Ribicoff Intends to Retire from Senate at End of His Term in 1980

Sen. Abraham A. Ribicoff (D. Conn.) announced today that he intends to retire from the Senate when his term expires at the end of next year and declared that he wishes to return to private life at his home in Hartford, Conn.

Ribicoff, who is 69, mode his announcement prior to his original intentions, he said, because friends were talking of organizing a campaign for his fourth term in the Senate and he did not want them to waste their time and effort.

He and his wife, the former Lois Mathes, said they decided in 1974, following his re-election to the Senate that year, that he would not be a candidate for public office again. He said that he was not interested in an ambassadorial appointment or any other governmental post. He indicated he is averse to serving abroad by noting he wished to live the remainder of his life in the United States. He said he expects to stay busy in retirement but he did not elaborate on that.

Ribicoff’s retirement, while expected in political circles here for many months, was unexpected because of its timing. It immediately, raised speculation that his seat in the 1980 election — a Presidential election year — would be contested by Democratic Congressmen Toby Moffett and Christopher Dodd, both third term members of the House of Representatives.

Moffett, who was a staff assistant to Vice President Walter Mondale when he was a Minnesota Senator, has emerged in the House as a chief advocate of pro-Arab perceptions in the Middle East political process. Dodd, on the other hand, has visited Israel, the Soviet Union and West Germany to obtain factual evidence at first hand in support of Israel’s security, Soviet Jewry’s plight and extending West Germany’s statute of limitations on the prosecution of Nazi war criminals.

STRONG SUPPORTER OF ISRAEL

Ribicoff, an outstanding liberal, has been a leader in the Democratic Party for more than 40 years on the state and national levels. He began his career as a member of the Connecticut General Assembly in 1938. Later, after two terms in the House of Representatives, he returned to his native state to become its Governor for two terms President Kennedy named him Secretary of Health Education and Welfare in 1961. He left that past the following year to run successfully for the U.S. Senate where he is now serving his third term.

Ribicoff is a member of Temple Beth Israel in Hartford and of the Washington Hebrew Congregation here. A strong supporter of Israel, he nevertheless was a firm backer of President Carter’s Middle East policies, especially the package sale of advanced jet fighter planes to Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia which angered many friends of Israel.