Jeffrey Bell (political operative)
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Jeffrey Bell is a Republican political consultant and writer.
Bell, the former president of the Manhattan Institute, ran for the U.S. Senate from New Jersey 1978 and 1982. Bell also worked as an aide to Presidents Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon, and to Congressman Jack Kemp. A graduate of Columbia 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 the Eagleton Institute at Rutgers, and as the DeWitt Wallace Fellow in Communications at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. He presently serves on the Board of Directors of the American Conservative Union and of the Campaign Finance Institute at George Washington University. Bell is also a visting scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.[1]
[edit] 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 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 no National Sales or Income Tax, the state would have to come up with its own funds for programmes. Reagan lost the New Hampshire primary to Ford and the Bell speech was seen as largely to blame for backfiring on Reagan as a gaffe.
[edit] Senate Candidate
In 1978, Bell challenged liberal Republican Senator Clifford Case in the primary. Bell defeated the liberal Case in a stunning upset, but lost the general election to Democrat Bill Bradley, 55% to 43%. Bell again ran for the Senate again in 1982, but was defeated in the primary by liberal Republican Congresswoman Millicent Fenwick. Fenwick was defeated in November by Democrat Frank Lautenberg. (No Republican has been elected to the U.S. Senate in New Jersey since 1972)
[edit] 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."[2] 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," which Fred Barnes, then with The New Republic, called “the most important political book” of 1992. Bell lives with his wife and four children in Annandale, Virginia.
