The Man Who Is ‘Plugged in’ to How the Nation Communicates : Regulation: Rep. Edward J. Markey has the power to determine the shape of tomorrow, technologically speaking.

As a Massachusetts state legislator nearly 20 years ago, Edward J. Markey so incensed some fellow lawmakers with his maverick views and support for a judicial reform bill that they angrily shoved his desk out into the Statehouse hallway.

But today, as chairman of the powerful congressional subcommittee that oversees the affairs of Wall Street as well as the burgeoning telephone, broadcast and entertainment industries, Rep. Markey--the son of a Boston-area milkman--isn’t so easily pushed around.

Now, with a fellow Democrat in the White House sharing his passion for putting economic and technology policy on the political front burner, the former maverick finds himself among Washington’s powerbrokers. Says Rep. W.J. Tauzin, a Louisiana Democrat and subcommittee colleague: “Ed Markey has arrived.”

His timing couldn’t have been better. As computers, television and telephones increasingly converge toward a single, potentially transformative technology, this genial New England populist enjoys extraordinary power to determine the shape of tomorrow, technologically speaking.

Markey can’t stop progress, and he certainly doesn’t want to. But few individuals will play a more important role in determining who wins and who loses along the way.

In some ways, the 47-year old Markey hasn’t ventured far from his roots in Malden, the blue-collar, mostly Irish- and Italian-American district north of Boston that he now represents.

A product of the neighborhood Catholic schools right up through his law degree at Boston College, Markey’s hometown is the wellspring of many of his passions, from his preoccupation with the “average Joe” to his opposition to nuclear power to his love of the Red Sox and Celtics.

And he’s always worked in politics. Markey never earned a full-time living as a lawyer or in business except for summer stints driving an ice-cream truck to help pay his way through college.

In other ways, however, Markey has come quite a ways from Malden. Last year, for example, the Massachusetts Democrat became the only member of Congress during George Bush’s four years in office to carry legislation--the cable re-regulation law--over a presidential veto, a feat that demonstrated Markey’s mature ability to unite politicians with disparate views.

It’s also a lot easier to make ends meet as chairman of the House telecommunications and finance subcommittee than it was in his Malden days. While Markey has sworn off honorariums and doesn’t accept money from political action committees, financial bigwigs still clamor to give him campaign money.

Thus, Markey ran unopposed in the 1988 election but still managed to raise $443,000 in donations from individuals--46th best in the House in that category, according to the Federal Election Commission.

In 1992, Markey raised $444,628--a campaign chest so large that he recently paid his campaign staff $38,000 in bonuses for helping him trounce his last opponent, Cambridge, Mass. plastic surgeon Stephen Sohn.

“He says he doesn’t take PAC money, but a lot of this money comes from individuals in the industries he regulates,” says Sohn. “I’m not sure it’s clouded his judgment, but it seems improper.”

Markey acknowledges that individuals on Wall Street and in communications are major contributors. But he insists that he has long advocated public financing of congressional campaigns, and says that taking individual contributions is the fairest way to distance himself from the “influence of special-interest money.”

Markey adds that consistently crafting pro-business--or even pro-consumer--solutions to legislative problems in telecommunications or finance wouldn’t be so easy even if that’s what he wanted to do, because it’s not always clear what’s best for which group.

“I deal with very powerful interests on all sides,” Markey said during an interview in his office, which has a videocassette recorder, telephone, TV and fax machine, but is otherwise bereft of the kind of high-tech gadgetry over which his committee so often deliberates.

“But I try very hard to make honest judgments--to make sure the maximum public benefit is realized on any of these issues,” Markey says, adding: “My political philosophy is that it is important for me to protect working-class people from monopolistic practices.”

Notwithstanding such talk, the shift from outsider to powerful political insider has left some longtime allies unsettled. Consumer activist Ralph Nader told the Boston Globe in 1990 that Markey was “getting on a first-name basis with too many people in the industries he oversees, having too many dinners with them.”

But even his critics find much to like in the gregarious legislator. Nader recently softened his stance and called Markey one of the nation’s two best congressmen (his other choice: Henry Waxman, the Los Angeles Democrat).

“Ralph is a lot more of a purist than I am,” says Andrew Jay Schwartzman, executive director of Media Access Project, a Washington-based consumer watchdog group. “Markey has moved from an advocate to one of the most powerful subcommittee chairmen. He’s been very effective in educating members of the House of Representatives” on telecommunications and finance.

First elected to the House in 1976, Markey acquired a reputation as an independent-minded liberal. With his long sideburns and penchant for grabbing the TV spotlight by offering one-liners on almost any subject, Markey quickly became a highly visible presence on Capitol Hill.

With his natty suits, trim physique and occasionally glib demeanor, however, the perception developed that self-promotion was his real expertise. Markey, who served on the law review at Boston College, is considered very bright, but his style often overshadowed his substance.

In a July, 1988, poll by Washingtonian magazine, for instance, House administrative assistants voted Markey the No.1 “Camera Hog” in Congress.

