Barbara Mikulski Oral History

As we discussed, we’re here to talk about Senator Kennedy.

Why don’t I give you an outline of how I know him before we value-add to or amplify? We need to go back to the mid-’60s, when I was running a poverty program to help old people. It was one of the things that was so successful and we were so good at what we did, and he chaired it. So that was my first direct exposure other than being an admirer of the Kennedy family as someone in the ’60s. That is now the subcommittee that I chair. That’s just an interesting point.

Then of course probably one of the most pivotal points in my life was 1968, with all that went on in 1968—the assassination of Dr. [Martin Luther, Jr.] King, and then of Ted’s brother, Bobby. I would refer back to it because I was more of a Bobby Kennedy type than a Gene McCarthy type and that actually took me to some things. 

Then, I come to the House in 1976. In 1980 I was an integral part of the Kennedy campaign for President, so there are some things about that. I was supposed to nominate him at the convention. We can come back to that—what I did for him in Detroit with Walter Mondale and so on. And the way he welcomed me, helped me get started on the committee, how he, [Christopher] Dodd, and I were pals. They were a dynamic duo before they each found love. 

And then some of the really important things that we truly did. There would not be a Women’s Health Initiative had it not been for him and me being here, but I couldn’t have done it—and what we did, even in a [Ronald] Reagan administration. Then of course it’s the fun things we’ve done. Those are the way I know him in addition to that. So, what do you have there?

Tell us about the birthday parties.

Tell me what you have there and then I’ll you about the birthday parties. Of course, I’m going to combine some things.

We’ve got a lot here but one of the things we wanted to start with is if you could just tell us your initial impressions of him. You said that you testified before the Senate.

Go through the list and tell me the outline that you want to follow so that when I do that, I’ll be able to answer the questions doing what I’m going to say and then I’ll have in mind what you want. OK?

Overall impressions of the Senator, including what your initial impressions were when you first met him and then perhaps how that’s evolved over the years. Obviously, you got to know him quite a bit better in the intervening years. And then we were thinking of asking you about Kennedy in committee, but we don’t want to get too detailed.

No, you don’t want a civics lesson.

Right, right. Since we have only a limited period of time, a more general account would be the best way to present it.

OK. Well, if you ask those questions, what I’m going to do then is bring in some of these things.

To get back to your initial meetings with Senator Kennedy, when you first met him back in 1965, any early impressions that you may have had of him at that point. I realize it was a brief encounter but if you’d talk a little bit about your first meeting with him. You also mentioned 1968 and Bobby Kennedy, and his eulogy and how important that was to your own—

Well, to have a record of my knowledge of Ted Kennedy, you have to put me in the same historical context. I’m younger than Ted, older than Hillary [Rodham Clinton].

Being an adult in the 1960s—I was an adult when his brother became President and I was kind of a sword carrier in the 1960 election. In 1964 when I was in graduate school getting a Masters in social work, because of the Kennedy initiatives and the war on poverty, I had the chance to go to graduate school and community organization, and social strategy. So, it’s like a connection that shaped my life and gave me opportunities. 

When I got out with my Masters, there was a brand new program created by Democrats called Medicare, and my job was to help old people know what these programs were. I hired old people, trained them to go out and troubadour what this program was, and also in an advocacy role. It was so successful—I mean, headlines—I was making news in my own way—that I was invited to come with my teammates to testify to the United States Senate. I came and who chaired the subcommittee on aging but Senator Ted Kennedy. I talked about this program and he responded. It was to get what were the best ideas and the best practices to be able to expand these programs. 

Flash forward to now. I’m now in the United States Senate. He’s helped me get on my committees. By the way, one of the important things, when I came to the Senate in 1986, it was about 20 years after our first meeting—His own, which of course focused on health, education, and issues related to the aging, and then also in the Appropriations Committee, which will be important to an agenda that he and I did. I now chair that subcommittee. There I was, testifying about ideas and best practices, and now it’s 40 years later and I will hopefully chair the committee, and we’re still talking about best ideas and best practices. 

For me, it’s not just giving speeches on the Senate floor, which is important, or inspiring a generation, which is what the Kennedys did, but how do you really operationalize your good intentions? Ted Kennedy was into a legislative framework as well as being charismatic and inspirational. Not to sound like a legislative plumber or interior designer, but it was to take what are the best ideas so we can create real opportunities for people. That was my first meeting with him, and you know what? I see him every day and it’s still the same podium.

