B6 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 14 , 2020
BY JULIET EILPERINTed Halstead, an author and
social entrepreneur who helped
create Washington-based policy
institutes that groomed a genera-
tion of public intellectuals and
sought to redefine the middle of
American politics to solve some of
the country’s most pressing chal-
lenges, died Sept. 2 in Spain. He
was 52.
The cause was the impact of a
fall while hiking alone in the
mountains near Es Capdellà, in
Mallorca, according to his wife,
Véronique Bardach. He was a resi-
dent of Boynton Beach, Fla.
With his chiseled features,
gray-blue eyes and well-coiffed
hair, Mr. Halstead established
himself quickly as a social pres-
ence in Washington starting in
the late 1990s. He arrived after
having started an environmental
think tank in San Francisco at 25
and propelled himself into the
mediasphere with editorials,
books and TV appearances.
The author and business execu-
tive Arianna Huffington as well as
the foreign affairs scholar Walter
Russell Mead were among those
who used their influence to help
advance his ideas and connect
him with influential policymak-
ers.
Mr. Halstead, who co-founded
the nonpartisan New America
Foundation (now New America)
in 1999 and later the Climate
Leadership Council, possessed a
keen fundraising ability and un-
shakable belief that with enough
persistence he could forge broad
political alliances. Working on is-
sues including health care, in-
come inequality and climate
change, he focused on forging
“The Radical Center,” as he put it
in the title of one of his books.
Sherle Schwenninger, who
helped start the New America
Foundation with Mr. Halstead,
Mead and Michael Lind (co-au-
thor in 2001 of “The Radical Cen-
ter”), described this vision not as
one “that split the difference be-
tween left and right” but as “a
radical center that offered solu-
tions to the big problems.”
In the crowded Washington
ideas industry, New America
carved out space for young writers
with new ideas. “The old think-
tank models don’t make sense
anymore,” Mr. Halstead told The
Washington Post in 2001. “There’s
a new generation of aspiring pub-
lic intellectuals who don’t have
easy entry into the world of ideas.”
In starting New America, he
received seed money from Bill
Moyers, the longtime public af-
fairs mandarin, and early contri-
butions from then-Google chief
executive Eric Schmidt and the
MacArthur Foundation.
The group’s work contributed
to the policy architecture of the
Affordable Care Act and pio-
neered ideas such as “baby
bonds,” a proposal to narrow the
wealth gap by giving every Ameri-
can at birth a modest federal
grant. Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.)
campaigned in part on that idea
as he ran for president this year.
New America’s fellows went onto hold prominent positions in the
nation’s policy and media estab-
lishment. Among them are Karen
Kornbluh, who served as U.S. am-
bassador to the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and De-
velopment during the Obama ad-
ministration; Laurie Rubiner, the
executive vice president at Cam-
paign for Tobacco-Free Kids and a
former chief of staff for Sen. Rich-
ard Blumenthal (D-Conn.); and
the journalists Margaret Talbot of
the New Yorker and Jonathan
Chait of New York magazine.
When Mr. Halstead stepped
down as president in 2007, he was
succeeded by Pulitzer Prize-win-
ning author and former Post man-
aging editor Steve Coll (now the
dean of Columbia University’s
Graduate School of Journalism).
A decade later, Mr. Halstead
helped create the Climate Leader-
ship Council as a way to bring
together policy shapers, environ-
mentalists and fossil-fuel pollut-
ers to find common ground and
resolve the impasse over cleaning
up the climate. He said he thought
the political will had stalled over
partisan agendas on Capitol Hill,
not because of a lack of desire tosolve the problem.
As chairman and chief execu-
tive of the Climate Leadership
Council until his death, Mr. Hal-
stead had been a relentless pro-
moter of a carbon tax and divi-
dend plan that would require peo-
ple to pay for the carbon dioxide
spewed into the air but would
return those payments to taxpay-
ers in the form of dividends. The
dividends would be equal to the
tax revenue, and federal officials
would ease some environmental
regulations as part of the deal.
He enlisted a bipartisan group
of prominent policymakers to ex-
plain that industries’ ability to
pump carbon dioxide into the at-
mosphere without cost was a mar-
ket failure that should be correct-
ed.
The group included former
Treasury secretaries James A.
Baker III and Lawrence H. Sum-
mers, former secretary of state
George P. Shultz, former chair-
man of the White House Council
of Economic Advisers N. Gregory
Mankiw, and former Federal Re-
serve chair Janet L. Yellen.
