Honest Man: The Life of R. Budd Dwyer

R. Budd Dwyer was the State Treasurer of Pennsylvania in the 1980s, a humble and modest man who rose his way to the top after serving in Pennsylvania’s State Senate in the 1970s. He wasn’t really known nationally outside of his jurisdiction, until being caught up in a bribery scandal led to call a press conference, seemingly to resign after being convicted of accepted bribes. Instead, he read a long speech saying goodbye to his position, then put a gun in his mouth and killed himself in front of television cameras. His death was not only shocking, but raised ethics of whether it was appropriate to air his death on TV in the name of journalism, or if people capitalized on the salaciousness of his final moments. Honest Man, a film by James Dirschbeger, takes Dwyer’s story and expands it beyond his notoriety, to look at a modest man who only wanted the best for his state, yet may have been too trusting of nefarious influences.

Budd Dwyer, a Republican, got involved with politics at a young age, elected to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in 1965, when he was just 26. He served many years in the Senate, and was a tireless self-promoter, often going door-to-door and giving nail files to women and sets of matches for men. He was warm and likable, and eventually became State Treasurer in 1981. He and his wife Joanne were very known and popular amongst the political elite, even having known Ronald and Nancy Reagan.

The film gets a little tricky and confusing when describing the exact financial scandals that went on in the early 1980s. People who worked for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania overpaid millions of dollars in federal taxes, and the state sought money from accounting firms to pay refunds for the employees. The owner of a company called Computer Technology Associates, named John Torquato, Jr., who had connections to organized crime, used bribery to get millions of dollars for the state. The governor at the time, Dick Thornburgh, heard of the bribe and investigated Dwyer as treasurer for accepting the bribes. Dwyer, along with Republican Party Chairman Robert Asher, Torquato, Torquato’s attorney William Smith and Smith’s wife, were all found guilty of bribery. Dwyer, despite having initially been indicted on receiving a kickback of $300,000, always professed his innocence, and nobody close to him could imagine him as guilty. He was sentenced to 55 years in prison.

So if Dwyer was innocent, why would he commit suicide, and do it so publically? If he had been sentenced to prison, it would be likely that his sentence would have been reduced on good behavior. A possibility was that, if he wasn’t state treasurer, he would have lost his pension, and his death would have provided benefits for his family. He didn’t show any signs of possibly committing suicide, his family was just as shocked as everyone else.

The effect of Dwyer’s suicide did not change anything, or make any kind of dent in the political system. It was rerun by news media making money off of the notoriety of his death, trying to get ratings. Dwyer’s son Robert is visibly disgusted at reporters who claim that they are showcasing his death to educate people, retorting that they were thinking more about getting a Pulitzer. Joanne, who passed away in 2009, gives a thoughtful and engaging interview on the life of her husband, still believing him to be an innocent man all those years later.

An Honest Man takes a stab at showing a public figure as a more dimensional person, beyond his grisly end and who he was as a person. It could be compared to the wishes of the filmmakers behind The Tillman Story, who wanted to show Pat Tillman as a real human being, and not being defined by his death or the media manipulation of his image. However, there isn’t anything about Dwyer that seems remarkable or noteworthy beyond his years in politics. He was a Republican politician who cared for his family and appealed to the common man, and who chose a violent and senseless way to make his mark on the world.

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