At one time, Rhode Island was a staunchly Republican state, but things began to change with the 1928 election in which although Herbert Hoover scored a resounding national victory, the Democrats succeeded in mobilizing their voters in Rhode Island and won the state for Smith. Not too long after, Democrats in the state began making major gains, with the leading figure being Theodore Green as governor. His time as governor led to the Senate for him, being elected in 1936. However, by 1960, Green was 93 years old and hard-of-hearing. He had not too long before been eased out of his chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by LBJ in favor of Arkansas’ J. William Fulbright. A new figure needed to step up, and that was Claiborne Pell (1918-2009).
Politics were deeply ingrained in Pell’s family, with an ancestor serving as the state’s lieutenant governor as well as his father Herbert serving as a diplomat and a term in Congress from Manhattan from 1919 to 1921. Pell and his wife were friends of the Kennedys, and John joked of him that he was “the least electable man in America” because he had some strange habits and beliefs. Among his oddities were his beliefs in UFOs, psychic mediums, and ESP, buying used cars and using public transportation despite his wealth, and wore his father’s belt despite his father having been an overweight man while Pell was rail-thin. Pell thought of himself as “about as improbable, impossible and implausible a candidate as could have turned up in many a moon” (Roberts). Ironically given Kennedy’s joking, Pell not only in his first time ever running for elected office defeated the choice of the state Democratic establishment in the Senate primary, he also won the election. Although his lifestyle was generally upper-class despite his practices on used cars and public transportation, he was quite popular with working class voters in Rhode Island. Part of his popularity was his ability to campaign in the native languages of numerous of the state’s immigrant populations as he spoke French, Italian, and Portuguese. Pell was considered by some to be too nice…he didn’t once in his political career run a negative campaign, although he seldom had a need to do so. In office, he proved a liberal who supported civil rights and the New Frontier and Great Society programs. His best friend in the Senate was liberal Republican Jacob Javits of New York, with who he would frequently collaborate to advance liberal legislation. The conservative lobbying group Americans for Constitutional Action would judge him as a staunch liberal, with his career average score, taking pairs and certain position announcements into account between 1961 and 1984, being an 8%. The occasional exceptions he made tended to involve agricultural issues and occasional military procurement and development, such as for a nuclear attack aircraft carrier in 1972 and the SAM-D missile in 1973. He would, however, oppose the B-1 Bomber and MX Missile. Pell also opposed bailing out businesses, casting votes against the Lockheed Martin bailout in 1971 and the Chrysler bailout in 1979. Pell’s most notable achievement, and its the achievement that makes his last name familiar to many, is the Pell Grant to fund college educations, which was included in the 1972 Basic Educational Opportunity Act. This was also the achievement he was most proud of. That year, he faced his most formidable challenger in Republican John Chafee, former governor and President Nixon’s Secretary of the Navy. Initially, polls put Chafee up on Pell by 25 points, and indeed 1972 was an election that for once could work in favor for the Republicans for national office in Rhode Island; the last time they won a Congressional election in the state was in 1938 and the last time they had won a Senate seat was in 1930. Pell would prevail, but by single digits, and it was the only time he did not win all the state’s counties. Four years later, Chafee would win Rhode Island’s other Senate seat with the retirement of John Pastore. The two would serve together for twenty years.
Pell was effective at pushing his priorities while forming bipartisan compromises given his nonconfrontational demeanor that emphasized discussion, artfully characterizing his skill as “letting the other fellow have my way” (Roberts). Among his other accomplishments included sponsoring the bill establishing the National Endowment of the Arts and the National Endowment of the Humanities and sponsoring legislation for Amtrak. He also served on the powerful Foreign Relations Committee and was its chairman from 1987 to 1995, often sparring with North Carolina’s ultra-conservative Jesse Helms. Pell was an internationalist, backing foreign aid. Although a strong supporter of President Carter and generally of his foreign policy, he dissented on Carter’s sale of fighter jets to Egypt, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, seeing this policy as on net disadvantaging Israel. Pell was an opponent of the Reagan Administration, both domestically and on its increased military spending as well as support for El Salvador and the Contras.
In 1990, Pell faced another significant challenger in Republican Congresswoman Claudine Schneider. Despite Schneider being liberal and voters generally liking her, many didn’t want to risk control of the Senate going to Republicans, and Pell was victorious with 61% of the vote. Shortly after, he cast his vote against the US authorizing military force against Iraq for its invasion of Kuwait. Pell was an opponent of the Contract with America agenda of Congressional Republicans and in 1996 he was one of 14 senators to vote against the Defense of Marriage Act. In December 1994, he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, and although he mulled for a time whether to run again, he ultimately opted to retire. Pell died on January 1, 2009 at the age of 90. It is so rich with irony that the man JFK once jokingly called the “least electable man in America” turned out to be the most electable man Rhode Island ever sent to the Senate.
References
Claiborne Pell dies at 90; former Rhode Island senator, creator of Pell Grants. (2009, January 2). Los Angeles Times.
Retrieved from
https://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-pell2-2009jan02-story.html
Lesniewski, N. (2011, November 29). Claiborne Pell: Story of an Uncommon Senator. Roll Call.
Retrieved from
https://rollcall.com/2011/11/29/claiborne-pell-story-of-an-uncommon-senator/
Ludes, J. (2018, November 20). Sen. Pell: Life and legacy. The Newport Daily News.
Retrieved from
Pell, Claiborne de Borda. Voteview.
Retrieved from
https://voteview.com/person/10818/claiborne-de-borda-pell
Roberts, T. (2021, Fall). Senator Claiborne Pell Helped Bring the Arts and Humanities to Every State. Humanities, 42(4).
Retrieved from
https://www.neh.gov/article/senator-claiborne-pell-helped-bring-arts-and-humanities-every-state
Mad Politics: The Bizarre, Fascinating, and Unknown of American Political History 