The year is 1962 and Republican Congressman Edwin Dooley of Westchester County, New York, wants a fourth term. However, he isn’t the most exceptional representative, and his record from a conservative perspective is rather middling. Enter Ogden “Brownie” Rogers Reid (1925-2019).
Brownie Reid hails from a historically Republican family…it was his politically influential grandfather, Whitelaw Reid, who was picked for VP on Benjamin Harrison’s 1892 reelection effort. His father, Ogden Mills Reid, formed the New York Herald Tribune, a prominent Rockefeller Republican newspaper which had been highly influential in the party’s nomination of Wendell Willkie in 1940. Reid was also related to Ogden Mills, who served as President Hoover’s final Secretary of the Treasury. Ogden Reid himself ran the Tribune from 1955 to 1958. The Tribune, however, was facing financial troubles brought in part from some disastrous business decisions and was increasingly being overshadowed by The New York Times. Thus, the family sold the paper to Ambassador to Britain John Hay Whitney. The Tribune would shutter in 1966. Reid himself served as Ambassador to Israel under President Eisenhower from 1959 to 1961. Governor Nelson Rockefeller then appointed him to the State Commission on Discrimination. Reid was throughout his political career a staunch supporter of civil rights legislation.
Reid had the family advantage over Dooley but also an age advantage: at 37 he was 20 years younger, and most crucially managed to get the local party organization to back him. One of the ways in which he hit Dooley was on attendance, and indeed he was worse than the median on roll call attendance of 2.1% at the time for legislators at 6%, missing 37 of 613 roll calls (Govtrack). Ironically, Reid’s average would be worse than Dooley’s. This was largely in his last term in Congress, missing 836 of 3,272 roll call votes throughout his career, or 25.6%; the median at the time was 9.7% (Govtrack). Reid won the primary and as a new member of Congress he initially voted in the middle: in 1963, his Americans for Constitutional Action (ACA) score was a 61% while his Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) score was a 55%. However, in the next year, Reid came out solidly for the Great Society, voting for the Economic Opportunity Act, mass transit legislation, and other LBJ initiatives. However, Reid did vote against the Food Stamp Act of 1964, making the program permanent. His ACA and ADA scores respectively for 1964 were a 26% and a 69%. Reid’s record would get more liberal after being reelected in 1964, and conservative Republicans remarked that his initials, “O.R.”, stood for “Occasionally Republican” (Whitestone).
Reid found vanishingly few points of agreement with conservatives over the years, occasionally backing budget cuts here and there. He was one of the few House Republicans to repeatedly vote to back rent subsidies, voted for Medicare as well as against a Republican motion to recommit. Although conservative candidates tried to primary him, they never succeeded. Indeed, Reid was very popular in the general elections, winning reelection by over 40 points in 1966, 1968, and 1970. In 1969, Reid was the only Republican to vote against the “Toward Peace with Justice in Vietnam” resolution, a Congressional endorsement of President Nixon’s goals in Vietnam. However, Reid, who was closely allied to New York City Mayor John Lindsay, found himself taking the same path out of the party he did. On March 22, 1972, Reid switched party affiliation to Democrat, holding that he could not back President Nixon for reelection, that the GOP had “moved to the right”, was “not showing the compassion and sensitivity to meet the problems of the average American”, and objected to Nixon’s record on civil rights, Supreme Court nominations, and Vietnam (Lynn). Reid also acknowledged that he was facing a tough challenge from the right in the primary and that Republicans wished to block his greater political ambitions in the state. The Nixon Administration response to his switch came from Press Secretary Ronald Zeigler: “Who?” (Lynn) To show how liberal Reid was, I have below his ACA and ADA scores, modified to count pairs for and against but not to count mere absences against legislators.
| Years | ACA | ADA |
| 1963 | 61 | 55 |
| 1964 | 26 | 69 |
| 1965 | 11 | 89 |
| 1966 | 35 | 88 |
| 1967 | 24 | 80 |
| 1968 | 9 | 91 |
| 1969 | 12 | 93 |
| 1970 | 16 | 91 |
| 1971 | 11 | 94 |
| 1972 | 0 | 100 |
| 1973 | 4 | 95 |
| 1974 | 0 | 91 |
| Average | 17 | 86 |
Reid as a Democrat
In 1972, Reid faced his closest election ever, winning by 4.6 points in the longtime Republican district, being the first Democrat to win an election in the district in sixty years, a district whose representative in 1935, Charles Millard, voted against Social Security. In 1973, he was one of 35 representatives to vote against confirming Gerald Ford as vice president. Although Brownie Reid switched to the Democratic Party for reasons ideological and for career advancement, his final term in Congress was marked by absenteeism due to his ambitions to run for governor, only to be overwhelmed by Democratic Congressman Hugh Carey as he could find little enthusiasm outside Westchester County and he dropped out of the race in June 1974. That year, Reid opted not to run for Congress again. In 1983, Reid one more time tried for elective office, as executive of Westchester County, but lost. He was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations up until his death on March 2, 2019.
Reid’s Career: A Portend for Westchester County
Since his departure from Congress in 1974, his territory was only represented by one more Republican in Joseph J. DioGuardi, who served from 1985 to 1989. It turns out that Reid’s shift was predictive for the direction of Westchester County. The Democrat who defeated DioGuardi, Nita Lowey, served until 2021. The county has not voted for a Republican for president since 1988 and in 2020 67.6% of the county’s vote went to Biden, a record for a Democrat. However, parts of Westchester County are, as of writing, represented by Republican Mike Lawler.
P.S.: RIP James Buckley. Although less known than his younger brother, William F. Buckley Jr., founder of National Review, he made his own contributions in his single term in the Senate, particularly in his efforts against campaign finance regulation. He was the plaintiff in the landmark Supreme Court decision, Buckley v. Valeo (1976), and is one of the few senators since 1856 to be elected to neither the Republican or Democratic Party platform. Buckley is also arguably the last conservative to be elected to the Senate from New York (to what degree Al D’Amato was, is debatable).
References
1973 ADA voting record. Americans for Democratic Action.
Retrieved from
https://adaction.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/1973.pdf
ADA 1969 The Ninety-First Congress First Session Voting Record. Americans for Democratic Action.
Retrieved from
ADA World Voting Record – 88th Congress, 2nd Session. Americans for Democratic Action.
Retrieved from
ADA World Voting Record Supplement – 88th Congress, 1st Session. Americans for Democratic Action.
Retrieved from
https://adaction.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/1963.pdf
Lynn, F. (1972, March 23). Reid Moves to Democratic Party To Seek Re-election to Congress. The New York Times.
Retrieved from
Presidential Election Results 1848-2020: How Westchester, Mamaroneck Voted. Mamaroneck Historical Society.
Retrieved from
https://www.mamaroneckhistoricalsociety.org/presidential-elections
Rep. Edwin Dooley. Govtrack.
Retrieved from
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/edwin_dooley/403537
Rep. Ogden Reid. Govtrack.
Retrieved from
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/ogden_reid/409127
Whitestone, R. (2019, April 2). Ogden Reid: A Link to Another Era in New York Politics. New York Almanack.
Retrieved from
Ogden Reid: A Link to Another Era in New York Politics
Mad Politics: The Bizarre, Fascinating, and Unknown of American Political History 