Sad news. The Courant is reporting that William A. O’Neill, who was governor of Connecticut from 1981-1990, has died.
O’Neill took office when then-Gov. Ella Grasso resigned for health reasons (Grasso died less than two months later). He led the state through what is arguably one of its most prosperous periods in recent memory–the 1980s. He was a well-liked man, and the people of the state rewarded him with two striking election wins in 1982 and 1986. He transcended ideology, as this post at the Everyday Republican illustrates.
…I only have one memory of him. I remember when I was a boy, my mother took my sister and I to the state capitol to take the tour. I remember a big, kindly man coming up to say hello to us. That was Gov. O’Neill. Needless to say, that little kindness from over twenty years ago left an impression on me.
Flags have been lowered to half staff in his honor.
6 responses so far ↓
Thats terrible.
He was the last half way decent governor we had.
I met Bill O’Neill several times.
I recall when he showed up in the middle of a snow storm to attend the wake of a loyal supporter and ally, John Daly of Southington. That impressed me.
The weather was bad enough that he surely could have excused his absence – yet he showed up and hung around for quite a while as the storm worsened making his return to Hartford increasingly difficult.
He was a decent man with a fabulous talent with names; I ran into him years later at Mickey’s Drive In on Pitken Street in East Hartford, we were both having hot dogs – there was nothing phoney about Governor O’Neill.
He was a kind and (very) decent man.
I assume he was in Heaven before he even knew he had died; and I pray that I am right.
Connecticut thanks him, and may God Bless Bill O’Neill.
A true Gentleman who will be missed by all. Connecticut will never forget Bill O’Neil. R.I.P.
Bill O’Neil was the real deal. And Nikki is equally amazing.
The two of them were a wonderful couple. Everyone who ever saw them together knew how in love they were. And during these last several years they seemed to grow even closer.
With Nikki’s help, Bill O’Neil continued to get out and about these last several years. You often saw him at various public events, and even at local restaurants in Glastonbury and Middletown as recently as this last spring. Sometimes with an oxygen bottle, but he liked being with and around people and Nikki seemed to attach value to that. Invariably, he was always gracious to everyone; people he recognized and people he might be meeting for the first time.
Bill O’Neil will be remembered extremely fondly. He never made the governorship about him. He just loved this state with all his heart and everyone saw that in him.
Former Governor Bill O’Neill passing is a sad day for the state, though few will remember why.
O’Neill was an honorable man and a watchful governor, an oddity in modern politics. He was ushered into office at the death of former Governor Ella Grasso. Personality wise, she left him with large shoes to fill. Grasso was brash, bold, commanding, and those who knew her said that on occasion she had a salty tongue. O’Neill had a quiet presence and dignity that suited the state well.
His political acumen was vastly underestimated by almost everyone. People somehow mistook his gentility for weakness; but as a former House majority leader, Democrat chairman and lieutenant governor, O’Neill was a formidable politician.
Both Democrat governors were by temperament and disposition fiscal hawks, which is probably why they were followed by a succession of Republican governors disposed to give away the state’s silver plate to all comers. Former Gov. Lowell Weicker, now officially a resident of Virginia, will best be known in the state as the father of Connecticut burgeoning income tax. When Weicker pulled up his Connecticut roots and left the state, some of his critics suggested that he was doing so to protect his vast wealth from the income tax wolf he had posted at the state’s door. Former Gov. John Rowland served some time in prison because he had misused his office.
The termination of O’Neill’s career marked the end of an era in Connecticut politics. In the major cover story in the Harford Courant following his death, O’Neill is referred to as “the conservative O’Neill,” very likely the last of the breed in Democratic politics. He continually thwarted the liberals in his own party and effortlessly defeated the Republicans, who caught up with him in 1990, when he was more of less run out of office by an income tax hungry liberal press.
O’Neill was married to the same woman for 45 years; that in itself is an accomplishment in an era when successful politicians are much in the habit of ditching their first wives, the mules of their careers, and re-marrying or reinventing themselves.
Gov. Jodi Rell said of O’Neill, “No description of him would be complete without the words ‘decency’ and ‘fairness,’ and he understood that government must take its lead from the people it serves.” True and fair enough. Even truer still is former state chairman of the Democrat Party John Droney’s characterization of O’Neill: “He was, in my view, the Harry Truman of Connecticut.” All analogies are imperfect, but O’Neill was plainspoken, a tough as nails politician who disposed of vast gentlemanly reserves, a masterful political organizer, and someone who, like Truman, would rather be right than president.
At the end of his career, O’Neill was forced out of office by liberals who had prospered in the shade of his branches. The Courant story does not report how fierce its editorial board was in support of the income tax. Not only the editorial board but Charlie Morse, the paper’s chief political columnist at the time, singed O’Neill with charges that he was relying upon a decrepit tax structure, rife with niggling additional sin taxes, to balance the state’s budget. Morse later went to work for the Weicker administration.
O’Neill simply kissed the liberals off and declined to run again for office. Presently, in the post income tax era, we have returned to the status quo ante of pre-income tax days. Budget deficits, to be sure, are gone, replaced by a succession of surpluses hoarded by grasping legislators. And the niggling taxes are all back.
The more things change, the French say, the more they remain the same.
O’Neill must have been amused watching all this folderol from his easy chair. God bless him; he is gone, and we will not see his like in the Democrat Party again.
If it was left to the state of Connecticut, Michael “Hawk” Hector would have died in a hospital room, battling the last ravages of lung cancer.
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Every year, hundreds of low-income, terminally ill patients insured by the state’s Medicaid program have little option but to greet death alone in sterile hospital rooms because the state doesn’t offer them a hospice benefit
Connecticut is one of three states without a hospice benefit in its Medicaid program ..
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In 1985, the federal government realized the hospice benefit under the Medicare program was so cost-effective that it gave states the option of providing the benefit to Medicaid recipients.
Hawk died at home with dignity – but only because someone helped him do it for free – just as O’Neil did but too many of the state’s poor don’t have the same privilege — and the taxpayers pay for that lack of privilge.
http://www.courant.com/news/local/hc-hospice1125.artnov25,0,3480433.story?page=2&track=rss
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