Governor Tom Kean: From the New Jersey Statehouse to the 911 Commission

580 Pages·2006·1.67 MB·English

by  Alvin S. Felzenberg

Governor Tom Kean

GOVERNOR
TOM KEAN
From the
New Jersey Statehouse to
the 9–11 Commission
Alvin S. Felzenberg
Rivergate Books
An imprint of Rutgers University Press
New Brunswick, New Jersey, and London
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Felzenberg, Alvin S.
Governor Tom Kean : from the statehouse to the 9–11 Commission /
Alvin S. Felzenberg.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978–0–8135–3799–3 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Kean, Thomas H. 2. Legislators—United States—Biography.
3. United States. Congress. House—Biography. 4. National Commission
on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States. 5. Governors—New Jersey—
Biography. 6. Legislators—New Jersey—Biography. 7. New Jersey—
Politics and government—1951– 8. Drew University—
Presidents—Biography. I. Title.
E840.8.K33F45 2006
974.9′043092—dc22
2005024908
British Cataloging-in-Publication information for this book is available
from the British Library.
The publication of this volume has been made possible, in part,
by gifts from Maurice Lee Jr., Susan N. Wilson,
and the Schumann Fund for New Jersey.
Copyright © 2006 by Alvin S. Felzenberg
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without written permission from the publisher.
Please contact Rutgers University Press,
100 Joyce Kilmer Avenue, Piscataway, NJ 08854–8099.
The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use”
as defined by U.S. copyright law.
Manufactured in the United States of America
To the memory of my parents,
Lillian Ritter Felzenberg (1917–1993),
who liked Tom Kean, and
Joseph Felzenberg (1912–1964),
who would have

Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xv
Prologue 1
1. The Early Years 3
2. Kean Comes of Age 27
3. In the Service of His Father 48
4. Kean Finds His Calling 61
5. The Precocious Freshman 87
6. The Institutional Reformer 112
7. In the Minority But Not in the Wilderness 132
8. The Making of the Governor, 1981 156
9. A Truncated Transition 181
10. Kean Settles In 196
11. Building New Jersey Pride 219
12. The Education Governor 232
13. Kean and the Arts 258
14. Kean the Environmentalist 280
15. The Politics of Inclusion 294
vii
viii CONTENTS
16. The Administrator 312
17. The Reelection of the Governor, 1985 330
18. The Storm over the Wilentz Case 347
19. Kean Reforms Welfare 359
20. The Man with the Message 368
21. Citizen Kean 386
22. Chairing the 9–11 Commission 405
Epilogue 443
Interviews 451
Notes 455
Index 525
Preface
Like its subject, this book has had a long history. Long before I began
my research, I had thought that Thomas Howard Kean’s journey
from a shy and withdrawn child with a rebellious streak to an effec-
tive state legislator, a transformational governor, and, certainly, one
of the most significant actors on the New Jersey political stage dur-
ing the second half of the twentieth century would make for an in-
teresting book. Yet I held off. When Tom Kean stepped down as New
Jersey’s forty-eighth governor in 1990 at the age of fifty-four, I, like so
many who had observed his career, believed that his public career
had not drawn to a close, but that he had merely ended a chapter.
Subscribing to the prevailing conventional wisdom—readers will dis-
cover that the conventional wisdom was more often wrong than right
when it concerned Tom Kean—I assumed that it was only a matter of
time before he would return to elective politics. Barring that, I pre-
sumed he was certain to accept a high government post, before set-
tling in as one of that rapidly disappearing breed of retired statesmen
who frequent Washington, and are often referred to as “wise men.”1
The time to write his biography, I reasoned, would be then.
Ten years later, with Kean still serving as president of Drew Uni-
versity, having passed up three opportunities to run for the U.S. Sen-
ate (he would decline two more) and having cast aside entreaties
from two presidents that he join their Cabinet, I began to reconsider.
One day, I received an e-mail from Marlie Wasserman of Rutgers
University Press. Picking up on a prior conversation, she wanted to
know whether I had any topics in mind for a book that might interest
her readers. “What about a book about Tom Kean?” I asked. I thought
that Kean’s efforts to reform education and welfare policy, preserve
ix