We’ve all kind of changed our geometry as the years have gone on. That’s another thing. We have so many diets together. In one of these speeches that I gave for him I said,  You know, Senator Kennedy and I have a lot in common. Our parents were both in business. My father had a small grocery store. Your father owned Boston. And devoted mothers. But the one thing we do share is that we both have chunky jeans. Kennedy, he’s the same guy. He has the same passion, the same energy and it’s still focused on, always, opportunity and what are the best ideas and the best practices. So that’s how I met him. 

Then, let’s flash forward. Under Lyndon Johnson, we all truly thought we were going to create a Great Society and continue the Kennedy Presidential legacy. Well, 1968 was probably one of the worst years, with the increasing Vietnam War and then the assassination of Dr. King. And then, Bobby Kennedy being more urban, more gritty, more into the streets and neighborhoods. Rather than the coalition of issues, we were into the coalition of people. 

We couldn’t believe it. I remember Senator Kennedy at St. Patrick’s Cathedral giving a very poignant eulogy about his brother, and then of course this train coming down. I was one of the ones who, in Baltimore, went out to the tracks and waited and waited. 

But I went back that year, and then at the Chicago convention, [Richard Milhous] Nixon, and I had to just—Really, it was a generational broken heart, that’s what we had. But it was his eulogy about, Don’t over-romanticize my brother, and so on. I thought, well, we can’t just let this go, even though we’ve got Nixon. That’s when I decided to go to graduate school in public health, but I got into a fight on a highway, which took me into politics. My whole approach was to keep the dream, and there was Ted Kennedy, to keep the dream and keep on fighting. It took me into thinking about, again, building the kind of coalitions that Bobby stood for and Ted stood for. It was different than Jack [John F. Kennedy], very different than Jack.

In what way?

Well, Jack was cerebral, he was cool. It was Camelot. This was American, and it was very American in the sense that it was also into these coalitions. The coalitions were black and white, but it wasn’t only about race. Bobby also understood social class and so did Ted. This was meeting people where they are, organizing around felt needs, understanding that people have a right to know and a right to be heard, and a right to be represented, and how we could bring people together. 

I got into this highway fight in Baltimore—it was a 16-lane highway going through the European ethnic neighborhoods, and going through the first black homeownership neighborhood in Baltimore. They laughed at us. They said, You can’t do this. It’s after the riots. Blacks and whites will never get together. Well, we put together a group in my neighborhood called RAM [Relocation Action Movement]. We had a citywide coalition called MAD [Movement Against Destruction] and we knocked the hell out of the establishment. Nancy Pelosi’s brother, Tommy [D’Alessandro, III], was the mayor and we not only won the fight but—It was not about the highway; it was about the neighborhoods. Everything you see in Baltimore today, it’s not about the Inner Harbor and selling tchotchkes at the Rouse Company Pavilions. It is about the fact that the neighborhoods came together. I went into politics and we continued that. It was very much this legacy.

While I was in the House I was invited to a breakfast meeting at the Senator’s house at McLean. It was Shirley Chisholm and me, and some of the others, but I remember the Congresswoman, who was my pal. I was one of that first group of Congresswomen in the ’70s. It was Pat Schroeder and Yvonne Braithwaite Burke and Barbara Jordan and Shirley Chisholm and me and Liz Holtzman. I mean, you know who the founding mothers were of the House. 

Well, I signed up immediately and did surrogates for him and traveled around, and there was this one thing where I got a call. The Soviets had invaded Afghanistan and they canceled the Olympics. Somebody was supposed to go speak for him at this big UAW [United Auto Workers] meeting and he couldn’t go, so I went out and I gave a speech. I don’t remember the words but it was one of those nights where I said something about him, because I have so much affection for him. And he is funny, but I’m funny about him.

You don’t recall what you said?

