politics

Fascinating Politics

William F. Knowland: The Golden State’s Senate Republican Leader

At one time, California Republicans were of great significance; Hiram Johnson was a celebrated leader of the progressive faction of the Republican Party and nationally known for his role in defeating the Versailles Treaty, Richard Nixon was from California, and Ronald Reagan’s political career began in California. As late as 2023, a California Republican had a leadership role, Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Another figure of significance, although not as well known as Nixon or Reagan, was William Fife Knowland (1908-1974), who was one of the foremost figures of Washington at the height of his power.

Knowland’s birth as well as how his father, J.R. Knowland, regarded him set him up for a career in politics. The elder Knowland had been a member of Congress in the conservative faction of the party from the Roosevelt to Wilson Administrations representing Oakland (different time, different Oakland). J.R. also was a mentor to Earl Warren, who would diverge considerably from conservative politics with time. From his youth, the younger Knowland was an active player in California politics, serving in the State Assembly from 1933 to 1935 and the State Senate from 1935 to 1939. In 1942, at the age of 34, he joined the army; he and his father’s newspaper, the Oakland Tribune, for which he worked as assistant publisher, had supported the peacetime draft law and he figured that if he supported such a policy that he should live it for the duration of the war.

After Senator Hiram Johnson died in 1945, Warren approached J.R. Knowland about a temporary Senate appointment, but he declined and recommended his son. Interestingly, Knowland learned of his appointment by the reading the Stars and Stripes newspaper; his wife Helen had attempted to call him to tell him about his appointment, but her call was turned down by military censors as “not essential government business” (Hill). The army honorably discharged him and sent him to Washington to serve.

Although Knowland would develop a public reputation as a conservative, in his first years in the Senate he was politically moderate. Indeed, when appointed, he publicly identified himself as a “liberal Republican pointed toward national social programs and business stability and international cooperation based on a non-partisan approach to foreign policy” (Montgomery and Johnson, 53). He demonstrated his willingness by backing President Truman’s Full Employment bill in 1945, which would be signed into law but in a compromised form the following year. He was, however, fiscally conservative, and was concerned about the accumulation of debt (Montgomery and Johnson, 67). Knowland’s warnings on debt have since been largely unheeded by both parties. In 1950, Knowland, a strong supporter of authority of states, sponsored an amendment to that year’s Social Security bill restricting the authority of the Social Security Administrator to require states to adopt federal standards for unemployment compensation, requiring a 90 day notice for noncompliance findings and required judicial review before funds could be withheld from states. The amendment was adopted as part of that year’s legislation. Bill Knowland was also not what we would think of as a politician temperamentally, he was humorless, not charismatic, and had a tendency not to remember people he had previously met. However, he was also highly principled, and indeed the integrity of his public life is unblemished. However, Knowland’s private life was a different story. Although he and his wife Helen loved each other, both had extra-marital affairs. They had married very young and hadn’t had a chance to “sow their wild oats”. Helen conducted an affair with journalist and later senator Blair Moody, while Knowland had an affair with Moody’s wife, Ruth.

In 1952, Knowland faithfully backed fellow Californian and family friend Earl Warren for the Republican nomination for president. Richard Nixon was also supposed to be a backer of Warren, but he double-crossed Warren by working behind the scenes to get the California delegation to flip to Eisenhower on key procedural votes during the Republican National Convention, thus securing his nomination (Farrell). Knowland himself had received an offer for an arrangement from Taft which he declined, most likely meaning a vice president nomination in exchange getting California’s delegates to his side. Had Knowland acted before Nixon, he would have secured the nomination for Taft. And since Taft died on July 31, 1953, we would have had President Knowland. This demonstrates that principles in politics can come at a cost. Earl Warren, however, would get a pretty substantial consolation prize with the advocacy of Knowland: Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. During the Eisenhower presidency, he increasingly identified with the conservative wing, particularly once he succeeded Taft as Senate Republican leader, and voted against Senator Joseph McCarthy’s censure in 1954. Although not a slavish devotee of his, indeed Knowland had voted against his pushes to reject Charles Bohlen’s nomination as Ambassador to Russia as well as reducing aid to nations trading with Red China in 1953 and objected to his breaches of Senatorial decorum, he nonetheless thought that McCarthy’s prime sin was exaggeration as opposed to the validity of his crusade. He reflected on McCarthy in 1970, “…one of Joe McCarthy’s liabilities was a tendency to overstate his case. I think he hurt himself a good deal by this overstating his case, and he offended a lot of Republican senators by some of the statements he made” and further stated, “I haven’t agreed with Senator Fulbright on the way he performed either during the Eisenhower Administration or during the Johnson Administration, or even currently. But he was a senator of the United States, and I really resented when McCarthy got up on the floor and referred to him as Senator Halfbright. I mean, it was this kind of a thing, you know, that just isn’t done” (Frantz, 21).