“He had a loose-cannon reputation, but that was unfair,” says Brian Moir, a Washington lawyer and former Markey aide. He says that because Markey was a freshman with little power, he was forced to “do through noise what he couldn’t do through seniority. He made himself visible.”

Since becoming chairman of the telecommunications and finance subcommittee in 1987, Markey has gotten on a first-name basis with the captains of the communications industry and the financial world. He’s also adopted a more buttoned-down style.

Amid heightened concern over the safety of financial markets after the October, 1987, stock market crash, Markey’s panel in 1988 produced the only major reform measure--increasing civil and criminal penalties for insider trading and holding firms accountable for their employees. It was unanimously approved by the House and signed into law that same year.

“When you sit at the witness table and look at a figure like Ed Markey, there’s no mistaking who’s in charge,” says Richard H. Brown, vice chairman of the Chicago-based phone conglomerate Ameritech and one of dozens of industry chiefs Markey’s committee has called to testify. “We do not always see eye to eye . . . but I respect him. He is plugged into the pulse of the issues in our industry.”

As Markey undergoes a kind of political metamorphosis, he has developed a reputation as a formidable consensus builder, largely by being evenhanded and patient.

“I think Eddie is one of the fairest chairmen in the House,” says Rep. Jack Fields (R-Texas). He credits Markey with special skill at disengaging contentious issues from divisive regional passions.

One device Markey uses to bring a sense of pragmatism to deliberations is a fictional character by the name of Mrs. McGuillicuddy, a stand-in for the average person.

“Mrs. McGuillicuddy is our litmus test,” says Fields. “Before we act on any legislation, we always ask ourselves, ‘what benefits would this have for Mrs. McGuillicuddy?’ ”

Although Markey’s committee doesn’t generate as much public interest as, say, those grappling with tax issues or health care, its deliberations are of direct importance to business, and its actions on such issues as TV violence, securities fraud and telephone privacy and reliability often affect Americans broadly.

“They are on the cutting edge of technology, and Ed Markey is a man in a profoundly influential position,” says Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Assn. of America. Markey, says Valenti, is presiding over “a sea change in the way we communicate.”

Although he led last year’s fight for re-regulation of the cable industry, Markey has generally embraced the political movement for less government oversight of the burgeoning telecommunications industry.

He has, for example, relaxed his opposition to freeing up the regional Bell telephone operating companies to compete more directly with cable TV operators, and he has pushed for the rapid introduction of new technologies such as wireless telecommunications services.

“The role of government is not to judge technologies but rather to create viable platforms on which they can be nurtured, flourish, or perish on their own merits with consumers,” Markey has said.

However, when it comes to overseeing the securities industry, Markey has remained an activist regulator. He’s expressed particular concern about the potential for new trading practices and technologies, such as computerized program trading, to drive the market at the expense of small investors.

“The challenge before us is how best to factor in market developments and technological changes in a way which gives us a new mix while not abandoning old values,” Markey told a January gathering of the Government Finance Officers Assn.

“During the 1980s, I believe that we went through a period when the deregulatory agenda of the Reagan Administration sent an unfortunate signal to Wall Street that the securities cop had been disarmed.”

Markey is pushing Congress to approve a bill to reform the government securities market as well as another that would require the Securities and Exchange Commission to make more frequent inspections of financial planners, and require planners to disclose to clients more information about their financial backgrounds.

Markey’s power is substantial, but critics say he doesn’t use it effectively.

Along with Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.), for instance, Markey was instrumental in pressuring the TV networks to address complaints that programs were too violent. In response, the networks earlier this month announced a new policy under which they will air a warning before showing violent fare. Markey termed the announcement “the dawning of new era.”

But others found the plan a day late and a dollar short. In a recent appearance on the ABC TV program Nightline, media critic Edwin Diamond blasted the deal as having no teeth.

“The network presidents are high-fiving each other now,” Diamond said.

TV violence notwithstanding, Gene Kimmelman, legislative director of the Consumer Federation of America, a Washington-based group that led the fight for the federal law re-regulating the cable industry, says Markey proved last year with the cable bill that he is a true fighter.

“Ed had a reputation of passing bills that were consensual and the question emerged: ‘Can Ed Markey fight the big fight?’ ” says Kimmelman. “I think with the cable law, he proved that he could. I think that everyone that comes before him has to view him as more formidable than before.”

Bio: Edward J. Markey

What the news peg as to why we’re taking a closer look at the exec named above.

Age: 47

Born: Malden, Mass.

Education: Received B.A. degree in history from Boston College 1968; received law degree from Boston College in 1972.

Family: Married to Susan Blumenthal, a psychiatrist who is chief of behavioral medicine at the National Institutes of Mental Health. The couple have no children.

Resume: Massachusetts House 1973-1977; Elected to U.S. House of Representatives 1978. Became chairman of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Finance in 1987.

Business philosophy: Protecting working class people from monopolistic practices by promoting more competition in telecommunications and finance.

Quote: “A lot of people look back on the (Reagan-Bush years) and wish they had fought harder. Too many Democrats were supporting MX missles and . . . turning a blind eye to the world. I’m proud of the fights I fought and the enemies I made.”