Sen. Metzenbaum, unabashed liberal

WASHINGTON - Former Sen. Howard Metzenbaum, 90, an Ohio Democrat who was a feisty self-made millionaire before he began a long career fighting big business in the Senate, died Wednesday.

Sen. Metzenbaum died at his home near Fort Lauderdale, Fla., said Joel Johnson, his former chief of staff. No cause was given.

During 18 years on Capitol Hill, until his retirement in 1995, Sen. Metzenbaum came to be known as "Senator No" and "Headline Howard" for his abilities to block legislation and get publicity for himself.

He was a cantankerous firebrand who didn't need a microphone to hold a full auditorium spellbound while dropping rhetorical bombs on big oil companies, the insurance industry, savings and loans, and the National Rifle Association, to name just a few favorite targets.

Unabashedly liberal, the former labor lawyer and union lobbyist considered himself a champion of workers and was a driving force behind the law requiring 60-day notice of plant closings.

When other liberals shied away from that label, Sen. Metzenbaum embraced it, winning reelection in 1988 from Ohio voters who chose Republicans for governor and president, and by wider margins than either George Voinovich or George H.W. Bush.

That victory produced his third, final and most productive term in the Senate. When it was over, in 1995, he started a new career as consumer advocate, heading the Consumer Federation of America.

Born June 4, 1917, Sen. Metzenbaum grew up a child of poverty and prejudice on Cleveland's east side.

He made his first big money when he and a partner got the idea for a well-lighted, 24-hour-staffed parking lot at Cleveland Hopkins Airport.

The enterprise expanded and eventually became APCOA, the world's largest parking lot company.

A political miscalculation led to his defeat by John Glenn in a ferocious 1974 Senate primary.

Sen. Metzenbaum had been contrasting his business background with Glenn's military and astronaut credentials, saying his opponent had "never worked for a living."

Glenn's reply came to be known as the "Gold Star Mothers" speech, referring to a group for mothers who had lost children in wars. Glenn told Sen. Metzenbaum to go to a veterans' hospital and "look those men with mangled bodies in the eyes and tell them they didn't hold a job. You go with me to any Gold Star mother and you look her in the eye and tell her that her son did not hold a job."

Sen. Metzenbaum won Ohio's other Senate seat in 1976, but he and Glenn didn't speak for years.

The two senators made peace when Glenn needed help with his presidential campaign in 1984. In 1988, Glenn returned the favor by piloting Sen. Metzenbaum throughout Ohio to announce the beginning of his reelection campaign.