Richard Schultz Schweiker (June 1, 1926, Norristown, Pennsylvania – July 31, 2015, Pomona, New Jersey), Republican.
Richard S. Schweiker represented Pennsylvania's 13th District in the U.S. House (1961–1969) and the state at large in the U.S. Senate (1969–1981), then served as the 14th U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services under President Reagan (1981–1983). He began his career as a moderate Rockefeller Republican and grew steadily more conservative after Reagan named him his preemptive running mate ahead of the 1976 Republican National Convention — an alliance told in full on the Deep Dives tab. The complete chronological record, including his Senate Intelligence Committee work reviewing the original JFK assassination investigation, is on the Timeline tab.
As Secretary, he spent much of his two years defending the department's budget against the administration's own proposed cuts, and his name went on the 1981 Social Security proposal Congress rejected. The more lasting record is quieter: the plan that became Medicare's prospective payment system for hospitals, the Medicaid waiver that let Katie Beckett be cared for at home and became a national option for disabled children, and the first federal tamper-resistant packaging rules after the Tylenol murders. The full account is the "Two Years at HHS" Deep Dive; the regulations he signed and the lawsuits brought against the department have their own pages, HHS Regulations and HHS Litigation.
Claire Schweiker
His wife, Claire Joan Coleman Schweiker, was a Philadelphia native and the valedictorian of her high school class. Before their 1955 marriage, she was the original "Miss Claire" on Romper Room, the pioneering children's educational program then broadcasting out of Philadelphia — one of the show's earliest hostesses, from 1954 to 1956 — and gave it up after she and Richard met and married six months later. Raised, like her husband, in what she called a "strictly Pennsylvania Dutch family that stressed values and service," she would later say the two of them "see our primary purpose in life as serving God."
A 1953 radio and television broadcasting graduate of Temple University — later the first recipient of the school's Alumni in the Media award and a member of its hall of fame — she moved to Washington after her husband's election to the House in 1960. She gave speeches on public service, health, and faith into the early 1990s, served as vice chairman of the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation Ball, and was a former president of the District's Republican Wives Club, alongside memberships in the International Club of Washington, the Senate Wives Club, and the Senate Ladies Red Cross Unit. In September 1981, The Washington Dossier put the couple on its cover for a profile titled "For a Healthy America."
Claire Schweiker died April 28, 2013, of respiratory failure at Inova Loudoun Hospital in Leesburg, Virginia, at age 81 — survived by her husband of 57 years, their five children, a sister, and 23 grandchildren.
Legacy: How His Story Gets Retold
His 1976 selection remains the standard historical reference point whenever a presidential candidate considers naming a running mate before securing the nomination. This is a representative sample of that recurring coverage, not an exhaustive news archive.
"A Gamble Gone Wrong"
TIME (cover story) · 1976-08
Contemporary coverage calling Reagan's move "one of the most astonishing and bizarre turnabouts in a campaign full of surprises" after it failed to swing the nomination.
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Cruz names Fiorina as running mate before the nomination — coverage reaches for the 1976 precedent
NBC News / MSNBC / NPR / TIME / CNBC · 2016-04
When Ted Cruz named Carly Fiorina his running mate before the 2016 nomination was decided, outlets across the board cited the Reagan-Schweiker gambit as the direct historical precedent — and the cautionary tale, since it failed both times.
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"When Ronald Reagan stunned America by picking a liberal running mate"
The Washington Post · 2024-07-11
A Trump-era retrospective using the 1976 episode as the history lesson for modern speculation about unconventional running-mate strategy.
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Authored Works
Three works he wrote or contributed to, drawn from Wikipedia's own bibliography for him.
How to End the Draft: The Case for an All-Volunteer Army (1967)
Co-author, with Reps. Robert T. Stafford, Frank J. Horton, Garner E. Shriver, and Charles W. Whalen Jr. · National Press
An early, detailed case for shifting the United States to an all-volunteer military, later used as a blueprint for the actual transition.
Accessories After the Fact: The Warren Commission, the Authorities & the Report (1976)
Contributed the introduction · Vintage Books (by Sylvia Meagher)
Written the same year as the Church Committee's review of the original Kennedy assassination investigation.
"Health Care: Making a Good System Better," in A Changing America: Conservatives View the '80s From the United States Senate (1980)
Contributing author · Regnery, edited by Sen. Paul Laxalt and Richard S. Williamson
A chapter-length statement of his health-policy views, published the year before he became HHS Secretary.
Sources
- Richard Schweiker — Wikipedia
- Congress.gov member record (S000159)
- U.S. House of Representatives, History, Art & Archives
- Miller Center — Richard Schweiker (1981–1983)
- GovTrack.us member profile
- Social Security Administration — History
- American Olean — "The AO Story" (Franklin Tile Company founding and history)
- Washington Post, Aug. 3 2015 — "Richard Schweiker, former congressman, senator and Reagan Cabinet secretary, dies at 89" (Emily Langer)
- Washington Post, May 21 2013 — "Claire J. Schweiker, 'Romper Room' hostess, wife of U.S. politician" (Megan McDonough)
- The Washington Dossier, September 1981 — "For a Healthy America" (cover) and "Looking After the Nation's Welfare: Richard and Claire Schweiker" (Don Oldenburg)
