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'Richard L. "Dick" Thornburgh' (born July 16, 1932) is a lawyer and Republican politician who served as the Governor of Pennsylvania from 1979 to 1987, and then as the U.S. Attorney General from 1988 to 1991.

Contents

Early life and family

Political career

U.S. Attorney

Pennsylvania Governor

U.S. Attorney General

Later political life

Returns to private life

Publications

External links

Early life and family

Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Thornburgh attended Mercersburg Academy and later majored in engineering at Yale University, graduating in 1954. He later earned a law degree from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law in 1957, and joined the law firm of Kirkpatrick & Lockhart a year later.
Thornburgh married Ginny Hooton and fathered three children. Ginny Hooton Thornburgh was killed in an automobile accident that also injured all three of their children. Their youngest son Peter was left disabled due to brain damage. Four years later, Thornburgh married his second wife, the former Ginny Judson, who adopted his three sons. The couple had a fourth child together. Ginny Judson Thornburgh later became an advocate for the disabled and served as a representative of the National Organization on Disability. Mrs. Thornburgh was a vocal advocate for the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, which was signed into law while her husband was a member of George H.W. Bush's cabinet.

Political career

U.S. Attorney

Following a failed bid for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1966, Thornburgh served as a delegate to the 1967-1968 Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention. In 1969 President Richard Nixon appointed Thornburgh as the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, where he earned a reputation as being tough on organized crime. In 1975, President Gerald Ford tapped him to serve as the Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department's Criminal Division. After two years at that post, Thornburgh returned to private practice.

Pennsylvania Governor

In 1978, Thornburgh launched a campaign for governor of Pennsylvania. He won the primary over three other contenders, including Arlen Specter, who had become well known as a former Democrat who switched parties and was elected the Philadelphia County district attorney in 1965 and the more conservative David W. Marston, a former U.S. attorney in Philadelphia, who was dismissed in 1977 by the Jimmy Carter administration after Marston launched prosecution of two Democratic congressment and two Democratic state legislators.
Despite a Democratic majority in the commonwealth, he and running mate William W. Scranton III defeated Pittsburgh mayor Peter F. Flaherty. The victory was attributed to Thornburgh's campaign promises to crack down on government corruption, at a time when 230 state officials were convicted of corruption. Thornburgh and Scranton were reelected in 1982. However, Scranton failed to win the governorship on his own in 1986.
In what was likely the biggest event during his gubernatorial career, Thornburgh oversaw emergency response efforts to the partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Harrisburg in 1979. To quell public fears, he ordered a partial evacuation of the area, and was partly responsible for overseeing cleanup efforts.
Throughout the 1980s, Thornburgh attempted to balance the commonwealth's budget through conservative fiscal policies. Though successful, he was criticized by organized labor for eliminating 15,000 state jobs.
Thornburgh was also responsible for consolidating all of Pennsylvania's state-owned colleges and universities into the State System of Higher Education. He also created the Governor's Schools, which were summer programs for talented and gifted high school students.
After leaving office in 1987, Thornburgh served as director of the Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

U.S. Attorney General

In 1988, President Ronald Reagan appointed Thornburgh as the United States Attorney General and he was retained in office after President George H.W. Bush was sworn into office in January 1989. His main priorities were to crack down on drug trafficking and white-collar crime. Thornburgh also oversaw prosecution against Exxon in the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska. Thornburg also authored the controversial Thornburgh Memo, that attempted to define the ethical rules applicable to Department of Justice lawyers.

Later political life

He resigned as Attorney General in 1991 to run for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Senator John Heinz, who was killed in a plane crash. Thornburgh was widely expected to win the seat; however, he was defeated in a surprise upset by Democrat Harris Wofford. Thornburgh then served as undersecretary general to the United Nations from 1992 to 1993.
In 1993, Thornburgh's campaign committee was sued in federal court by Karl Rove, at the time President of Karl Rove & Co, an Austin-based company. Rove's won the case and collected $180,000 from the Thornburgh committee. Karl Rove & Co v. Thornburgh was heard by Judge Sam Sparks who had been appointed by President George H.W. Bush in 1991.

Returns to private life

After his time in politics, Thornburgh reentered private legal practice returning to Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Nicholson Graham, the law firm he originally joined in 1958. In 2002, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of New York appointed him as an examiner in the WorldCom bankruptcy proceedings. His report to the court included damning criticism of Arthur Andersen, WorldCom's accounting firm, and banking giant Citigroup. The report concluded that the two companies aided WorldCom executives in committing fraud.
In 2004, he was appointed to an independent panel set up by CBS to investigate the so-called Memogate controversy. In October 2005 he was hired to represent controversial Democratic Pennsylvania politician and nationally renowned forensic pathologist Dr. Cyril Wecht, who was then serving as Coroner of Allegheny County. Wecht was later indicted on January 20, 2006 on 84 counts of corruption while in office and Thornburgh is expected to lead the defense team.
Thornburgh authored "The Future of Puerto Rico: A Time for Change" in 2007, in which he calls for immediate change in the island's territorial/commonwealth status. He describes it as a vestige of colonialism. He concedes, however, that change is difficult because equal segments of Puerto Ricans desire total independence; or statehood; or continuation of the status quo. The book is based in part on ongoing research he has done regarding Puerto Rico's vexing political status problem since he testified as Attorney General on behalf of the first Bush administration on the issue before the Energy and Natural Resources Committee Committee of the United States Senate in 1991 and for an amicus curiae brief he filed in a Puerto Rico voting rights case before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

Publications

Puerto Rico's Future: A Time to Decide, Center for Strategic and International Studies Press, 2007, ISBN 978-0-89206-494-6

External links

★ The Dick Thornburgh Papers at the University of Pittsburgh.

★ Professional biography at the law firm K&L Gates

★ Thornburgh's biography from the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.