No less an authority than The Washington Post has called you “the quintessential Washington insider” in the best sense of that term—working effectively, though mostly behind the scenes, to advance the public good. You quickly rose in your native Minnesota to serve as chairman of the state’s Democratic-farmer-Labor Party before moving to Washington to head Senator Walter Mondale’s staff and eventually become in the Carter-Mondale Administration the first vice presidential aide ever to serve also on the president’s senior staff. Since 1992 this considerable expertise has benefited the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which under your presidency has successfully transformed the preservation movement into an effective advocate of controlling the bane of communities known as sprawl. You led the successful charge against the armies of Disney, poised to plunder Prince William County Virginia for a giant theme park, and reached out to our neighbors to the north by placing the entire State of Vermont on the list of endangered national treasures. Undergirding all this work has been your commitment to the health of communities and to winning for them, through preservation, the benefits of new jobs, affordable housing, and a stable tax base—principles spelled out in your recent book, Changing Places. For “what’s at stake” you have written “is not just bricks and mortar but a part of the American soul.”
Megamenu Social