9/16/2008
Felice Belman’s tribute to Rep. Elizabeth Hager (“City will regret campaign to oust Hager,” Monitor Forum, Sept.11) was well said and well deserved. Hager lost because she was in the wrong political party. She almost lost two years ago.
She started in politics about 35 years ago. You had to be a Republican in those days to get elected or appointed to anything. The leadership of the Republican Party was a group of Ivy League “Eisenhower Republicans.” They believed in frugal, humane, competent government.
Those Republicans began losing control of the party in the ’70s, when William Loeb and Meldrim Thomson started attacking them viciously, calling them “the green underwear crowd,” a snide reference to the fact that many of them went to Dartmouth. Liz was practically the last moderate Republican standing. It really is the end of an era.
I never agreed with Liz that the state needs an income tax. I see no evidence that states that have one have better schools or public services. But she stuck by her beliefs until her political party left her at the curb.