Bill Hughes

Rutgers, 1952

DSF:       Tell us about yourself, how you got to Rutgers, and some of the activities with which you were involved while there.

BH:         I grew up in Pennsgrove, New Jersey, in Salem County, and graduated from Pennsgrove Regional High School in 1950. I then attended night school for a couple years from 1950-1951 at Rutgers’ campus in Camden in order to save enough money to go to full-time college. In 1952 I transferred to Rutgers in New Brunswick. Shortly thereafter, I joined the Gamma Zeta Chapter of Delta Sigma Phi, and graduated in 1955.

I was very active in a number of activities, including the Rutgers Crew team. I was the Bow Man or #1 on the varsity crew team for a number of years while there. I also went to law school at Rutgers in Camden, and graduated from there in 1958. While in law school, I met my wife Nancy, who was at Rutgers College at the same time. We were married in 1956, and we have four children, three girls and a boy. The oldest was born in 1957 while I was in law school and Nancy was at Rutgers College. Three of our children are lawyers. Two are Of Counsel to large corporations and one is a trial lawyer. One of our daughters went straight; she is a Director of Marketing at an assisted living facility.

I passed the New Jersey Bar in 1959 and practiced law in Ocean City, NJ for a number of years. In 1960 I became a county prosecutor in Cape May County, and served in that position until 1970 when I left to run for Congress from the 2nd District of New Jersey.

DSF:       Tell us about your time in the Delta Sigma Phi Chapter on campus.

BH:          It was a great experience. I had a wonderful group of brothers who were very supportive and very interesting. Many of them, I still have contact with after all these years. I remember serving as the Pledge Chairman while in the chapter.

DSF:      Tell us a little bit about your time before running for Congress. What was your experience like in the prosecutor’s office?

BH:         Then, Cape May County, where I served as a prosecutor, was growing. It’s the county where we have a lot of seashore resorts, Ocean City, my home city being one of them. It also includes Avalon, Stone Harbor and Cape May. We swelled in the summertime from a very small population to much larger populations. For example, Ocean City swelled from 12,000 to 200,000 on busy holiday weekends. So, our county grew by leaps and bounds both as a seashore destination and in year-round residents as we were able to attract more jobs to the area. That was the case when the casinos took off in the 1970s and early 1980s.

I actually practiced law and was in the prosecutor’s office at the same time – I could do both then. I was in the general practice of law in a law firm, which became known as Loveland, Hughes & Garrett. It had five members, which was pretty large for Cape May County at that time. 

                It was an interesting period of time, for a recent decision of the US Supreme Court changed the rules governing arrest and the questioning of suspects. The new rules required a major change in the way our law enforcement community conducted their arrest and interrogation procedures. During those years I was a very active prosecutor, and was the lead prosecutor in many homicide, robbery, kidnapping and other serious as well as lesser offenses.

DSF:      What was it that ended up causing you to run for Congress?

BH:         There were a number of things. I think the two main things were that, first, I became very actively involved in an organization called S.O.S. (Save our Seas). All of the municipalities in the region, including Philadelphia and New York City, were dumping sewage, sludge and all kinds of other things in the ocean. It was damaging our tourist economy, because all kinds of things were washing up on our beaches, our water was becoming very contaminated, and our clammers and fishermen were adversely affected. I became very much involved in that movement and the mission to clean up the oceans. My predecessor, who was a well-known office holder with state-wide ambitions, was not very focused on this problem. That is why I left the prosecutor's office in order to challenge him for the Congressional seat.

                I was also trying at that time a number of very high profile cases, including a capital murder case that generated a lot of publicity. People started encouraging me to do other things. The Democratic Party came to me probably a half a dozen times over the years that I was in the prosecutor’s office as a result of the publicity that some of the cases were getting, and I turned them down for a number of years. Finally, my interest in a better ocean policy convinced me that the time was ripe to pursue those interests as a Federal legislator. I ran on a platform to ban ocean dumping and to generally clean up our oceans. It was quite a challenge, and took almost 17 years to complete the change needed in ocean policy.

DSF:      Talk to us about your 20 years in the Congress, and what some of the highlights were for you.

BH:         It was one of the highlights of my life. I ended up being the chairman of the Crime Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee. In that capacity, I was able to work on a number of comprehensive crime bills. In fact, interestingly, I worked with Joe Biden, as he was on the Senate side and I was the Chairman on the House side.

During the some 10 years that I served as Chairman of the Crime Subcommittee, I was able to pass about 40 major crime bills. They included many that many might recognize. Among them are the Long Arm statute that we utilize to go after terrorists around the world, the Product Tampering law, which came after the so-called Tylenol case in the 1980s and the Child Pornography laws that are used today to prosecute such offenders. I helped develop new laws to deal with the abuse involved with electronic transmissions. In fact, our subcommittee developed the first federal Computer Crime law. That too is used today to prosecute those who abuse such transmissions.  

