A Trio for Tough Departments

Composed of a businessman, a political pro and a Senator

To run three of the Federal Government's sprawling, complicated and unglamorous departments, Reagan picked a steer-roping businessman, a party operative and a Senator who was once his vice-presidential choice. The nuts-and-bolts trio:

A Cowboy at Commerce

On the professional rodeo circuit he is known as Mac Baldrige, a steer roper who finishes in the money about a third of the time (for $1,605 in prizes last year). To the uninitiated he is Malcolm Baldrige, chairman of Scovill Inc., a power in Connecticut Republican affairs and a close friend of Vice President-elect George Bush's. As Ronald Reagan's choice for Secretary of Commerce, Baldrige will bring to Washington --a proven capacity for managing, along with the practice lasso he keeps by his desk.

Despite his slow Western drawl, Baldrige, 58, son of a Nebraska Congressman, embodies the Eastern Establishment that many Reagan backers distrust. He is a graduate of Hotchkiss and Yale (class of 1943) and the brother of Author Letitia Baldrige, who was Jacqueline Kennedy's White House social secretary.

After 3 1/2 years in the Army, where he rose to the rank of captain, Baldrige went to work as a shop foreman in an ironworks, rising through the ranks to become president. He joined Scovill in 1962, and is credited with changing the company from a stodgy brass manufacturer with sales of $164 million to a conglomerate that now has sales of about $1 billion in goods ranging from appliances and building products to locks and zippers.

Lean (6 ft. 1 in., 175 Ibs.) and handsome as a cigarette-ad cowboy, Baldrige lives with his wife Margaret, the first woman member of the local volunteer fire department, on a rambling estate in Woodbury. The couple have two grown daughters. Baldrige first began riding at age seven in Nebraska. He took up steer roping in the 1950s, turned professional in the late '60s, and now competes in an average of eight rodeos a year. "I just plain like it," he once said. "I like the timing, the coordination, the partnership with a good horse, the excitement of it."

At Commerce, a collection of trade and technology agencies, with 48,170 employees and a 1981 fiscal budget of $2.8 billion, Baldrige's major excitement may be the challenge of bettering foreign trade. Said the Secretary-designate last week: "We are going to put a lot of emphasis on exports, productivity and getting rid of some unnecessary regulations that are smothering our job growth."

An Ex-Liberal for HHS

So impressed was Richard Schultz Schweiker when Ronald Reagan asked him to be his vice-presidential running mate in 1976 that the Pennsylvania Senator saved and later framed the airline ticket that brought him to California for their momentous meeting. Reagan's attempt to wrest the party's presidential nomination from Gerald Ford by prematurely naming the liberal Schweiker to his ticket failed, of course, but it left an indelible mark on Schweiker. Since then he has grown steadily more conservative. Now Reagan has given Schweiker, 54, a chance to turn philosophy into policy by naming him Secretary of Health and Human Services.

The son of a Philadelphia-area bricklayer who later founded and ran a flourishing tile company, Schweiker graduated from Pennsylvania State University in 1950 and joined the family business. In 1960 he succeeded in his first try for public office by unseating the conservative Republican incumbent in his Main Line congressional district. Schweiker upset Democrat Joseph S. Clark for a Senate seat in 1968. Though he hewed mostly to the liberal line, Schweiker occasionally displayed streaks of conservatism by voting for prayer in public schools and against busing. Schweiker announced that he would not seek a third term in 1980, partly because he wanted to spend more time with his wife Claire and their five children.

While in the Senate, Schweiker served on various health and welfare subcommittees. "I have spent ten years in the health field," says Schweiker, "and I am delighted to go from one side of the Government to the other." Yet, as head of a department that employs 160,000 and spends over $200 billion annually, he will surely be visited by Reagan's budget trimmers. Says Schweiker: "We will be cracking down on fraud and abuse. I see these as ways of saving money without hurting people."

A Pol for Transportation

Shortly before noon on July 26,1976, Andrew Lindsay ("Drew") Lewis Jr. received a phone call. It was from Pennsylvania Senator Richard S. Schweiker, his longtime neighbor and staunchest political ally. Would Lewis, state campaign manager for Gerald Ford, jump ship and join the campaign of Ronald Reagan? No, said Lewis. "I'm a loyalist," he says now. "I had made a commitment to Ford and I kept it." Lewis' loyalty so impressed Reagan that he recruited the pol to work for him this year, and last week named him Secretary of Transportation.

A graduate of Haverford College and Harvard Business School, Lewis, 49, headed Snelling & Snelling, an employment agency, from 1970 to 1974. Since 1975 he has run his own financial and management consulting firm. In 1971 Lewis was appointed a trustee of the bankrupt Reading Co., whose 1,200 miles of track were taken over by Conrail in 1976, which makes Lewis feel he now has the one job in Washington "where I have the most to give."

Lewis managed seven of Schweiker's eight campaigns, missing only the 1974 race when he himself ran against Milton Schapp for Governor and lost with 47% of the vote. Besides the political and social ties that bind Lewis and Schweiker, both are members of an obscure German Protestant sect, the Schwenkfelders.

At Transportation, with 115,000 employees and a 1981 fiscal budget of $21 billion, Lewis faces issues like deteriorating highways and deficit-plagued mass transit systems. Still, with his three children now grown, he plans to spend as much time as possible in his home state, partly because he enjoys relaxing at his 130-acre Lilliput Farms near Philadelphia and partly for an outright political reason: his wife Marilyn just won her second term to the Pennsylvania legislature.

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