As a leader, Knowland was not as skilled as Democratic leader Lyndon B. Johnson, who often got the better of him. As veteran journalist William S. White noted, “Knowland was very inflexible and not one-tenth as bright as Johnson in maneuvers and so on. So Johnson took care that he always maintained a very close personal relationship with Knowland, so that he could approach him at any time. He really just sort of overwhelmed Knowland with his brilliance as a leader” but also added that, “It only meant that he was a more intuitive man, operating with more freedom of motion in a more relaxed party. To put it another way, the stiffness of Knowland, an honorable and very down-right man quite incapable of subtlety, had a kind of inevitability in the very nature of his party. The flexible, inventive, more volatile characteristics of Johnson were in a sense really the human characteristics of his party” (Montgomery and Johnson, 140-141). President Eisenhower also noted Knowland’s deficit in leadership. He wrote in his diary on January 18, 1954, “Knowland means to be helpful and loyal, but he is cumbersome. He does not have the sharp mind and the great experience that Taft did. Consequently, he does not command the respect in the Senate that Senator Taft enjoyed” (Montgomery and Johnson, 150-151). While Knowland was without question a man of integrity in his public actions, his leadership deficiencies precluded moving higher. Interestingly, something that also connects to today is Knowland’s recounting of himself and other members of the Republican Senate leadership trying to convince President Eisenhower to replace some of Truman’s people in government departments, which he would not budge on as he did not want to be seen as attacking the civil service (Frantz, 24-25). Republican presidents since have been more friendly to the views of Knowland and other Republican bigwigs in the need to build up the party. Although Eisenhower had his differences with Knowland and others in the Republican leadership, Knowland rejected the interpretation that Eisenhower was ideologically closer to Democratic leader Lyndon B. Johnson than the GOP (Frantz, 29). In 1957, he sponsored an unsuccessful amendment retaining the restriction on bartering of commodities for communist nations, in keeping with his anti-communist stance. In 1958, Knowland successfully introduced an amendment blocking liberalization of the Battle Act as an amendment to foreign aid legislation to permit aid to communist nations aside from the USSR, China, and North Korea. Consistent with his views on unions, he also sponsored two unsuccessful secret ballot amendments to that year’s proposed labor reform bill.

Knowland and Civil Rights

After the decision of Brown v. Board of Education (1954), legislative action was bound to follow. In 1956, the House passed an Eisenhower Administration-backed civil rights bill, which focused on voting rights. Knowland and Majority Leader Johnson wanted to hold off on civil rights until after the election, and all but five senators agreed. In 1957, Knowland backed the Eisenhower Administration bill fully, and managed to bypass the Senate Judiciary Committee to bring it to the floor. The committee was chaired by James Eastland (D-Miss.), one of the most prominent and outspoken segregationists who made the committee a graveyard for civil rights bills. However, Knowland did not prevail in his effort to prevent weakening amendments, most notably striking the section of the bill granting the Attorney General authority to initiate 14th Amendment lawsuits and the adoption of a jury trial provision for contempt of court voting rights cases. Majority Leader Johnson had prevailed in the adoption of the latter two, which resulted in passage of the bill, as the Southern bloc had agreed not to have a coordinated filibuster if these weakening amendments were added. Johnson got a good deal of credit for securing the passage of the first civil rights bill, which also cemented him as a national rather than regional figure and made him a presidential contender.

Knowland atop an elephant during the 1958 Senate campaign.

Defeat and After

I have already covered the story of Knowland and the 1958 election, so long story short, he lost the gubernatorial election badly to Pat Brown in a deeply troubled campaign, and this ended his political career. Knowland sided with the liberal Americans for Democratic Action 31% of the time, and the conservative Americans for Constitutional Action 77% of the time, both measures indicating a moderate conservatism. His DW-Nominate score is a 0.227. Knowland’s political career was over at the age of 50, and he resumed publishing, succeeding his father as publisher for the Oakland Tribune.

