk during the Korean War. The direct experience of totalitarianism abroad and apparent infiltration of the government at home by communists were powerful influences on his political temperament.

“I remember vividly those debates, thinking: ‘These people are communists. They’re bad people,’” Mr. Newton says.

Mr. Berkowitz’s political ideas formed more gradually. The Boston native attended leftist rallies while a student at George Washington University — they were “great places to meet girls,” he acknowledges — but came away thinking that the “progressive” worldview was impractical. “We’re all created equal,” Mr. Berkowitz says, “but we’re all different. My father was an engineer, and I have trouble turning a screw.”

Mr. Berkowitz’s office decor helps differentiate him from what he calls “single-minded” activist conservatives. The walls and shelves are jammed with concert posters, record albums, a phonograph and other rock ‘n’ roll memorabilia from the ’50s and ’60s.

“I spend so much time in the office that I wanted it to be fun,” Mr. Berkowitz says. “This is a passion of mine.”

He is a particular fan of Buddy Holly and doo-wop and has a collection of 35,000 vinyl records in temperature-controlled storage. Mr. Newton, meanwhile, prefers Chet Baker and other jazz musicians.

The two routinely made sure that Heritage’s “beloved bookworms didn’t take themselves too seriously,” says Jennifer. In the early ’80s, Mr. Newton recalls, consumer activist Ralph Nader organized a “Big Business Day” of rallies and conferences slamming corporate America.

“We sat and talked about it: ‘How are we going to counter this thing?’ And rather than attack Nader, we said, ‘OK, we’ll create Growth Day.’”  “Growth Day,” touted to reporters at the National Press Club, celebrated businesses for creating jobs and strengthening the economy. The standard response of branding Mr. Nader a “lefty” wouldn’t have worked, Mr. Newton says.
Says Heritage President Edwin J. Feulner: “They knew how to work with the media, not fight it.”

They traveled four or five days a month, meeting with hundreds of editors and reporters. There wasn’t much choice but to be straight shooters, Mr. Berkowitz says, with so many in the press being Democrats. More importantly, Mr. Newton adds, they wanted their hallmark to be “working with everybody and not drawing distinctions.”

“I didn’t always agree with the Heritage Foundation,” says Ed Grimsley, former editorial page editor of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, but its two messengers were “absolutely forthright.”

Heritage started off with fewer than 20 employees and a budget of less than $1 million, squeezing into a small townhouse for 10 years. Today, it boasts 185 employees and a $35 million budget funded by membership donations and publication sales. Renovation of an adjacent eight-story building will nearly double the size of the headquarters at 214 Massachusetts Ave. NE.

The think tank became a player in major policy debates, among them welfare reform, missile defense, school choice, tax-code simplification and Social Security reform.

“September 11 changed the agenda dramatically,” Mr. Berkowitz says. “It’s almost impossible to get anyone to focus on anything else except homeland security-related topics.”

In the months ahead, he says, Heritage will focus domestically on a “short list” of important items, including reforming health care, expanding global free trade and overhauling Social Security.

But when 2003 rolls around and these issues come to the fore, someone else will be at the helm of Heritage’s PR operation, effectively bringing the Newton-Berkowitz era to a close.

“Copyright 2002 News World Communications, Inc.  Reprinted with permission of The Washington Times.  “Visit our web site at http://www.washingtontimes.com”

Media reports have indicated that Humana and UnitedHealth, two of the nation’s largest health insurers, are actively considering dropping an existing drug benefit for their members by stopping coverage of the latest prescription-only non-sedating antihistamines (NSAs), in the event that one or more NSAs are switched to over-the-counter status in coming months. They are also considering egregiously raising co-payments by beneficiaries.

This new HMO policy is a clever strategy for reducing their drug expenditures by shifting costs to their enrollees without having to formally change their benefit structures or co-payments,” said Jim Martin, President of 60 Plus Association. “Allergy treatment is not all economics. By removing a class of drugs completely from the formulary, HMO’s may place an entire form of treatment beyond the reach of patients, at the same time severing patient ties with their physicians on significant treatment matters. This is deplorable and driven by nothing but old-fashioned greed.”

