nothin Rowland Judge’s Political Education Started… | New Haven Independent

Rowland Judge’s Political Education Started Early

Janet Bond, November 1965.

The New Haven-based judge who will soon sentence disgraced ex-Gov. John G. Rowland for campaign shenanigans turns out to have a political past of her own – and it involves dead bodies.

Courthouse veterans know her as Janet Bond Arterton, a well-regarded labor lawyer tapped by President Bill Clinton 20 years ago for the federal bench.

Few are familiar with the events that catapulted the 71-year-old judge into national headlines 50 years ago this November, when she was a spritely, 21-year-old coed,” as papers back then referred to her, at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. (Rowland, who is scheduled to be sentenced on March 18, was a mere lad of 8 at the time.)

An Ideal Office”

Known then by her maiden name, Janet MacArthur Bond, she had the gumption her senior year to run for office as a write-in candidate back home in New Jersey as a possible prelude to a career in politics. For all her inexperience and youth, she walked off with the prize: a three-year term as Mercer County’s next … coroner.

In post-election interviews, the unlikely victor explained why she pursued the odd government post 200 miles from her school: It was a job hardly anyone wanted, so she had a shot. Deep down every political science student would like to be in Congress someday,’’ she told reporters. One way to get there is by winning elections.”

The job’s duties – more accurately put, its lack of duties – made it only more alluring, she explained, calling it an ideal office for a college girl” averse to projects that might interfere with her studies.

New Jersey’s first constitution established the county coroner system, but the state had transferred much of the authority for handling its dead over to professionally-trained medical examiners. In 1965, that meant coroners still received a certificate suitable for framing” at their swearing-in, but otherwise, had no salary, budget, or perks. Mostly, they oversaw the burial of shipwreck victims who washed ashore, of which there were few.

In Mercer County, where the nearest ocean is 25 miles away and the Delaware River is waist-high in many spots, business would have been moribund but for the occasional Lenape Indian or drunken canoer running into trouble. I don’t anticipate much business,” the collegian acknowledged.

The reaction to her feat was nothing short of viral. Major media swarmed. Hollywood sought her help promoting the new James Bond movie. Boy scout troops clamored for inspirational words. Barbara Walters interviewed her on the Today Show, the same day as Sammy Davis, Jr. and Zero Mostel. Life magazine hailed her as an example of the new generation of young women in America who are shunning convention to lead interesting lives.”

Mail poured in from American servicemen who read about the shapely blonde coroner” in their Stars and Stripes and were enchanted by the dishy photos that news organizations had thoughtfully included. One admirer proposed marriage.

Republican Marries Democrat

Today, as a sitting judge presiding over her share of public corruption cases, Judge Arterton seemed amused when reminded of the long-ago escapade. But she declined to discuss it or other political activities she pursued from campaign worker to Congressional aide, in the decade before law school, when she still nursed dreams of becoming a member of Congress.

Nor was there any hint of that past during the Rowland trial in September, a case that centered on the former governor’s illicit machinations in two Congressional races. You’re going to see how the sausage is made,” his lawyer, Reid Weingarten, cautioned the courtroom early on. He warned jurors they would hear much about a rich man’s wife who wanted her husband’s help to run for Congress. Welcome to American politics,” he thundered, feigning shock.

The judge, stone-faced throughout his exhortations, never once let on that it was, perhaps, a world she had observed up close some time ago.

An account of that chapter of her life has been pieced together by the New Haven Independent from the public records and interviews with key individuals, starting with F. Christopher Arterton (pictured with Janet). He was the Trinity College beau whose pin she was wearing and who served as her unpaid campaign manager in the 1965 race for coroner.

In time, he would make a name for himself as a pundit, pollster and Yale political science professor, but not before marrying the coroner the summer after her graduation. Today, he is a professor emeritus at George Washington University and the founding dean of its Graduate School of Political Management, where aspiring candidates can learn practical skills touching on all aspects of a campaign.

Smitten at first sight would be an accurate telling of my feelings,” Professor Arterton reported in an email. They met during her sophomore year on Trinity’s campus in Hartford. She happened to sit next to me at dinner,’’ he recalled. We were both interested in politics but from a different perspective: she was a Republican; I, a Democrat.” 

Her politics shifted leftward during the Vietnam War, interviews and public records show, and she has been listed on New Haven’s rolls as an unaffiliated voter at least as far back as 1978. In the meantime, the couple found common ground in 1964, knocking on doors for Edward Brooke, a liberal Massachusetts Republican who was seeking reelection after becoming the first African-American attorney general of any state two years earlier. 

A Girl President” Wouldn’t Do

In an essay she wrote when applying to law school – cited in a speech she delivered at Yale Law School in 2007 – the judge traced her own political baptism to the eighth grade.

It was 1957, and students had elected her vice-president of the Valley Road Student Council in Princeton, N.J. Tommy Douglas, their presidential pick, moved away that summer. She spent weeks, as the next in line, letting her father, a noted physicist, drill her on Robert’s Rules of Order.

It hardly mattered. The council’s female faculty adviser informed her in September that it wouldn’t do to have a girl be president,” and chose someone else, without a peep of protest from anyone. 