Although Helen Knowland’s extra-marital activities had ended with Blair Moody’s death in 1954, Bill’s affair with Ruth lasted until her death in 1961, and he continued to have affairs after. Finally, in 1972, the couple divorced so Bill could marry a much younger woman. However, she was a tempestuous woman, a full-blown alcoholic, and addicted to spending. This, combined with Knowland’s gambling addiction drained the family fortune. By 1974, Knowland was over $900,000 (over $5 million in today’s money) in debt to banks and mobsters. He considered selling the Oakland Tribune, but he ended up landing on a different course of action. On the morning of February 23, 1974, Knowland drove up to his compound in Guerneville, got his gun, went to his pier on the Russian River, and fired a shot into his right temple, dying instantly at the age of 65.

References

ADA Voting Records. Americans for Democratic Action.

Retrieved from

Voting Records

Farrell, J.A. (2017, March 21). Richard Nixon’s Ugly, 30-Year Feud with Earl Warren. Smithsonian Magazine.

Retrieved from

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/inside-story-richard-nixons-ugly-30-year-feud-earl-warren-180962614/

Frantz, J.B. (1970, March 23). Oral history transcript, William F. Knowland, interview 1 (I). LBJ Presidential Library.

Retrieved from

https://discoverlbj.org/item/oh-knowlandw-19700323-1-00-05

Knowland, William Fife. Voteview.

Retrieved from

https://voteview.com/person/5343/william-fife-knowland

Montgomery, G.B. & Johnson, J.W. (1998). One step from the White House: the rise and fall of Senator William F. Knowland. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Retrieved from

https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft4k4005jq;chunk.id=0;doc.view=print

Fascinating Politics

A Look at Hitler Was a Liberal by Joseph P. Kamp

There is a persistent ideological debate on where to place the Nazis. The American left loves to tar and feather the American right with comparisons to Nazis, and the common designation for Nazis is “far right” and the same people who apply that label I notice apply this label to a growing number of Republican officeholders. The right hits back by claiming that Nazism is a form of socialism, a rival socialism to Marx. The application of the term “Liberal” to Hitler is for most people a bizarre and unthinkable application. After all, Hitler and the Nazis were extremely socially conservative. However, it definitely can be argued that the Nazis’ efforts to undermine Christianity with a state-sponsored “Positive Christianity” go against the social conservatism of the United States, which is overwhelmingly based in Christianity. Joseph P. Kamp argued for Hitler being a liberal, as least a New Deal one, in 1949. But before I dive further into this, a bit of background on the author.

Background on the Author

Joseph P. Kamp, 1944.

Joseph Peter Kamp (1900-1993) was perhaps the most prolific right-wing pamphleteer of the 20th century. He started his activities in 1919 when the Constitutional Educational League was formed. Kamp become the organization’s lead spokesman in 1925, and basically became the League. In 1934, he would collaborate with Harold Lord Varney, Lawrence Dennis, and former Populist Congressman Milford W. Howard of Alabama in launching The Awakener, a newspaper that was strongly opposed to the New Deal and to the growing power of organized labor. Kamp authored numerous provocative pamphlets the Constitutional Educational League and later through Headlines, including Vote CIO and get a Soviet America (1944), We Must Abolish the United States: The Hidden Facts Behind the Crusade for World Government (1950), and Behind the Plot to Sovietize the South (1956). A notable pamphlet attacking Kamp was Joe Kamp: Hero of the Pro-Fascists by the organization Friends of Democracy. He was also regularly accused of anti-Semitism and fascism, including an indictment of the Constitutional Educational League in 1942 for allegedly seeking to undermine the U.S. Army and Navy. He was also indicted twice for contempt of Congress; first over his refusal to answer questions and the second time for refusal to disclose his backers and was convicted for the first time but acquitted the second time. While I think the charge of fascism is highly disputable for him, the anti-Semitism is pretty beyond dispute given what I have read of Kamp, and his association with notorious anti-Semite Willis Carto from the 1960s all the way up to the 1980s as part of Liberty Lobby includes letters the two wrote to each other. There is one in particular demonstrating that he was actively seeking to deny the Holocaust. The damning passage reads, “…I think I wrote to you once that I intended to deal with the allegation that six million Jews are supposed to have been put to death by the Nazis because the ADL now has the Catholic Church spreading this lie. When I get through demolishing the fable I am going to quote a Jewish author who writes that while FIVE million Jews are said to have been liquidated between 1933 and 1945, there were SEVEN million Christians who suffered the same fate” (Kamp, 1968). Kamp here is, ironically for someone on the right, not understanding “per capita” as there were far less Jews than Christians in Europe even if the figures he cites were accurate, as well as papering over that Jews were targeted directly for their religion as opposed to Christians who unless they were vocal faith-based dissenters were targeted because they were part of other groups the Nazis were interested in terminating. Simply put, he wished to downplay the impact of what he calls “Hitler’s anti-Jewish terror” (Kamp, 1968).  Anyway, on to Kamp’s pamphlet, Hitler Was a Liberal!