* Classic antihistamine side effects such as sedation can lead to twice the normal risk of a serious injury, according to a study published in the Annals of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology (2002; 89:244-250.)

* A 1999 study estimated that 3.4 million workdays are lost every year to allergies. Lost wages accounted for more than $150 million dollars a year, according to the study, published in the American Journal of Managed Care. Allergies affect 40 million Americans every year.

* A recent survey conducted by the American College of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology (ACAAI) detailed how 94 percent of allergy sufferers said their quality of life, often including work productivity and concentration, is affected when their allergy symptoms act up. (Nationwide telephone survey conducted by RoperASW, August 5 to August 14, 2002, among 300 adults, aged 18-64, who suffer from allergies. Source: American College of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology.)

“What is the allergy sufferer supposed to do when their HMO abandons them?” asked Martin. “I’ll tell you what they’ll do — they’ll either pay the additional out-of-pocket costs for their medicines or be forced to choose to go without the drugs entirely. If they’re subsequently then forced to choose a sedating antihistamine, you’re opening the door to potentially egregious workplace safety issues, to say nothing of lost productivity.”

“Bottom line: HMO’s are rationing health care to line their own pockets,” said Martin. “They have proven time and again they don’t care one whit about consumers; on top of their neglect of allergy sufferers, which constitute a significant sector of the health population, they’re jacking their premiums up left and right. And the money machine keeps on rolling. Consumers need to wake up and smell the hustle.”

Washington, DC — “Have they no shame? This is sick, in fact, sickening. To imply that President Bush or anybody else will send old folks in wheelchairs to the poor house by harming Social Security is not only deceitful but it’s totally dishonest. For 40 years, first as a reporter covering Congress, and now lobbying for seniors’, I have never seen such sheer hypocrisy.

“Actually, it’s pretty sad that the once vibrant Democrat party is reduced to outright lies to scare seniors, a tactic they’ve deceptively used for over 30 years. Seniors deserve better. Seniors are tired of being sucker-punched by unscrupulous politicians using these despicable tactics.>

“Nobody but nobody will take away or hurt Social Security. It’s more likely that a meteorite will strike the Social Security headquarters. I thought common decency in politics was on the comeback but Democrats seem to be determined to make a mockery of its return.”

Urge Your Representative To Pass Energy Legislation

Special Action Alert from the 60 PLUS ASSOCIATION and CARE!

Dear 60 Plus Association Advocate: Key members of the U.S. House and Senate are faced with an issue of critical importance to the Nation — passing national energy legislation. In order for America to ensure both national and economic security, affordable and reliable and supplies of energy must be available to businesses and individual consumers. Unless Congress acts now by adopting an effective national energy strategy, our economy, our jobs, and our way of life could be jeopardized. We need an energy plan that promotes energy conservation and efficiency, provides for greater use of all domestic energy resources, maintains fuel diversity, develops advanced energy technologies, and improves the country’s energy infrastructure. For example, the legislation must provide for incentives to develop advanced technologies that make the use of our abundant energy supplies cleaner and less polluting, but it must not impose government mandates that make energy use more expensive. The legislation must address the threat of global climate change by removing yet unanswered scientific uncertainties and developing breakthrough technologies, but it must not force climate change actions that damage our national economy. The CARE and the Coalition for Affordable and Reliable Energy (CARE) ask you to contact your Senators and Representative and strongly urge them to pass national comprehensive energy legislation. It’s very important that you contact them NOW! You can contact them by telephone by calling 1-877-488-2544. This is a toll-free energy hotline that we have established to connect you directly to your Senators’ and Representative’s offices. Or, if you prefer to write, you can click on the link below and our easy-to-use form will print a pre-drafted letter. You can then send it by fax, mail, or e-mail. We need your help! Nothing gets the attention of our elected officials more than contact from their constituents. Call 1-877-488-2544 or Click here to Get Started! Thank You! Please share this Action Alert with your friends, coworkers and associates so that they, too, can have their voices heard on the pressing need for Congress to pass comprehensive energy legislation.

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