Rep. Ted Weiss; Crusader for Liberal Causes

Rep. Ted Weiss, who took over Bella Abzug’s liberal congressional district on New York’s West Side and used it as a base to perpetuate his own ardent liberalism, died Monday of heart failure.

His office said the seasoned Democrat, who crusaded in Congress for AIDS education and other human rights programs and against increased military spending, died at 64 in a New York hospital.

The Hungarian-born Weiss had a history of heart trouble. He underwent cardiac bypass surgery in 1982 and had a quadruple bypass operation in 1986 after collapsing at a banquet on Capitol Hill.

Weiss’ base was the 17th District once represented by Abzug, and he proved to be nearly as strident and single-minded in his pursuit of liberal causes as his predecessor.

He was consistently given 100% ratings by the liberal political interest group Americans for Democratic Action, while conversely compiling a collection of zeros from the American Conservative Union.

Weiss’ unswerving liberal voting record had virtually guaranteed his reelection since 1976, when he finally realized his longtime ambition of becoming a congressman.

He had been favored again in today’s Democratic primary, and his name will remain on the ballot, said William Harrison, a spokesman for the State Board of Elections. If Weiss wins, Harrison said, county Democratic leaders will have to select another candidate to appear on the general election ballot in November.

Weiss became a New York City councilman in 1961 and lost three primaries before making it to the House on his fourth try. Abzug had opted not to seek reelection and ran unsuccessfully for the Senate.

Weiss and his district seemed made for each other. The area runs from Wall Street and Greenwich Village, long a bastion of left-wing politics and gay activism, to the aging but graceful communities along the Hudson River in Manhattan and the northwest Bronx.

In the House, Weiss undertook passionate crusades some colleagues regarded as hopeless. In 1983, he led a small band of representatives who called for the impeachment of President Ronald Reagan over the invasion of Grenada. He also was one of only a few representatives to oppose a 1981 bill making it a crime to publicize the names of intelligence agents.

He repeatedly voted against funding for research and development of the B-1 bomber, the MX missile and the neutron bomb. A longtime supporter of a mutually verifiable freeze on nuclear weapons stockpiling, Weiss also co-sponsored a joint resolution renouncing the first use of nuclear weapons in any future conflict.

For much of his career, Weiss served on the House Education and Labor Committee, where he fought Reagan cutbacks in social programs. In 1983, he was named to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, where he made humanitarian aid a special concern, proposing additional food assistance to drought-stricken Africa.

He repeatedly demanded that the United States withdraw its support from the leaders of El Salvador, and urged the cutoff of economic assistance to Chile until the country was returned to democratic rule. He also called for reparations for Holocaust victims and compensation for Vietnam veterans, and constantly criticized the Food and Drug Administration for not keeping what he said were dangerous drugs and food additives off the market.

Weiss and his Jewish family fled Hungary because of the Nazis when he was about 10. In 1980, he married Sonya M. Hoover, a press officer for New York state. He had two sons, Thomas D. Weiss and Stephen R. Weiss, from an earlier marriage that ended in divorce.