Kamp’s (1949) premise is, “Hitler’s ideology and program are shockingly parallel to the philosophy and measures currently expounded and promoted by a powerful clique of Americans who have the effrontery to call themselves “liberals”. This same “liberal” clique hails the results at the polls in the 1948 election as a “liberal” victory and a “mandate” from the American people for a “liberal” legislative program, a program which is strikingly similar to proposals set forth in Hitler’s Mein Kampf”. The paradox is due to the Red political smog which has been systematically exuded over our people to becloud their understanding of this time-honored and deeply-cherished American characteristic” (3-4).

Kamp proceeds to argue that the term “liberal” as commonly applied at the time of writing is a bad misnomer. He defines a traditional liberal as, “…one with generous mental horizons. He is open-minded, looks at both sides of a question. He has foresight as well as hindsight. He knows the past, and resolutely faces the future. He is not rutted in iron-clad tradition, nor given to impractical wishful thinking. He judges an issue in the light of fact and existing circumstance, and is not unduly swayed either be precept or roseate promise. He has common sense, good will and a profound belief in individual rights and liberties” (Kamp, 5).

Kamp considers those who call themselves liberal in 1949 thusly, “For the most part, his “liberalism” is characterized by VIOLENT OPPOSITION TO THE ESTABLISHED ORDER; which, according to him, has plenty of faults and few virtues; he is “all out” for revolutionary change – without a serious thought as to the consequences; he admits that there are two sides to every question – but the other side is always “reactionary;” he claims an open mind on everything – provided that it conforms to his own view” (6).

Kamp (1949) holds that “The real power behind the scenes Is not the Politburo; it is THE PHILOSOPHY OF SOCIALISM. We are inclined to think of the cold war in terms of the Kremlin, and to forget that Russian Communism is but one form of Socialism in action. The history of Soviet Socialism goes back no farther than November, 1917. Marxist Socialism with its plan of world revolution goes back a hundred years. All Socialism springs from the same root and produces the same narcotic to liberty. There is no Socialism of any hue which is not based upon the sacrifice of human rights and liberties for State slavery, and all Socialism is a political pyramid dominated by a dictator and his chosen bureaucrats. Every attempt at applied Socialism in the world has resulted in a dictatorship” (9-10).

His case for Hitler the Liberal?

“If opposition to the conservative social order, the building of a welfare state, wholesale raids on private property and fundamental human rights (all of which the new “liberalism” is promoting in the United States) are the earmarks of a “Liberal”, then Adolf Hitler should be enshrined as one of the mighty heroes of the “liberal movement,” for who more than the paperhanger of Bavaria gave wholeheartedly of his time and genius to the “liberal” cause of destroying governments, property and human rights, and building Socialist – welfare – slave states” (Kamp, 13). He makes his case by comparing points in the Nazi Party’s 25 point program to what New Deal liberals were standing for in 1949.

Kamp’s Comparisons:

“Hitler proposed “nationalization of education to give equality of advantages to all.” Our “liberals” demand Federal Aid to Education – the prelude to “nationalization.”

“Hitler demanded “equal rights for all German citizens.” Our “liberals” demand an F.E.P.C. law.”

“Hitler promised “old age pensions.” Our “liberals” propose increased old age pensions and expanded Social Security.” (14)

“Hitler sponsored “nationalization of public health service.” Our “liberals” are backing Socialized Medicine.”

“Hitler demanded the “nationalization of trusts.” Our “liberals” want 19 more TVAs and the right to “nationalize” our steel industry as a starter.”

“Hitler was for “a strong central state power.” Our “liberals” want all Government power to be concentrated in a bureaucratized executive department, and to make Congress a “rubber stamp.”

“Hitler did something else that is “happening here.” He concentrated the taxing power in Berlin, and doled back locally collected tax money to local politicians who did his bidding. Thus he broke down local self-government which was in Germany, as it has been in the United States, the bulwark of freedom”. (Kamp, 15)

There are some significant issues here. While all of the NSDAP points he reports are accurate, the context leaves a bit to be desired to put it lightly. First, lets cover the most obvious one, “equal rights for all German citizens” equating to proposed anti-discrimination laws. This point completely neglects that anti-discrimination laws in the United States would cover Jews as religion-based discrimination was to be prohibited, while in Germany Jews were stripped of their citizenship, consistent with another one of these 25 points, thus “equal rights” does not apply to them. This cannot have escaped Kamp given that he clearly read the 25 points.

