Pennsylvania Official to Fill Heinz’s Senate Seat

Gov. Robert P. Casey on Wednesday named a longtime associate and former John F. Kennedy Administration official to the U.S. Senate seat that had been occupied by John Heinz.

Harris Wofford, Pennsylvania’s secretary of labor and industry, will be sworn in today in Washington to succeed Heinz, a Republican who died April 4 in a airplane-helicopter collision near Philadelphia.

Wofford becomes the first Pennsylvania Democrat to serve in the Senate since 1969.

Casey said he also would support Wofford’s bid to be the Democratic Party’s candidate in a Nov. 5 special election to fill the remaining three years of Heinz’s term.

Wofford could face U.S. Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh, a former two-term Pennsylvania governor who is thinking about running as the Republican candidate.

Wofford, 65, had been prominently mentioned as a likely Heinz successor, but he was not Casey’s first choice.

Last week, the governor flew to Detroit to offer the job to Lee A. Iacocca, Chrysler Corp. chairman. The Pennsylvania native announced Monday that he had turned down the appointment.

Wofford, who was a civil rights adviser to President Kennedy and helped form the Peace Corps, has known Casey for more than 30 years. He was chairman of the Democratic State Committee during Casey’s successful 1986 gubernatorial campaign and has headed the Labor and Industry Department since Casey took office.

“I intend to take to the floor of the Senate a belief that American workers, Pennsylvania workers, can outperform anyone in the world if given the opportunity,” he said.

Wofford has little name recognition outside the state Capitol, but Casey said Wofford “is already in a position to get things done at the U.S. Capitol. Harris Wofford is one American who has never stopped asking what he can do for his country.”

He is widely viewed as a liberal but said he favors Pennsylvania’s restrictive abortion law.

Before coming to Harrisburg at Casey’s invitation, Wofford served as president of the College at Old Westbury in the State University of New York, and of Bryn Mawr College in suburban Philadelphia.

He also served as trustee or director for several education and human rights groups, including a trustee of the Martin Luther King Center for Nonviolent Social Change.