- Jeffrey Bell (political operative)
Jeffrey Bell is a Republican political consultant and writer.
Bell, the former president of the
Manhattan Institute , ran for theU.S. Senate fromNew Jersey 1978 and 1982. Bell also worked as an aide to PresidentsRonald Reagan andRichard Nixon , and to CongressmanJack Kemp . A graduate ofColumbia University and a veteran of the U.S. Army in Vietnam, Bell has served as a fellow of the Kennedy Institute of Politics at Harvard, visiting professor at theEagleton Institute of Politics atRutgers University , and as the DeWitt Wallace Fellow in Communications at theAmerican Enterprise Institute in Washington. He presently serves on the Board of Directors of theAmerican Conservative Union and of the Campaign Finance Institute atGeorge Washington University . Bell is also a visiting scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. [ [http://www.eppc.org/scholars/scholarID.86/scholar.asp Home > Fellows & Scholars > ] ] Bell is a graduate of Columbia University and a veteran of the Vietnam war. [ [ US News and World Report, "Two Tall, Young Ivy Leaguers Go At It", 10-9-1978, p26] ]The $90 Billion Speech
In 1975 Bell was responsible for a speech given by Ronald Reagan when he was running against President
Gerald Ford in the Republican Presidential Primaries. In it, Reagan proposed a "systematic transfer of authority and resources to the states - a program of creative federalism for America's third century. Federal authority has clearly failed to do the job. Indeed, it has created more problems in welfare, education, housing, food stamps, Medicaid, community and regional development, and revenue sharing, to name a few. The sums involved and the potential savings to the taxpayer are large. Transfer of authority in whole or part in all of these areas would reduce the outlay of the federal government by more than $90 billion, using the spending levels of fiscal 1975. With such a savings it would be possible to balance the federal budget, make an initial $5 billion payment on the national debt and cut the federal personal income tax of every American by an average of 23 percent".Bell's speech was intended to provide Reagan with a philosophical edge over Ford. The Ford campaign, however, seized on it as evidence that in primary states like
New Hampshire which pay noState Sales Tax orState Income Tax , the state would have to come up with its own funds for programs. Reagan lost theNew Hampshire primary to Ford and the Bell speech was seen as largely to blame for backfiring on Reagan as a gaffe.Senate Candidate
In 1978, Bell challenged liberal Republican Senator
Clifford Case in the New Jersey primary. Bell defeated the liberal Case in a stunning upset, but lost the general election to DemocratBill Bradley , 55% to 43%. Bell again ran for the Senate again in 1982, but was defeated in the primary by liberal RepublicanCongresswoman Millicent Fenwick . Fenwick was defeated in November by DemocratFrank Lautenberg . (No Republican has been elected to the U.S. Senate in New Jersey since 1972)Consultant and Author
Bell is a member of Capital City Partners, which bills itself as "a multi-skilled national public affairs firm specializing in coalitions development and strategic communications." [http://www.capitalcitydc.com] He has written articles for many publications, most recently "
The Washington Post ", "The Wall Street Journal ", and "The Weekly Standard ". He is author of "Populism and Elitism: Politics in the Age of Equality," whichFred Barnes , then withThe New Republic , called “the most important political book” of 1992. Bell lives with his wife and four children inAnnandale, Virginia .References
External links
* [http://politicalgraveyard.com/bio/bell.html Biographical information for Jeffrey Bell] from
The Political Graveyard
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.