Second, the point of “nationalization of trusts” has an anti-Semitic basis, in that the owners of major department stores in Germany at the time of the platform were Jewish. Thus, it wasn’t just out of a sense of left-wing populism that Nazis went against “trusts”.

Third, Hitler’s proposed “nationalization of public health service” was not the equivalent of single-payer healthcare. Single-payer healthcare was a post-World War II phenomenon, not something that arose in Nazi Germany. Kamp seeks to tie New Deal liberalism together with the totalitarianism of Hitler and call both forms of socialism.

Some points that I find have greater accuracy are:

The comparison of “old age pensions”. Something to note is that Germany had already set up a social insurance system for invalidity and old age under Otto von Bismarck, and although the Nazi regime did plan on an expanded old age pension scheme to be paid for by “plutocrats”, the plan was shelved in 1940 until the war was to be won (The New York Times). This is a bit more accurate on Kamp’s part because the Nazis did intend on this to happen, although their focus was far more on war preparation.

The comparison of states and federal control. Nazi Germany outright replaced the authority of German states with party district leaders, who reported directly to Hitler. This destroyed sovereignty of individual German states. Kamp’s comparison between liberal efforts to expand and concentrate federal authority in the United States and Germany’s knocking out of sovereignty of individual states, although hyperbolic, is admittedly in the same direction of power orientation that modern liberals since at least the New Deal have sought. Democrats seek to consolidate power in the federal, and the Nazis sought to consolidate power on Germany’s national level.

Despite some actual points, the validity of comparisons have significant limitations. For one thing, the staunch social liberalism would find little to no place in the Nazi agenda save for pushes against traditional religions. Although there is a point to be had about parties making lofty promises for providing a lot and then providing dictatorship. Although Kamp points to federalization as a potential threat to freedom and I think there are substantial arguments behind this, he engages in hyperbole and regarding Hitler and “equal rights”, gross distortion.

References

Kamp, J.P. (1968, December 31). Letter to Willis Carto.

Retrieved from

Joseph P. Kamp

Kamp, J.P. (1949). Hitler was a Liberal. New York, NY: Constitutional Educational League.

Retrieved from

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=osu.32435001551258&seq=3

Nazis Seen Shelving Old-Age Pension Plan. (1940, April 4). The New York Times.

Retrieved from

Stapp, A. (2019, March 11). Tim Wu’s Bad History: Big Business and the Rise of Fascism. Niskanen Center.

Retrieved from

Retrieved from

https://www.niskanencenter.org/big-business-rise-fascism-bad-history-tim-wu/

Fascinating Politics

The California Swap: A Great Political Misstep

Back in the 1950s, California had two Republican senators. What a concept, right? Their two senators were Minority Leader William F. Knowland and Thomas Kuchel. Knowland was counted among the conservatives and was a Cold War hawk, making opposition to Communist China and support of Nationalist China a signature issue. He had been a key player in pushing the Civil Rights Act of 1957 to passage, although he was unable to prevent the adoption of weakening provisions. California’s governor at the time was Goodwin “Goodie” Knight. From the late 19th century to this time, Republicans had been the dominant party in California. The last time the state had two Democratic senators was during the War of the Rebellion, and from 1896 onward, only once had a Democrat been elected governor, Cuthbert Olson, in 1938. He only served one term and is not considered one of the state’s notable governors, and had been succeeded by Republican Earl Warren, one of the state’s most notable governors and by this time chief justice. California Republicans were at the time a big tent party, having had prominent conservatives as well as progressives. Knowland as Republican leader since 1953 was one of the most prominent men in Washington.