No. You know, it was 26 years ago. Even the most egotistical don’t remember speeches for 26 years. And it wasn’t written, because I had something written. I wish I would and if I do, I’ll come back to it, but it was really—because people really held him and continue to—but I know him in a very warm and earthy kind of way. I mean, I know his jokes. I know he likes to be a bit of a prankster. His way of affection is to tease and banter. It’s very much like in the neighborhoods. You could see him at a bowling alley or you could see him at a pub as well as, you know, meeting with world leaders. And the reaction is the same, whether it would be in a bowling alley or in a meeting with—because that’s what he is. 

I think what’s so important here, and I’ll come back to the 1980 event, is that he really—his key—it’s not a secret—he really likes people. He’s genuinely interested, and he has a hospitable way of engaging people and getting them to talk. Even though he’s a great talker and a great storyteller, he really gets you to talk. He brings out the best in you. So you’re thinking that’s the best in him but it’s because of that. He genuinely really is a schmaltzy, soft-hearted guy. He really is touched by the plate and lives of people. 

I remember one day, we held hearings on—gosh, when little Ryan White came. What a sad day. The media was all over it. They were crowding this frail little boy who had been isolated from schoolmates—just on the verge of knowing what he even had. Just the way Senator Kennedy welcomed and treated him with respect, but when the hearing recessed and Ryan got ready to leave with his mother, we were walking out to go down the hall and all hell broke loose with TV cameras running and shoving this little boy, and pushing him, all to get a story. The mother was just—Senator Kennedy, big, bulky, put his arm around Ryan and protected him from this onslaught. 

It became a metaphor. I’m very touched about it today because we’re still working on this Ryan White bill and the Republicans are just screwing around with it. It was just—he protected him and I was with him and he said, Barbara, Barbara, get on the other side and grab Ryan’s mother. I said, OK Ted, and then he was calling out to Chris. He said, Chris, get up here. I was moved, because he literally protected Ryan White. He protected him legislatively in the Ryan White Bill. He protected him literally. And I think if he would have gone into that school when they had that little boy isolated, he would have kicked down the goddamned door. But that’s what he is. That was a little boy to him and he responded like a man—

Where do you think that comes from for him? Is it his religious faith?

I think it’s a totality. I think first of all it’s religious. Also, he spent a lot of time with his mother who had a tremendous impact on him. During the ’80 race, when I went up to Hyannis for a strategy meeting, I had the choice one afternoon of going sailing with him or spending the afternoon with his mother at the family compound. I said, I want to go out on the boat with you but you’re going to be President; we’ll have a lot of fun days together. I would like to spend the afternoon with your mother. He said, Good choice and good move. 

She took me around the house and showed me the pictures and so on, and then she talked to me about all of her children. She even has their little health records. Then she talked about Ted and she quizzed me, like any mother would. How’s he doing? What do you think? Do you think he’ll carry West Virginia like the President? as she called Jack. I asked her also about her father, Honey Fitz [John F. Fitzgerald]. The sense that I got when she talked about Ted was that Ted was more of a product of Boston politics and the Boston community, that he was more communal, less Harvard. It’s not that one was brainy and the other wasn’t, but that he was more grassroots and more into the streets and more into the neighborhoods.

More than his brothers?

Well, I don’t want to say more than his brothers, but you asked what I think shaped him and I think that was a dynamic—his mother and his connection to the Honey Fitz side was very strong with him.

He carried that campaign against [Jimmy] Carter to the bitter end. There was some criticism of him for doing that. Did you have any qualms about that?

No. I felt that he was in many ways just a spectacular post-President leader. But we were in a fight and, quite frankly, if Anne Wexler hadn’t come out on the floor—We were in the floor battles; we were in everything. Anne Wexler—go talk to her about how the Carter people were trying to outwit the Kennedy people. We were better organized but they had Presidential goodies, and we got into the floor fights. I felt that that was good because it was so refreshing that we were actually going to have a convention and people were going to have a choice. I was a Kennedy supporter. No, that whole thing about, Why should we fight to the bitter end? It’s to give the people a choice and that’s why you have conventions and nominations. 

I was to nominate him and I was so excited. I was in Baltimore that summer and I got a call. Barbara, it’s Ted. Well, you know, you don’t say, Ted who? There’s only one person I know in my whole life who says Ted, and particularly with that little cadence. Of course I said yes and began to ponder great words. You know, for the guys, all they need to do is get a navy blue suit and a made-for-TV shirt and off they go. But I had to think about this. I went and got a new dress and—what was I going to wear? And the hair thing. We were working both on me and the speech. We put that together. Anyway, I was all set and we rehearsed, and he said that [Robert] Shrum was already involved. 

