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Tom Foley: The former Secretary of Labor and Industry
Sunday, March 26, 2000 By James O'Toole, Post-Gazette Politics Editor
The ballfield was at one end of the street. St. Genevive's, where all 12 of the Foley kids went to school, was at the other.
There was a wooden picnic table in the kitchen. The basement served as a make-shift dormitory for the boys.
Tom Foley has traveled far from Flourtown, Pa. -- to Dartmouth, Yale, Belfast and Capitol Hill. He lives in Hershey now, but his life and his campaign for the U.S. Senate remain rooted in the modest Cape Cod house on Bysher Street.
Foley, the former state secretary of labor and industry, talks easily about issues. He embraces a mainstream menu of Democratic policies. He wants to preserve Social Security and Medicare. He has called for a prescription drug benefit under Medicare, more funding for Head Start, and federal help for schools to hire teachers and make capital improvements.
But Foley relies on biography more than policy as the core of his appeal to voters. The Montgomery County native repeatedly tells groups about his grandparents' migration to America, about his working class roots, and about his rise in the political worlds of Washington and Harrisburg.
"My family's journey is a truly American story," he said at a recent debate.
Foley made the leap from Flourtown to the Ivy League, graduating from Dartmouth College before going on to Yale Law School, where he took time out to spend two years working for a peace group in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
Returning to the United States, Foley worked on Capitol Hill in the mid-1980s. He first served as aide to Massachusetts Rep. James Shannon and then worked for U.S. Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del.
Foley began to consider returning to the Philadelphia area and private life. He cast his resume on the professional waters and was rewarded with job offers from the U.S. attorney's office and three law firms. In the course of interviewing, he met Harris Wofford. Their careers would be linked for years.
Wofford, who had worked for Gov. Robert Casey's successful campaign, was a partner in one of the firms that had courted Foley. One evening, Foley, who was still living in Washington at the time, got a call from the older lawyer.
"You didn't take any of those jobs yet, did you?" he asked.
Wofford explained that he was about to go to Harrisburg to join Casey's Cabinet, and he wanted Foley to come with him. And that's what happened.
Another unexpected turn in Foley's career was set in motion by the tragic death of Sen. John Heinz in a plane-helicopter collision over Montgomery County. After a protracted search, Casey turned to Wofford to fill the balance of the senator's term. Foley, still in his 30s, took Wofford's place as secretary of labor and industry. Working on issues such as mid-career job training and workers' insurance, Foley forged ties to labor that remain strong today.
"A good job is the best answer to most social problems," he says.
In the waning days of the Casey administration, candidates flocked to the Democratic primaries for both governor and lieutenant governor. Lt. Gov. Mark Singel, despite strained ties with Casey, ended up as the Democrats' nominee for governor. Foley, although it was his first run for office, managed a comfortable win in an eight-way primary for lieutenant governor.
In the 1994 general election, the Democratic team was defeated by now Gov. Tom Ridge and Lt. Gov. Mark Schweiker by more than 200,000 votes. Their hard-fought campaign foundered on the news that a former inmate whose release from prison Singel had supported had been arrested for rape and murder. Nevertheless, the campaign gave Foley a chance to build name recognition and political ties across the state.
He capitalized on some of those ties and strained others two years later when he decided to go after the Democratic nomination for auditor general. Foley won the endorsement of the state Democratic committee over a familiar name, Bob Casey Jr. Some Casey supporters took exception to Foley's decision to run against the son of the man who had appointed him to the Cabinet.
Other tensions were at work in that election. Many Democrats were upset with Gov. Casey's inaction in 1994. Casey, largely because he disagreed with their positions in favor of abortion rights, declined to campaign or raise money for Singel or Wofford, whose abbreviated tenure in the Senate would end that November with his upset defeat at the hands of Rick Santorum.
That background was a major factor in the Democratic state committee's decision to back Foley in the four-way race for auditor general in 1996. Casey Jr. nonetheless won the primary by less than one percentage point. Foley fell short statewide but managed to come in first in both Philadelphia and Allegheny County.
Given that history, it should not have been a surprise when Casey decided last week to back Foley's rival in this race, Rep. Ron Klink, D-Murrysville.
Foley says he is well positioned to defeat Santorum -- an outcome that would allow him to avenge the beating Santorum administered to Foley's former boss. He says he is the only candidate with statewide appeal, dismissing his strongest opponents, Klink and state Sen. Allyson Schwartz as regional candidates -- Klink in the West, Schwartz in the East.
Foley's opponents turn that analysis on its head, arguing that Foley lacks a true political base, that his political career has been nurtured by members of the Harrisburg party hierarchy rather than by Democratic grass roots. The most recent Pennsylvania Poll showed that Foley is in fact the best known candidate statewide, though not by an overwhelming margin.
On abortion, Foley follows a middle road; he supports most provisions of Pennsylvania's abortion control act but also backs the basic right to abortion. Foley supports hunters' rights and what he calls "common sense" gun control: bans on military-style weapons and cop killer bullets, and making it harder to buy guns at gun shows.
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Born Dec. 31, 1953, Philadelphia
Home: Hershey