William F. Knowland

By 1957, Knowland had his eyes set outside of the Senate. The 1958 elections were coming up, and on October 3rd, he announced he was running for governor. A popular narrative surrounding this decision is that Knowland had his eyes on the presidency and thought that being governor would be a good stepping stone to a 1960 run. He addressed this at the time, stating, “if nominated and elected, I will devote myself faithfully to the administration of the duties of the office for the term or terms to which I might be elected” but declined to issue a Sherman statement definitively ruling out a presidential run (Montgomery & Johnson, 240). Knowland’s declining to do so continued the speculation and accusations. In a 1970 interview, he denied the presidency was his motive, rather that he wanted to end his career on a high note and he wanted to return to California to be closer to his family (Frantz, 46). Knowland, however, would have to challenge popular Governor Knight for renomination, a task he felt up to. Knight initially resolved to face off Senator Knowland, however, he had secured the support of his colleague Kuchel as well as the entire Republican Congressional delegation and worse yet polling was showing he would be losing to Knowland 3 to 1 (Montgomery & Johnson, 240-241).  Knight kept out of the public eye in early November, but once he reemerged, he announced his bid for the Senate. Critics accused Knowland of masterminding the swapping of offices. However, he held that circumstances had “…opened up a false charge that this was a deal, whereby in effect I had entered into [an agreement] with Knight to get him out of the governorship and in turn get him into the senatorial race, which plagued me during the campaign” (Frantz, 45). If this is so, who or what was behind Governor Knight choosing to switch elections? The major sources were Vice President Nixon and the Chandler family, which owned the Los Angeles Times and were backing Knowland. In 1964, Knight himself identified Richard Nixon as the source of pressure for his switch, stating, “The long series of disasters which Republicans have suffered in California since 1958 can be traced to the ‘big switch’ in which I was denied financial aid unless I agreed to run for senator instead of governor” (Montgomery & Johnson, 242-243).  This switch negatively impacted the Republican ticket but in particular Knowland’s campaign. Essentially, Knowland was taking the fall for Nixon’s scheming. What’s more, Democrats had two solid candidates for both offices: Edmund “Pat” Brown and Clair Engle. Brown had been elected state attorney general in 1950 and Engle had represented the Sacramento Valley in Congress since 1943. Brown, a popular figure, ran on a platform of “responsible liberalism” and Engle could point to a significant achievement in his record in securing funds for the Central Valley irrigation project. There was also a significant statewide issue that benefited the Democrats and haunted the Republicans.

The Impact of Prop 18

An important issue in a number of states were “right to work” proposals. In California, this was Prop 18, and if enacted it would have allowed employees at a company that had a union to not join it as a condition of employment. This proposition motivated unions to go into overdrive in campaigning and getting their members out to vote. Knowland, who had repeatedly supported measures curbing the power of organized labor in the Senate, supported Prop 18 while Governor Knight opposed. Knight’s opposition as well as his record as governor did secure him some organized labor support. Knowland’s opponent, Democrat Edmund “Pat” Brown, ran heavily against Prop 18. Knight’s opponent, Democratic Congressman Clair Engle, also managed to win organized labor support.

Other Issues

Another issue for Knowland’s campaign was that he did not appear all that much in California in the early stages of the primary campaign, opting instead to campaign from Washington and worse yet, while he initially supported complete federal funding of the Trinity River portion of the Central Valley Project, he changed course and announced support or a deal involving Pacific Gas and Electric Company, in which they would construct power stations and sell the power for profit, with Pat Brown promptly taking the opposite position (Montgomery & Johnson, 243-244). Numerous missteps occurred in the Knowland campaign and there was clear disunity between Knowland and Knight. One such misstep was his wife Helen sending out copies of a pamphlet to Republican officials titled “Meet the Man Who Plans to Rule America”, a hit piece on United Auto Workers leader Walter Reuther by the extremely right-wing pamphleteer Joseph P. Kamp who had been accused of being anti-Semitic and a fascist (Montgomery & Johnson, 248-249). However, a devastating blow to the campaign came about when the disunity of the Republican ticket became official. On October 4th, Knight announced that he would not be supporting Knowland’s campaign for governor over his positions on labor issues (Montgomery & Johnson, 249). By the final weeks of the campaign, obituaries were being preemptively written for the Knowland campaign. Historically in California, the press supported Republican politicians, but the senator and Helen continued to make missteps on the campaign, and this resulted in a withdrawal of an endorsement by the San Francisco Chronicle and the endorsement of Pat Brown by the normally Republican San Francisco Examiner (Montgomery & Johnson, 252).