That night was really the big battle and we were coming now to the crescendo. I was at some event and they said—this is before cell phones and Palm Pilots and all that—Ted Kennedy’s got to talk to you. I went to the phone and he said, Barbara— Of course you’re sad to hear that from him. So he was talking about it. He said, I’m still going to speak to the convention; that’s what I negotiated with the Carter people, and I would like you to introduce me as I come to speak to the convention. 

I said to him, Look, you’re a great man and you’re a great leader, and there will be another day for you, and I’ve got this dress that I bought for you. Remember it’s 1980. I said, I paid $120 for this. The hairdo won’t be here the day after tomorrow but I’m going to put this dress in the closet and I’m going to wait until I pull it out. Do you know, I still have that dress? I still have it. Periodically, he says, How are you? How’s the dress? I went to the convention and gave my speech, and little did I know that six years later I would be joining him in the Senate. President Carter—it just wasn’t in the cards for a Democrat that year.

Some people have said—and I don’t know if you feel comfortable commenting on this— that he’s become a more effective Senator since abandoning his Presidential ambitions. Do you think there’s anything to that?

I think Ted Kennedy was always an effective Senator. He reached out to people. When he came, I know he made a special effort to reach out to the southern conservatives. His going on the Armed Services Committee was not only about wars and what were going to be the right policies for our military, but there were the great southern giants there. One time, he was heading for a leadership post of either Whip or Majority Leader, or something like that—I think he’s always been effective and he’s always had very good people work for him who are as dedicated as he is.

He came out and endorsed you, I believe, during your primary race in ’86 for Senate, which is a rare step for him to take.

Well, he was just a tremendous help for me in ’86. I was going through this, you know, I’m four-foot-eleven. On any given day, I range from chunky to chubby and this theme runs through us. In my primary I was running against a sitting Governor, Harry Hughes, a fine man and quite handsome. And Mike Barnes, a Congressman from Montgomery County, very smart, wanting to be a leader in foreign policy, particularly Latin America, and one of those, I’m running; I’m on the fast track. And there was me. I was getting this, You don’t look the part. There was a lot of gender and class prejudice that was an undercurrent here. One of the things that Ted Kennedy’s endorsement was—there were a couple of things. Outside of my own state was the Emily help [Emily’s List is a pro-choice, Democratic political fund-raising network founded in 1985]. And Ted Kennedy said—it was kind of the declaration about, This is what a really good Senator would be. It was a big help because it helped smash some of these undercurrents that I was dealing with. By the way, these are what my opponents were doing. This is what press and media and so on was doing.

You mentioned earlier that Senator Kennedy made you feel very welcome when you arrived at the Senate.

When I came to the Senate in 1986—first of all, I’m the first Democratic woman ever elected in her own right. There had been other Democratic women, like Muriel Humphrey, but only 18 women had served in both parties and, of the 18, only five had been elected in their own right and they had been Republican, like Senator [Nancy] Kassebaum. So when I arrived in the Senate in 1986, the only other woman here was Senator Kassebaum, our Republican colleague, who indeed was very gracious and helpful. I count her as a special friend. But oh, Ted Kennedy. I mean, when you look at—it was of course my own colleague, Senator [Paul] Sarbanes, who, if I had a brother in the Senate, could not have been more with me and for me and helpful.

Let me tell you, I’m on the Steering and Policy Committee. This is how it works. This is what you need to do to get on the committees. He said, What’s so fantastic is 11 of you have been elected. We’ve now taken back the Senate. Ah, to hear those magic words again. He was on the Steering and Policy Committee and he said, Now they’re all going to fly in and they’re going to call upon people. You live in Baltimore. Whenever they can see you, you just come over, because they wonder, are you going to be bold and brassy? This is a club. 

He gave me, along with Senator Sarbanes, the seven Senators that I needed to see, including Senator Bob Byrd, and said to follow their advice. And he said, Now, when we go in, we vote on what committees. I’m going to be your precinct organizer. I said, Well, that’s a hell of a precinct, you know. Are we going to go by Baltimore rules or Boston rules? He said, We’re going to go by Ted rules. I’m going to get you on the committee. Lo and behold, I mean, you have to call upon Senators when you want to win their support. It’s like inside campaigning to get on these committees. It can be your destiny. 