In Princeton High, she faced more of the same, crystallized in the decision of her classmates to crown her, a high honors student, yearbook editor and one-time tomboy, best-looking” girl in the Class of 1962.

At Mount Holyoke, she found a mentor who had different notions about what women could or could not be, Victoria Schuck. Bond had expected to major in zoology, and even cared for a boa constrictor. But the smell of formaldehyde led her to switch to political science, Professor Schuck’s bailiwick.

Schuck, the Trenton Times reported at the time, helped her promising protégée land a whirlwind summer internship in Washington with the Republican National Committee and the press office for Hugh Scott, a U.S. senator from Pennsylvania. Scott’s staff was also helping Arlen Specter run for district attorney in Philadelphia. The student returned to campus senior year with fresh contacts, know-how and resolve to set her political career in motion. 

Campus War Room

One intriguing opportunity was the coroner’s job back home. There were no takers when the ballots were finalized. As a write-in, she would need just to get on voters’ radar. 

From her war room in Massachusetts — otherwise known as Pearsons Hall — Bond typed a Dear Friends” letter on Oct. 29, 1965, asking voters for a special favor.”

Tired of the same old straight ticket voting?” the letter pressed.

Add interest to your Election Day,” it urged, by helping a political science student gain insight, however small,” into New Jersey politics.

Professor Arterton said his biggest contribution to the homespun campaign was mimeographing the letter, which the candidate sent to at least 50 friends and family” and gave her parents to distribute at church.” 

Bond’s father, the professor recalled, also combed through law books to help the candidate gird herself for the challenges of Day One. One discovery: Coroners were required to buy burial clothes for shipwreck victims found nude, but were barred from spending more than $1 per person.

Arguing that the job had outlived its usefulness, the candidate pledged that her first — and last— act in office would be to get the position abolished. Failing that, she figured she could turn whatever she learned about its longevity into an independent study project. 

On Nov. 2, 1965, just over 100 of Mercer County’s 96,000 voters slid the metal plates back on their ballots and selected a name for coroner. 

The Mount Holyoke senior snagged 54 votes, edging out her nearest rival by 18 votes, according to Mercer County’s Board of Elections. A landslide,” as far as the press was concerned. 

New Jersey’s governor signed this certificate for the newly elected coroner.

Media Frenzy

Sensibly, she took her oath of office while home for Thanksgiving. Newspapers from Fresno, Cal., to Kansas City, Mo., ran with the story. They marveled over her blond hair and blue eyes and made room for splashy shots photographers had goaded her into taking, exiting her car, legs first, and cross-legged on a couch in fishnet stockings. 

Co-Ed Tries Politics,” the Toledo Blade alerted readers. Cute Coroner Gets Ground Rules: Blonde to Check Shipwreck Deaths.”

That was just the headline.

Coed Coroner Eyes Congress,” crooned the Chicago Daily News.
 
Even the straightlaced New York Times lavished 14 paragraphs on its profile of the victorious girl” whom it described as a tall, vivacious political science major.”

Life with a coroner was deadly,” one roommate quipped. The officeholder handled the attention with the the instincts of a pro. 
 
When a lawyers association urged her to monitor their canoe outing on the Delaware, since we have had 137 accidents already,” she recommended they needed a boating instructor, rather than a county coroner.”

Page 1 of Barbara Walters’ script from Bond’s Today Show appearance.

And when Barbara Walters initially mistook her for a lightweight, peppering her about the sexual revolution, getting pinned, and Holyoke’s lack of men, the political tyro did not lose her cool.

She made her point another way. 

Page 2.

Before going on air, she had called Sen. Scott’s office to see if there was any issue the senator might appreciate her mentioning on national television, given the chance.

So, what is concerning you these days?” Walters asked her guest on camera. The undergraduate nonchalantly replied: the interstate compact that governs the Delaware River.

Mission Accomplished

Contributed Photo

Judge Arterton today.

Not surprisingly, her political career burned bright for several years more.

As she told the crowd at Yale, she returned to Capitol Hill in 1966 for two years to be a very self-important, but lowly, Congressional press secretary” to Frank Horton, a Republican from Rochester.
 
When her husband’s Ph.D studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology prompted a move to Boston, she held a series of jobs in helping the university develop low-income housing and employee daycare and working with the state on alternatives to juvenile jails. At the Yale event, she credited those experiences – along with a 1973 article on the rights of children under the law by newly-minted lawyer Hillary Rodham — with pricking her interest in the law as a tool for affecting social policy and in public interest law as a profession.

She was already 30 and a mother when she entered Northeastern University’s law school in 1974. That U‑turn marked the beginning of a long and storied career, culminating with her seat on the federal bench, a lifetime seat on the 374-year-old committee that oversees the New Haven Green and involvement in international initiatives aimed at protecting human rights and promoting the rule of law overseas.

One way or another, she also appears to have delivered on her campaign promise to bury the antiquated coroner’s post once and for all. Not long after she drew attention to it, New Jersey finally passed a bill on Nov. 20, 1967, dismantling the system. Letters went out to Janet M. Bond and her fellow coroners that their positions were being eliminated that January.

Contact Alison Leigh Cowan .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or follow her on Twitter at @cowannyt.

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