• Pittsburgh was important stop on Bush’s road to presidency,
This isn’t a folksy political legend about how Pittsburgh — which with enough contortions can claim credit for anything of importance — was the launching pad for George H.W. Bush’s political career.
For starters, by the time Mr. Bush announced his first bid for president in 1979, he’d already served as a U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, director of the CIA, and chairman of the Republican National Committee.
“Bush is a man who has occupied many high places in government, but he has occupied them almost invisibly,” Pittsburgh Press columnist-at-large Roy McHugh observed in December 1979.
As his visibility began an improbable rise that year, a lot of the heavy lifting was done by Elsie Hillman, who “conducted a one-woman campaign in Pennsylvania for the man nobody knew,” wrote Pittsburgh Press political editor Sherley Uhl in January 1980.
Even then, Mr. Uhl wrote, Mr. Bush had the right ingredients for a win in Pennsylvania. But it was a recipe on paper, not a meal on a plate.
“He made his fortune in Texas oil, but he was born in Massachusetts,” he wrote. “He has no drawl and has never been indicted. He appeals to Eastern Establishmentarians as a poised intellectual with impressive credentials.”
His Yale diploma awarded membership in a club that included Pennsylvania Gov. Dick Thornburgh and U.S. Sen. H. John Heinz III, Mr. Uhl wrote.
But it was largely Ms. Hillman, the Republican National Committeewoman and political heavy hitter whose lone voice at first orchestrated a chorus of support for Mr. Bush’s presidential bid.
Ms. Hillman had always told people that Mr. Bush was a distant relative, that his uncle was married to her cousin. By the time he decided to run, Mr. Uhl wrote, they had been friends for 30 years.
Ms. Hillman hosted a number of fundraisers, corralling crowds of more than 1,000 people in deep-blue Pittsburgh to show up for the mild-mannered Mr. Bush. She marshaled a Pennsylvania steering committee for the Bush campaign that included Pittsburgh National Bank executive William Boyd Jr. and Carnegie Institute president James Walton, along with industry leaders and attorneys.
She credited him with helping to keep the Republican Party intact after the Watergate scandal and said that while they differed on certain issues, she believed Mr. Bush was “a moderate in areas of social concern.”
Mr. Bush, whose early appearances here were described by press reports as tame, became more animated in demeanor and rhetoric as the campaign wore on.
“When it comes to foreign affairs, I can lead,” Mr. Bush declared to a crowd of about 250 Republican Party workers at the Hilton Hotel in the summer of 1979, though he vowed that his “No. 1 issue” would be inflation.
He riled the crowd into a standing ovation when he demanded that the U.S. “regains a firm commitment to lead the free world” and said he was considering reinstating the draft and including women in it.
“We’re not going to exempt rich people and we’re not going to exempt people who want to study their way out by getting Ph.D.s,” he vowed.
During a swing through Pittsburgh just two weeks before the April 1980 primary, Mr. Bush, at the Syria Mosque in Oakland, railed against regulations, said the Clean Air Act needed to be reviewed, and complained to a reporter about “these crazy OSHA regulations that have gone too far.”
To the coal crowd, he gave a wholehearted cheer for industry.
“You have enough coal here to supply the country’s energy needs,” Mr. Bush told some 1,000 Republicans at Hardy’s Road House in Westmoreland County a few weeks later, if only regulators would get out of the way.
Speaking on the same stage as his primary competitor, Ronald Reagan, in a mini-convention-type event, Mr. Bush said he was for the Equal Rights Amendment and against licensing of weapons. It was around this time that Mr. Bush coined the term “voodoo economics” to refer to Mr. Reagan’s policies, though the two appeared to be friendly to each other in public settings.
Less than a week before the primary, Mr. Bush braved traditionally Democratic territory for a “people’s press conference” at the AFLCIO convention on the South Side, where he was asked what qualities he would seek in a running mate.
“Well, first, she has to be…” he began to an uproarious reception.
In no small part because of the efforts of Ms. Hillman and with no lack of surprised political observers, Mr. Bush won the Pennsylvania primary in 1980.
But when it became obvious that Ronald Reagan would get his party’s nomination, Ms. Hillman’s efforts turned to securing Mr. Bush the role of vice president.
The deal-making then took place on the convention floor, and for a while, a rumor that former President Gerald Ford would serve as Mr. Reagan’s No. 2 took hold at the convention. Pundits and politicians began hailing the Reagan-Ford ticket as a genius move. Some were in mid-sentence in on-camera interviews when it was announced that Mr. Reagan had selected Mr. Bush.
A press account described Gov. Thornburgh as looking as if he’d just swallowed a persimmon. The ReaganBush ticket was successful that November, ousting incumbent Democrat Jimmy Carter.
In future years, Mr. Thornburg would serve as Mr. Bush’s attorney general, a role he said in a public condolence issued Saturday was the highest honor.
“Few individuals in public life have possessed such admirable personal qualities as George H.W. Bush,” Mr. Thornburg wrote. “He was an intelligent, thoughtful and decent human being, loyal to those who served with him.”
As his political profile rose, Mr. Bush would return to Pittsburgh and to his loyal friend Ms. Hillman, who served as the Pennsylvania chairwoman for his 1988 presidential campaign.
In a speech scribbled on a yellow legal pad, Ms. Hillman, who was set to introduce then Vice President Bush toward the end of the 1988 election season, took on the “most beautiful question of the whole campaign.” She said a reporter had asked her why she felt so loyal to Mr. Bush.
“You, George, have been so loyal to yourself and to your principles!” she wrote. “How could any of us be less than loyal to you.”
“Be your wonderful self, George, just as you are a father, a friend, and a leader,” she concluded. “Because this will make you the finest president of the U.S. that the world will ever see.”
Pittsburgh didn’t launch Mr. Bush into history. But it supplied some fuel.