Results

The 1958 election resulted in Democrat Pat Brown winning 60-40 and Democrat Clair Engle winning 57-43 for the Senate. This was the real start of the rise of the Democratic Party in California. In Knowland’s home turf of Oakland, Republican Congressman John J. Allen lost reelection to Democrat Jeffery Cohelan, and Oakland would only move more and more to the left, never again being represented by a Republican. Knowland was reserved on whether he had made a mistake running for governor, stating, “Now, I don’t say that I would have been elected that year because we lost a lot of Republicans. You remember Sputnik had been put up. We had a recession on. We lost senators in the states where they didn’t even have the right-to-work issue on the ballot” (Frantz, 45). Worse yet for Republicans, Democrats managed to win control of both the State Senate and Assembly, the first time they had held both in many years. Democrats have consistently held majorities in both chambers since, the only exceptions being 1969 to 1971, when Republicans held a majority in both, and 1994 to 1996, when Republicans held a majority in the State Assembly. It is honestly hard for me to overstate how good of an election 1958 was for Democrats and liberalism and how bad it was for Republicans and conservatism. Pat Brown summed up the situation for the GOP, “The election has eliminated two people who very frankly, no matter what they say, don’t like Mr. Nixon. And I’m referring to Mr. Knowland and Mr. Knight. He’s the only one left, so you might say that helped – that left Nixon in charge of the Republican Party in California. There’s no one to challenge his leadership out here now” (Montgomery & Johnson, 258). Newly elected Clair Engle thought similarly. He stated, “Knight and Knowland were fighting like men until [Nixon] interceded and ran them in tandem” although he did not rule out a political comeback for Knowland (Montgomery & Johnson, 258)

Aftermath

Although Knowland maintained background influence in the California Republican Party and publicly through his ownership of the Oakland Tribune and supported Goldwater, Reagan, and Nixon, his political career was over. His end was tragic, he committed suicide in 1974 as he was facing financial ruin. His successor, Clair Engle, would tragically die of a brain tumor in office in 1964. Knight would try for office one more time, but lost the 1962 gubernatorial primary to Richard Nixon. Pat Brown would win another term in 1962, defeating Nixon and resulting in Nixon’s famous remark to the press, “You don’t have Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference”. Although Brown would be defeated by Ronald Reagan in 1966, his son, Jerry, would serve in multiple positions in California, most notably governor from 1975 to 1983 and again from 2011 to 2019.

References

Frantz, J.B. (1970, March 23). Oral history transcript, William F. Knowland, interview 1 (I). LBJ Presidential Library.

Retrieved from

https://discoverlbj.org/item/oh-knowlandw-19700323-1-00-05

Knight and Engle Win Labor Backing. (1958, April 15). The New York Times.

Retrieved from

Knowland Bid for Governor Fails; Engle Beats Knight in Senate Race. The Harvard Crimson.

Retrieved from

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1958/11/5/knowland-bid-for-governor-fails-engle/

Montgomery, G.B. & Johnson, J.W. (1998). One step from the White House: the rise and fall of Senator William F. Knowland. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Retrieved from

https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft4k4005jq;chunk.id=0;doc.view=print

Nov. 7, 1962 – Richard Nixon’s “Last Press Conference”. Real Time 1960s.

Retrieved from

Pawel, M. (2018, November 6). The 1958 Governor’s Race That Launched a Dynasty. Zocalo Public Square.

Retrieved from

The 1958 Governor’s Race That Launched a Dynasty
Fascinating Politics

William Jennings Bryan Dorn: When Politicians Change

A general assumption exists that with politicians they ideologically come and go from Washington as the same people on ideological matters. Although more true today than it used to be, it is never a full guarantee. One example from the Deep South was Democrat William Jennings Bryan Dorn (1916-2005). Dorn was named after the politician William Jennings Bryan as his father wished for him to have a life in politics. He came on to the scene early, being elected to the State House in 1938 and the State Senate in 1940. His political career was interrupted by him serving in the US Army during World War II. On Dorn’s return, he sought to win election to Congress. He challenged incumbent Butler B. Hare of the 3rd district, who had served in Congress 16 years, and defeated him. Dorn proved to be to Hare’s right in his first term, and often disagreed with his party on certain key issues. Notably, he voted for Republican tax reduction bills, voted for Taft-Hartley, and even was one of the few Southern Democrats to vote against the Marshall Plan. Although only a man of 32 by the 1948 election, Dorn was highly ambitious and decided to challenge incumbent Senator Burnet R. Maybank. However, Maybank was sufficiently popular to survive Dorn’s challenge from his right. Although out of office, he wasn’t for long, and sought his old seat in 1950, now held by Hare’s son, James. This election proved to be a boon to the political right, and Dorn won renomination, tantamount to election in the at-the-time one party state of South Carolina.

