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Sunday, June 01, 2003

By James O'Toole, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

In the summer of 1978, Dick Thornburgh's internal polls showed him trailing Democrat Pete Flaherty by more than 30 points in the race for governor.

"At our lowest moments," Thornburgh acknowledged in an unpublished memoir, "[Mrs. Ginny Thornburgh] and I confided that our bottom line goal was to avoid a humiliating defeat."

Jay C. Waldman had other ideas.

The Pittsburgh native had forged a reputation for legal brilliance at Thornburgh's side in the U.S. attorney's office for the Western District of Pennsylvania and at the Justice Department in Washington. Now he turned his sights to politics.

As campaign manager for what looked like a long-shot effort against Flaherty, a popular former Pittsburgh mayor, Mr. Waldman gave Thornburgh a 75-page single-spaced memo detailing a plan to transform the campaign. That was on July 7. Four months later, it bore fruit in a 200,000-vote victory for the first of the Republican's two terms as governor.

"In addition to being a first-class lawyer, a brilliant judge, he had this enormous capacity for making good judgments politically," Thornburgh recalled. "He could see around corners."

Mr. Waldman, 58, died Friday of lung cancer after a career as a prosecutor, political sage, policy-maker and jurist. He had served on the federal bench for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania since 1988. As he died, his nomination by President Bush to a seat on the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals was before the Senate.

"Jay was probably one of the most alive persons that I've ever known," said former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a friend from their days as colleagues in the Justice Department. "He was very, very smart. He had a great sense of humor; he was very learned . . . and he was a political genius."

A graduate of the University of Wisconsin and the University of Pennsylvania law school, Mr. Waldman first met Thornburgh and joined his staff as first assistant in the U.S. attorney's office from 1971 to 1975. When Thornburgh moved on to be assistant attorney general for the criminal division, Mr. Waldman went to Washington with him as a deputy assistant attorney general.

After quarterbacking Thornburgh's gubernatorial campaign, Mr. Waldman was the governor's chief adviser through eight years in Harrisburg.

Thornburgh recalled hard-charging Mr. Waldman's demand for a clean sweep in the halls of Harrisburg.

" 'Fire all the incompetent staff in your departments and most of the competent ones as well,' " Mr. Waldman instructed Thornburgh's newly assembled Cabinet at its first meeting.

Paul Critchlow, who served alongside Mr. Waldman as press secretary, said, "He was a remarkably focused and driven guy."

As Thornburgh's 1982 re-election approached, Critchlow had just been married and was driving to his honeymoon at West Virginia' s Greenbriar resort when his car phone rang.

"It was Jay. He said that something had come up in the campaign -- I can't even remember what it was now -- and I had to cancel the honeymoon and drive back immediately. Of course, I didn't, but that was Jay."

Mr. Waldman was at the top of what Thornburgh called the "ad-hocracy" that he hurriedly pulled together to craft a state response to the 1979 nuclear accident at Three Mile Island -- an event that tested the administration only three months after its inauguration.

After leaving the governor's office in 1986, Mr. Waldman practiced law in Philadelphia before former President Reagan nominated him as a federal judge in 1988.

"When he went on the bench, I thought he'd be restless after really running the governor's office for all those years," Giuliani said. "I thought being a judge would be a little bit too retiring for him. But the reality was that he loved it; it brought out his more reflective, scholarly side."

Giuliani and Thornburgh said they continued to rely on Mr. Waldman's instincts and advice.

"The only time I didn't [take his advice] was when I ran for the Senate," Thornburgh said of his upset loss to Democrat Harris Wofford in 1991. "He could see that coming."

Giuliani said, "Any serious thing I had to decide, I would never decide it without talking it over with him."

Describing his decision to run for mayor, he said, "I spent a lot of time that year driving down to Philadelphia and having dinner with him and getting his advice. . . . All through my years as mayor, if I had a difficult decision or issue, I would talk to him."

The former mayor said he last talked to Mr. Waldman two weeks ago, the day before Giuliani's wedding, when his old friend called to say he wouldn't be able to make it to the ceremony.

"I told him to rest and get better . . . that we would have plenty of time to celebrate later."

Mr. Waldman is survived by his wife, Roberta.

A remembrance service will be at 10 a.m. tomorrow at the chapel of the Bringhurst Funeral Home, 225 Belmont Ave., in Bala-Cynwyd, Montgomery County. Friends will be received at the funeral home before the service, starting at 9 a.m.