Thursday, September 01, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

`Supply-side economics' champion dead at 69

Wanniski was R-J political reporter, columnist from '61 to '65

Jude Wanniski, 69, made a name for himself as an insightful reporter and polished writer in Las Vegas before he moved to the national political stage and became a controversial advocate of "supply-side economics," a name he coined.

He died Tuesday of an apparent heart attack in his office in New Jersey.

Wanniski, who worked for the Review-Journal as a political reporter and columnist between 1961 and 1965, was born in Pottsville, Pa., but grew up in Brooklyn, the son of a former coal miner and communist.

Wanniski later moved to the other end of the spectrum, advising Republicans, including President Reagan, presidential candidate Steve Forbes and former Sens. Jack Kemp and Bob Dole.

His moment in history came in 1974 when he was sitting at a table with Arthur Laffer, then an economist with the Office and Management and Budget, and Dick Cheney, then deputy chief of staff for the White House.

After Laffer sketched a diagram of his "Laffer curve" on a cocktail napkin to explain his theory of how lower taxes spurred economic growth and thus paid for themselves, Wanniski coined the now famous "supply-side economics" term, according to the New York Times.

Robert Bartley, the editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page, Wanniski, Laffer and Robert Mundell, an economist who advocated tax cuts, met regularly to advance the theory.

Wanniski became a leading promoter for the concept, which emerged as a historic hallmark of the Reagan administration.

Wanniski became part of the national media in 1965 when he joined the National Observer, arriving in a silver convertible, shiny gold coat and sunglasses with a Las Vegas showgirl on his arm, according to "Worldly Power: The Making of the Wall Street Journal" by Edward Scharff.

Wanniski switched to the Journal as an editorial writer in 1972, but he was fired several years later when an executive saw him passing out campaign literature for a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in violation of Journal policy.

Wanniski earned a bachelor's degree in political science and a master's degree in journalism for the University of California, Los Angeles.

While with the Review-Journal, Wanniski called himself the Henderson man and wrote a column that he delivered by car to the paper each day, said longtime friend and then fellow journalist Jim Seagrave.

Wanniski later joined the main staff and wrote "Reporter's Notebook."

"Jude was an investigative reporter when there were very few of those seen in Las Vegas," said Seagrave, now vice president of the Stardust.

Seagrave recalls Wanniski writing an expose about the sanitation commission "that really shook up the town" in the 1960s.

"He was very much liked and very easy to get along with, but, as a journalist, he was fearless," Seagrave said.

"Jude had a way of writing a story that took the mystery out of it so that everyone could understand it," Seagrave said.

Don Digilio, who was Wanniski's managing editor and later became editor of the Review-Journal, however, remembered him as somewhat distant although a thorough and well-respected journalist.

Lawyer Ralph Denton recalled being the subject of Wanniski's stories first as a county commissioner and then as an unsuccessful Democratic candidate for Congress.

"You never had any idea of what his political leanings were, he was so even handed in his reporting," Denton said.

Wanniski's brother, Terry, said Jude helped him get a job with developer Harry Polk.

But then his brother caused Polk to fire him when Jude suggested that Polk might be the real, if unofficial, mayor of North Las Vegas. Terry Wanniski, a civil engineer, went on to serve for 27 years as Nevada Test Site operations manager.

His brother's journalism skills impressed Warren Lerude, who was Associated Press bureau manager in Las Vegas at the time and later won a Pulitzer prize for editorial writing.

"He could see through things that other people couldn't see through," said Lerude, a journalism professor at the University of Nevada, Reno.

Las Vegas was a small town with frequent dust storms at the time, Lerude said.

"There were a lot of colorful, adventurous people in Las Vegas at that time."

Wanniski wrote, for example, that a dynamic city manager in North Las Vegas would never get the same job in Las Vegas, according to "Resort City in the Sunbelt, 1930-2000" by Eugene Moehring.

Wanniski explained that Las Vegas City Council members wanted "a docile one who will stand back quietly, do their bidding, write an occasional interdepartmental memo and generally keep his seat warm. No questions asked."

Michael Green, professor of history at the Community College of Southern Nevada, described Wanniski as a columnist in the tradition that started with Al Cahlan in the 1930s and continues with John L. Smith today.

Don Payne, manager of the Las Vegas News Bureau for 29 years, recalled Wanniski as "one of the smartest people I ever knew. I considered him one of the brightest watchers of the economy in the United States."

But he did not lack for ego. Sig Rogich, a former adviser to Reagan and a Wanniski friend, liked to kid Wanniski about his humility in writing a 1978 book titled: "The Way the World Works."

National Review, a conservative magazine, called it one of the 100 most influential books of the 20th century.

However, Barron's, the weekly financial tabloid, carried a column in 1990 that lambasted Wanniski for first taking money from vested interests at his consulting firm Polyconomics.

Then, Barron's said Wanniski published the "Media Guide," which contained negative evaluations from anonymous contributors about prominent journalists who wrote about these same interests.

The Guardian of London, England, carried an article in 2002 that questioned Wanniski's political alliance with Louis Farrakhan, head of the National of Islam.

It noted that liberal weekly The Nation said Wanniski is "as crazy as he is endearing. ... Like Howard Stern, the man is unembarrassable, which is a great gift in American political life."

The New York Times noted that Wanniski last year backed Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., and called President Bush "an imperialist."

Survivors include his wife, Patricia; mother, Canstance Wanniski; brother, Terry; sons, Andrew of Las Vegas and Matthew of Los Angeles; daughter, Jennifer Harlan; former wife, Christine Bobal of Las Vegas; and a granddaughter.