I mentioned ocean dumping earlier in the interview. Working with many of my colleagues throughout our region, we were finally able to force some of the municipalities out of the ocean in the late 1970s. The first Ocean Dumping bill that I authored was signed by President Jimmy Carter in December 1977. It was the law that led to the cities of Philadelphia and Camden, as well as many communities in Northern New Jersey, to end ocean dumping. Unfortunately, New York resisted and challenged it, and was able to get a federal court to factor in cost. When you factor the cost into dumping, the ocean always loses, so it took me another eight years before I was able to get all of the dumpers out of the ocean. It was a 17-year project that finally was successful.

DSF:       After your time in Congress ended, you were asked to become the US Ambassador to Panama. Talk to us about that a little bit.

BH:          I left Congress in early 1995, and within month and a half, I was on the short list to be appointed to be the Ambassador to Panama. I went through the confirmation process, and by the latter part of 1995 I left for the Republic of Panama as the new US Ambassador. 

Panama is a very interesting country, and it was a very busy post. The Embassy comprised about 435 employees, many of whom were foreign-service nationals. The US Southern Command was located in Panama at the time, but has since been moved to Miami. It was a critical time in the history of our relations with Panama, for we were in the process of turning over the Panama Canal to the Panamanians under our treaty obligations. I was very much involved in that process, which included not only making certain that it was a seamless transition, but creating a new relationship with Panama in the years ahead. We were also turning over military bases, and I was point person for the Southern Command in our dealings with the Government of Panama on the many issues involved in such a transfer.

Another of our major challenges in Panama during my tenure as Ambassador was narcotics trafficking. Panama had become a major transit country for drugs coming mainly from South America. Panama's proximity to Columbia and its long and sparsely populated coastline made it a target for smugglers. In fact, when I completed my tour of duty in Panama in 1998, the Panamanian government with our help confiscated some 35 metric tons of drugs during the previous year. Since most of the narcotics that were coming through Panama were heading for the US, the battle against the traffickers was one of our top priorities. During that time our Customs, DEA, and Coast Guard attachés at the Embassy worked closely with their Panamanian counterparts to develop new and innovative strategies to meet the ongoing threat.

Panama also has a major free-trade zone called the Colón Free-Trade Zone. It is the second largest free-trade zone in the world, second only to Hong Kong. Because it was essentially unregulated, we experienced major problems with US intellectual property rights. I am talking about the theft of our patents and property protected by trademarks and copyright. Setting up a regime to deal with these violations of US property rights was very important to our interests. Money Laundering was also prevalent in Panama, and creating a Financial Analysis Unit in the country became another priority. Since I had worked on both issues in Congress during my 10 years as Chairman of the Subcommittee on Crime, I had a good information base to work from.

DSF:       What did you do after returning from your service in Panama?

BH:          Upon my return to the States I taught public policy at the college level, first as the Clifford P. Case Professor of Public Policy at Rutgers University and then as the Visiting Distinguished Scholar in Public Policy at the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey.  I taught at Stockton for a number of years, and then became very much involved in creating a public policy center at the College.

DSF:       In fact, that public policy institute is actually the William J. Hughes Center for Public Policy, named in your honor. Tell us a little bit about it.         

BH:         The Hughes Public Policy Center is dedicated to creating a strong focus on the importance of public policy in our everyday lives. Its mission is to become the catalyst for research, analysis and debate on the critical issues confronting Americans, particularly those that live in the Southern part of New Jersey. It has as its mission the creation of a speaker's bureau, a broadening of the opportunity for students to intern in the private and public sectors and to conduct polling to measure opinions and trends. The Center has hosted candidate debates and will conduct short-courses for candidates and office holders on a myriad of topics including ethics in government. In early 2009 it will host an energy symposium to explore the full range of options that might lead to energy independence from carbon-based fuels. It is an exciting initiative, and clearly one of the highlights of my career.

DSF:       In running for Congress many times, what have you thought of the current presidential campaign.

BH:         The environment has gotten very negative. Of course, this presidential race is becoming very personal and very negative with a lot of half truths. It’s most unfortunate, because what’s happened at the federal level in particular, is that we’ve lost one of the major ingredients of the democratic system of government, the ability to reach across the aisle in a bipartisan fashion to try to work issues through by compromise and understanding. We have lost a lot of that in today's decision-making process. Clearly, our system of government does not work very well unless people of goodwill recognize that others have a different point of view, different needs, hopes and aspirations, and that what is good for New Jersey may not be good for Louisiana or California. At the same time, we have go work through the issues and talk to one another in a civil fashion, with understanding and tolerance for other points of view. That is the only way we can reach accommodation and accord, but unfortunately that is not taking place in Congress and in other forums today. Without that basic willingness to engage in the give and take of our Democratic process, the system will not work and the problems that confront us as a People will not be solved.

DSF:       What do you like to do in your spare time?

BH:          I like swimming and bicycling. Nancy and I like to ride our bikes on the Ocean City boardwalk, which runs right along the Atlantic Ocean. We also enjoy swimming, gardening, walking and travel. I love skiing, particularly in Vermont.

DSF:       What is a piece of advice that you would be willing to share with our brothers about being successful in their careers and future.

BH:          I don't think that there is any question that working to be the best at what you do, reaching out to others in need and contributing in some way to make your community a better place to live are all important. Developing a moral compass to live your life by is essential, and it is surely the pathway to reputation and character which I believe is important in one's life.  I believe they are among the attributes that will make for a happy and successful life.