Rep. Ted Weiss, Outspoken Liberal In Congress, Dies Of Heart Failure

WASHINGTON - Rep. Ted Weiss, D-N.Y., an ardent liberal who crusaded in Congress for social programs, human rights and against increased military spending, died today of heart failure. He was 64.

Weiss died early this morning at a hospital in New York, according to a brief statement issued by his congressional office.

Weiss had a history of heart trouble and underwent bypass surgery in 1982 and again in 1986 after collapsing at a banquet on Capitol Hill.

Weiss' base was the colorful district on Manhattan's West Side once represented by Bella Abzug, and Weiss proved to be nearly as single-minded in his pursuit of liberal causes as his predecessor.

He was consistently rewarded with 100 percent ratings from the liberal political-interest group Americans for Democratic Action and zero ratings from the American Conservative Union, its conservative counterpart.

Weiss' unswerving liberal voting record virtually guaranteed his re-election since 1976, when he won the seat in his fourth campaign for it.

He was favored again in tomorrow's Democratic primary.

Weiss and his district seemed made for each other. The area runs from Wall Street and Greenwich Village, long a bastion of left-wing politics, to the aging but graceful communities along the Hudson River in Manhattan and the northeast Bronx, home to many elderly Jews and middle-class blacks.

In the House, Weiss undertook passionate crusades some colleagues regarded as hopeless. In 1983, Weiss led a small band of representatives who called for the impeachment of President Reagan over the invasion of Grenada. He also was one of only a few representatives to oppose a 1981 bill making it a crime to publicize the names of intelligence agents.

"If an amendment were offered to strike the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, it would probably carry," Weiss lamented afterward.

He repeatedly voted against funding for research and development of the B-1 bomber, the MX missile and the neutron bomb. A longtime supporter of a mutually verifiable freeze on nuclear-weapons stockpiling, Weiss also co-sponsored a joint resolution renouncing the first use of nuclear weapons in any future conflict.

Born in Hungary on Sept. 17, 1927, Weiss and his family fled the Nazis when he was about 10. In 1980, he married Sonya M. Hoover, a press officer for New York state. He had two sons, Thomas D. Weiss and Stephen R. Weiss, from an earlier marriage.