Weicker's political career appeared to be over after his 1988 defeat, and he became a professor at the George Washington University Law School. However, he entered the 1990 gubernatorial election as the candidate of A Connecticut Party, running as a good government candidate and drawing on his coalition of liberal Republicans, moderate Democrats, and independent voters. The early 1990s recession had hit Connecticut hard, worsened by the fall in revenues from traditional sources such as sales tax and corporation tax, and exacerbating the state's inequality and crime rates. Connecticut politics had a tradition at the time of opposition to a state income tax — one had been implemented in 1971 but rescinded after six weeks under public pressure. Weicker initially campaigned on a platform of solving Connecticut's fiscal crisis without implementing an income tax. He won in a three-way race with Republican John G. Rowland and Democrat Bruce Morrison, taking 40% of the vote against Rowland's 37% and Morrison's 20%. Weicker lost Fairfield and New Haven County counties to Rowland, but won eastern Connecticut, drawing especially strong support from the Hartford metro area, where he had been strongly endorsed by the "Hartford Courant" and by many state employee labor unions. The "Los Angeles Times" wrote that support from Democrats was credited for Weicker's victory, reflected in Morrison's third-place finish.