He said, Of course I want you on my committee. Well, I wanted to be on his committee. I was enthusiastic about it, but I wanted to be on Appropriations, where you actually put money in the federal checkbook. So we’re back to what I said at the beginning, where Senator Kennedy is always thinking about how to operationalize these good intentions. You can come up with the best authorizing bill, but unless there is money in the federal checkbook, there’s not—So he said, I’ve got [Thomas Richard] Harkin on the committee, I’m going to get you on the committee, and he did.

I will give you one major way where I absolutely know that women are alive today because of what we did. As I was doing our work, what became very clear—and I knew this from my work in the House where I had also worked on health policy. You see, when I was in the House, we actually would have conferences, not conferences like think-tank conferences, but conference committees. We would see him. The Republicans don’t do that any more. 

When I was in the House there were hearings that women were systematically excluded from the clinical research at NIH [National Institutes of Health]. The famous study of take an aspirin a day, keep a heart attack away was 10,000 male interns and residents. Not one woman was included. At the National Institutes of Aging, they did a 25-year study on the normal processes of aging. Not one woman was included. Their answer was, We didn’t have a bathroom in the building. I mean, this is not research where you needed Petri dishes and a sonic boom to do your testing. 

Ted knew this and we were raising hell and I was working with Schroeder and Olympia Snowe in the House. Then, we really went and forced [George H.W.] Bush’s hands to appoint a woman to NIH. That was Bernadine Healy. We wanted to institutionalize this. We didn’t trust the Republicans. I said, Let’s establish the office legislatively. We cooked up a scheme, an appropriate, legal, but late-at-night scheme where we took the whole legislative framework—Senator Kennedy had his staff and I’m very junior. This was all very early in my career—to come through with the really basic framework. 

Harkin was the appropriator on Labor-HHS [Health and Human Services] and though we never, ever, legislate on appropriations, we took this and just put it into the NIH bill. Harkin put it in and then they couldn’t object to it. So the funding for NIH went through. It then established forevermore the Office of Women’s Health at NIH. It’s now celebrated its eleventh year—actually more than that now—time goes so fast. It’s headed by Dr. Vivian Pinn, a distinguished physician, a former medical professor at Howard University. 

Here’s what’s come out of the study: the famous hormonal replacement therapy can either kill you or give you breast cancer. We stopped that. We did the heart attack study and they found definite gender differences, that for women it’s not the pain in the arm and the (gasps) shortness of breath, it’s incredible fatigue. Doctors have all new diagnostic tools. We established mammogram quality standards because there were doctors doing mammograms using chest X-ray equipment. Literally, doctors have new tools for some of the basic things that were done. 

Every day in every way, with Ted, Tom, more women came. With the Anita Hill debacle. We’ve increased breast cancer research by 700 percent, from that day—me talking to him about a women’s health initiative. I think that’s phenomenal. I think it’s absolutely phenomenal. You could Race for the Cure, and I’m big on these grassroots groups, but you could Race for the Cure from now until the end of this century and not raise the money—what we were able to do working together. We need both. Being able to be on the committee with him and then working together, we’ve made a difference.

It’s a thing that I say in the speech, you know, Each and every one of us makes a difference but when we work together we make change. I’m telling you, this is why I always refer to him as one of the Galahads, you know, that for the women of the Senate, it’s not only about our issues but it’s about the good men who have worked with us. He has directly been helpful and then organized other men to also support us to do many of these kinds of initiatives.

What would you say to those critics who have pointed to his personal life and his treatment of women in the past? Is this something that has ever bothered you personally? There are some women who find his personal behavior somewhat offensive.

I follow the Senator Dodd quote, Every sinner has a future and every saint has a past. That’s kind of Ted in one—We’re all familiar with those, and for whatever he’s done, he’s tried to get it right. I can only tell you that within the Senate he treats the women Senators with great respect. And in terms of our agenda, we can’t have a more fierce and determined advocate.

One quick question for you. The Spousal Anti-Impoverishment Act. That’s something that you talk about a lot in speeches, and it was the only thing to survive from Catastrophic Health. To what extent did you work together with him on that?