Top executives of ConocoPhil-
lips, BP, the utility giant Exelon,Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase
and Procter & Gamble’s largest
division endorsed the idea.
Mr. Halstead recognized that
Republican opposition to any tax
was an obstacle to his climate
plan. But in an interview in Febru-
ary, he said that gaining the sup-
port of major corporations was “a
Republican jailbreak moment”
that would “lead to ever more
Republicans coming on board.”
Robert Stavins, a professor of
energy and economic develop-
ment at Harvard University’s Ken-
nedy School, said in an interview
that the plan was a serious blue-
print “that looked like the future
of Democratic proposals” when it
was unveiled this year. But the
Democratic Party has shifted to
the left with its Green New Deal,
he said, and the party’s presiden-
tial nominee, Joe Biden, has ad-
justed accordingly.
Edward Allen Halstead was
born in Chicago on July 25, 1968,
and grew up in Brussels, where his
father worked as a food industry
consultant. A member of Dart-
mouth College’s Class of 1990, he
graduated with a bachelor’s de-
gree in philosophy and then
worked with the Green Corps, a
community-service program.
He once told The Post that the
experience convinced him that
the environmental movement
was far behind the times, so he
started his own public policy
group, the San Francisco-based
Redefining Progress, with a
$15,000 grant from the Echoing
Green foundation. He also re-
ceived a master’s degree in public
administration at Harvard’s Ken-
nedy School in 1998.
In addition to his wife of 14
years, survivors include their
daughter, Naya Bardach Hal-
stead; his mother, Kate Halstead,
of Waltham, Mass.; his father and
stepmother, Roy and Gabriele
Halstead, of Kraainem, Belgium;and a sister.
After marrying, Mr. Halstead
and his wife bought a catamaran
and spent four years — from the
spring of 2008 to the fall of 2012 —
working remotely from sea with
their dog, Ria. In a 2011 Cruising
World article, he recounted how
they fumbled their way through at
first.
“In our haste to prepare for our
trip, we found little time to im-
prove our distinctly subpar sail-
ing skills,” he wrote. “In our first
weeks on board, Véronique pro-
vided near constant entertain-
ment with such repeated inqui-
ries as ‘What’s the boom?’ and
‘What do you call the left and right
sides again?’ ”
They e ventually sold the boat to
a couple they met in Bali who
were convinced they should start
out their marriage the same way.
As they awaited the birth of
their daughter, Bardach recalled,
her husband regularly meditated
on the peak of Mallorca’s Moleta
des Coll as they discussed the
implications of bringing a child
into a troubled world. He would
take his usual snacks — corn
chips, French brie, an avocado
and water — and one day on
returning from a hike, he said that
he would focus on climate change.
Mr. Halstead then went out and
proselytized in his usual upbeat,
self-assured way. During a 2017
TED Talk titled “A climate solu-
tion where all sides can win,” he
flashed a photo of dark-eyed,
curly-haired Naya as he recount-
ed how his toddler was “under the
mistaken impression that this
conference is named in honor of
her father.”
As the laughter died down, he
offered, “Who am I to contradict
my baby girl?”
[email protected]Steven Mufson contributed to this
report.TED HALSTEAD, 52
Creator of D.C. policy institutes envisioned a U.S. with a ‘radical center’
CLIMATE LEADERSHIP COUNCIL
Ted Halstead co-founded what
is now New America and the
Climate Leadership Council. JUANA ARIAS/THE WASHINGTON POST
Mr. Halstead s peaks at the National Press Club in 2001. T he social
entrepreneur worked at finding a common ground in U.S. politics.picks up.
“If you want the recovery to be
rapid, you need to keep
businesses — and cities and
states — afloat until the recovery
starts. Otherwise, the recovery
will be very slow, just as it was in
2008,” DeWitt said.
The District has slashed its
budget by about $1.5 billion over
17 months because of the
recession.
Several analysts said
Republican opposition to federal
aid for metropolitan areas was
self-defeating because GOP-led
states and counties need help,
too. The economies of large red
states such as Texas and Florida
rely heavily on urban areas such
as Houston, Dallas, Miami and
Tampa. Also, Republican-led
counties bordering urban areas
benefit from economic
dynamism in the cities, even if
the latter are led by Democrats.
“While the impact on the
major economic engines is in the
foreground, there’s a lot of
collateral damage on the red
areas,” said Muro, of Brookings.
“No one is a winner with this
kind of approach.”
[email protected]Maryland has already cut its
budget for the fiscal year that
ends next summer by more than
$500 million, with the largest
share of the cuts falling on
higher education. It still faces a
deficit of more than $2 billion
for the year, and the forecast for
the following year is worse.
