Ben Wattenberg

Joseph Ben Zion Wattenberg was born in the Bronx on Aug. 26, 1933, a son of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. His father, Judah, was a real estate lawyer. His mother, the former Rachel Gutman, was a nutritionist. He was raised in the Amalgamated Houses union cooperative and attended DeWitt Clinton High School. Even growing up as a Bronx boy, he was a contrarian: He dreamed of playing center field for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Instead, he graduated from Hobart College in Geneva, N.Y., in 1955, served in the Air Force and worked as a journalist, specializing in nautical stories. Mr. Wattenberg also had stints as a political operative. President Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration hired him as a researcher and speechwriter. He went on to help Mr. Humphrey return to the Senate after his defeat in the 1968 presidential election and worked on Mr. Jackson’s unsuccessful efforts to win the presidential nomination in 1972 and ’76. Mr. Wattenberg helped found the Coalition for a Democratic Majority. Its aim was to shift the party back to the center by focusing on pocketbook issues and centrist themes that resonated with what he considered the moderate majority and which Bill Clinton would eventually corral for the Democratic side in 1992. Besides his son, Daniel, he and the former Marna Hade, who died in 1997, had two other children who survive him, Ruth and Sarah. He is also survived by his second wife, Diane Abelman, and their daughter, Rachel, as well as a sister, the actress Rebecca Schull, and four grandchildren.