I worked with him and George Mitchell on that. I had testified as a very young social worker to lay the groundwork that the very cruel rules of government were forcing families into poverty when one spouse went into a nursing home, because they had to spend down their life savings before they qualified for Medicaid help, to the point that they only had something like a couple hundred dollars in the bank. It got the spouse at home. With him, we identified what the problems were and his staff worked with me on solutions.

It had to go through the Finance Committee. Oh, I don’t know, they were doing yet one more tax bill, and I thought, well, if we could hitchhike on this in some way. I went to Senator George Mitchell and got his support. This is when Bob Byrd was the Democratic Leader and George was on Finance. He said, Yes, but we’re going to have to get Lloyd Bentsen and Bob  Dole and we’re going to need help here. I went back to Ted and Ted said, We’ll talk to them both. 

Once again, he put together a little precinct organization within, because in the Senate it is about talking with Senators. It’s about making your points, often not in these grand speeches that are there, but it’s in private, quiet conversation. As I talked to the other Senators, Ted was my other ally here, and at the end of the day we got the support of Bob Dole, Lloyd Bentsen’s committee, Chuck Grassley and, zoom, it went through. If you want to do grassroots organizing and you need somebody to put up the lawn signs or the amendments, call Ted, because that’s the way we did it. 

You know, it’s not to go through the intricacy process but you have to look at how you get things done. I knew that just offering the amendment— I could have given the grandest speech and had the best backup data and had all my public policy validated by Johns Hopkins School of Public Health Economics, but the leadership is not often swayed by speeches on the floor; it’s what you’ve done before you get to give that speech that makes the difference. So I did my argument. 

What I like about Ted—it wasn’t like, I’ll take care of that for you, or Don’t worry, honey, I’ll take care of that for you. It was that we were allies, we were partners, we were equals. He brought more resources. He brought stature. He brought long histories with colleagues. I did my thing, he did his thing, and as a result, we passed it. 

Did you have to do the same thing to keep it from being repealed when Catastrophic Health was repealed?

We had to make all those fights.

The same thing again.

Catastrophic was a disaster. It was the Titanic meeting the Andrea Doria. Anyway, we have a lot of fun together. I’ll finish with this. I’m very honored to be invited to his famous birthday parties in McLean. He likes costumes and it had to be from the ’60s. It could be the 1860s, the 1960s, it didn’t matter. I decided I was going to come as Jackie [Jacqueline Bouvier] Kennedy, only because I had an old black suit. What I did was I went to Baltimore’s very urban neighborhood, walked into a store and said I wanted a wig. It was run by African American women and Korean women. Hi, Senator. What are you doing here? I said, I want to buy a wig and I want to look like Jackie Kennedy. They said, Oh, OK. I said to this one lady, What do you think about this wig? And she said, Well I think it looks OK, but you look like a white Supreme. So I said, This is what I want. I got a gold braid and actually stapled it on a jacket like this. 

Off we went to the party. I had a pillbox hat I bought in a consignment shop and one of the bags over the arm. I walked in and there is Ted dressed like Rhett Butler and Vicki [Reggie Kennedy] dressed like Scarlett [O’Hara], because they had decided to come from the 1860s. While I was kind of jitterbugging with friends and making sure my pillbox didn’t tilt too far, in comes Bob Shrum, of course his ace aide and my media advisor, and he’s dressed like [Pope] John XXIII and his beloved, Mary Louise [Oates], who was dressed like the Flying Nun. Does this give you a sense of what the parties were like?

It does.

While we were having a great time dancing and noshing and doing all those things you do, and with a lot of wonderful people, it’s there that Mary Louise Oates and I decided that we were going to write—to this day, how I got those novels done is a mystery. But most of all, why I ever decided to be Jackie Kennedy is something that only some deep psychiatric probing would do. Anyway, that’s it.

Thank you very much.

We haven’t had anybody talk about his parties, so that’s wonderful.

Oh, they were very good. Well, they’re a lot of fun, but you never know who’s going to be there. It could be somebody who he met traveling in the first group of the Peace Corps people or it could be Bishop—Anyway, I did get rid of the wig, but I have the dress. 

Thank you guys so much.