Virginia Secretary of Finance
Aubrey Layne said states need
help because the pandemic is
lasting longer than originally
anticipated.
“Contrary to what the
administration is putting out, we
are not turning the corner on
this virus,” Layne said. “Quite
frankly, the inaction of Congress
is going to prolong the impact on
the economy. It very much
means that this is going to be a
very slow recovery.”
The slump has reduced state
revenue in Virginia by nearly
$3 billion over two years.
District Chief Financial
Officer Jeffrey S. DeWitt said the
federal government doesn’t need
to bail out states and cities that
have underfunded pensions —
one of the GOP’s main concerns
— but just needs to make up for
lost revenue until the economybe addressed if there were a state
and local support effort.”
Mark Zandi, chief economist
for Moody’s Analytics, said that
except for a small number of
cases, the criticism that state and
local governments have been
mismanaged was “a false
narrative.” He noted that they
generally have to balance their
budgets, whereas the federal
government is not obliged to do
so.
In the Washington region, the
economic downturn has forced
billions of dollars in state and
local government budget cuts.
The top budget officials in the
District, Maryland and Virginia
said the harm will be
significantly more severe
without additional federal aid.
“If we don’t get that, then we
at the state level are going to be
really in a life-or-death, sink-or-
swim condition,” said Maryland
Comptroller Peter Franchot (D).
“The first stimulus really
worked. The second one needs to
go forward. The idea that you’re
going to shortchange state
budgets because they’re of a
different political party
obviously is unacceptable.”cities,” said Richard Florida, a
University of Toronto researcher
and author of books on urban
areas. “I think it’s partly
psychological. He was raised in
New York but never felt
respected [by elites] there.”
GOP senators are wary of
offending Trump, plus they say
they don’t want to add to the
nation’s debt or help
Democratic-led states and cities
that they say have been
mismanaged.
But independent analysts say
a steep recession is no time to try
to rein in debt, and state and
local governments are generally
more fiscally responsible than
Congress.
“We’re in this silly election
season, and as a result, people
are trying to score points instead
of getting something done,” said
JB Holston, the new chief
executive of the Greater
Washington Partnership.
Holston warned that
transportation, health and
education infrastructure will
“fall apart at an accelerated
degree to the extent that we
don’t do the things that we
should do.... A lot of that couldCongress must decide in
coming weeks whether to
approve a major stimulus bill
similar to the $2 trillion package
approved in March. Prospects for
agreement appear bleak because
of partisan gridlock.
The Democratic-controlled
House approved a $3 trillion bill
in May, including about
$1 trillion for state and local
governments and $15 billion for
public transit. But the
Republican-controlled Senate
has not approved any bill, and
even if there’s a compromise,
GOP leaders have ruled out
direct help for state and local
governments or transit.
Trump is demonizing cities as
part of his reelection strategy, in
hopes of rallying his political
base in rural and exurban areas.
He wants to restrict federal
funding to what he calls
“anarchist jurisdictions,”
including the District. In a
recent tweet endorsing
Maryland Republican
congressional candidate
Kimberly Klacik, he said
Baltimore was “worst in the
nation” and “last in everything.”
“Trump just viscerally hatesyou surely don’t want to have
state and local governments
laying off people across the
country, which is what is
happening right now.”
Economic researchers say a
major mistake by policymakers
in the Great Recession of 2008
was a lack of adequate federal
funding for state and local
governments. Those
governments support critical
front-line services, including for
schools, public health and small
businesses, and their spending
goes straight into the economy.
“It really does boggle the mind
that we’re going to stiff the
economic engine of the country
here,” said Mark Muro, senior
fellow at the Brookings
Institution’s Metropolitan Policy
Program. “We saw last time it led
to a kind of scarring of the
economy.”
Just 15 metropolitan areas
account for more than 40
percent of the U.S. economy. The
greater Washington region alone
— stretching from Baltimore to
Richmond — makes up 4 percent
of the nation’s economy.
MEMO FROM B1
REGIONAL MEMO
Metropolitan areas are a key part of the nation’s economic growth and r ecovery
Lending their voice
SARAH L. VOISIN/THE WASHINGTON POSTM auro Mir of the Mir Manley
Band sings at the Social
Distancing Live Music for
Justice, Equality and Hope
event at the T akoma Park
Gazebo on Saturday. Band
members said living in a
“sanctuary city” inspired them to
hold the performance.obituaries