Although of the right, Dorn stood out among the South Carolina House delegation in his support for public housing. However, he was opposed to price and rent controls and consistently backed foreign aid cuts. During the Eisenhower Administration, Dorn continued his opposition to foreign aid, supported releasing the regulation of natural gas prices from the Federal Power Commission, and started voting against public housing measures. He did, however, express a preference for public control over power generation and transmission, one of the ways in which many Southern Democrats remained New Dealers.

From 1961 to 1964, Dorn proved South Carolina’s foremost foe of New Frontier and Great Society measures in the House, even though his district had voted for Kennedy in 1960. This included opposing highly popular measures such as the Manpower Development and Training Act of 1962 for vocational training of the unemployed and the Educational Television Facilities Act of 1962 for the construction of public television stations for educational broadcasting. He voted against the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, the Food Stamp Act of 1964, as well as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and Medicare in 1965. Notably, this is contrary to South Carolina Encyclopedia’s biography on him, which depicts him as a supporter of LBJ’s anti-poverty program, which simply wasn’t so during Johnson’s time as president (Moore). Like other South Carolinian officeholders, Dorn was a segregationist and opposed every civil rights measure during the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson Administrations. Given this record quite hostile to social welfare measures and high spending, how Dorn would legislatively behave during the Nixon Administration would prove surprising if not shocking.

The Nixon Administration: Some Surprises

Agreement rates, ADA and ACA.

A preview of Congressman Dorn’s changes came in 1968, when he supported an open-ended appropriation for food stamps. Although this change is not nearly as represented in Americans for Democratic Action’s (ADA) ratings as opposed to Americans for Constitutional Action’s (ACA) ratings, these came in the form of how he addressed social programs and even civil rights. In 1969, Dorn opposed a conservative substitute to extending the Federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which he had opposed only four years before. In 1970, Dorn was the only South Carolina representative to vote for a bill for federal aid for desegregation. This absolutely floored his colleagues, especially when one considers that in other ways Dorn’s record remained in his old ways. For instance, he opposed extending the Voting Rights Act in 1970 and continued to oppose funding for the Civil Rights Commission. Dorn was also the only South Carolina representative to vote against the Equal Rights Amendment in 1971. However, he also voted against another amendment that proved even more surprising; he was also the only South Carolina representative to vote against a school prayer amendment that same year. Dorn also voted against several legislative efforts to curb busing as a means for desegregation, including Rep. Broomfield’s (R-Mich.) and Rep. Ashbrook’s (R-Ohio) 1971 proposals. Although in 1969 Dorn had supported transferring anti-poverty functions to the states, he supported extending such programs despite President Nixon’s opposition to the bill for the level of spending and for containing a provision for government daycare. He also opposed a Republican substitute to anti-poverty legislation which had a simple extension with no funding increases or government daycare program or legal services corporation the following year. The reason, however, that ADA found him still pretty conservative while ACA found him considerably less so was due to his staunchly pro-military voting record. Dorn constantly opposed defense cuts and was always supportive of President Nixon on the Vietnam War. He also voted against the War Powers Act of 1973, which was passed over President Nixon’s veto. ADA placed considerably more weight on military issues than ACA, which although far from neglectful of military spending and Vietnam, placed more weight on issues of spending and government expansion. Dorn was furthermore an advocate for veterans, and thus was well suited for his time as chairman of the Veterans’ Affairs Committee from 1973 to 1974. In 1974, Dorn opted against another term in Congress to run for governor. This certainly seemed like a good idea, after all Republicans were being dragged down by Watergate. However, South Carolina defied this trend with the election of Republican Governor James Edwards. Dorn had sided with ADA 15% of the time during his time in Congress, ACA 72% of the time, and his DW-Nominate score is -0.017. None of these criterion really reflect the notion that Dorn was a “progressive populist” as South Carolina Encyclopedia’s profile depicts him in his later career (Moore). Sure, he became a bit more liberal, but his ACA agreement never fell below 48% and he never agreed with ADA more than 58% of the time in a given year. Although DW-Nominate’s score does not look conservative at all, bear in mind that party-line procedural votes get counted and that his score is higher than any Democrat serving nationally. Dorn tried again for governor in 1978, but lost the Democratic primary. From 1980 to 1984, he did one last service for his party by serving as the chairman of the state’s Democratic Party. Perhaps aside from the shifts in his record, the most interesting thing about Dorn is that his portrayal seems a bit different from reality.

References

ADA Voting Records. Americans for Democratic Action.

Retrieved from

Voting Records

Dorn, William Jennings Bryan. Voteview.

Retrieved from

https://voteview.com/person/2672/william-jennings-bryan-dorn

Moore, W.V. (2016, May 17). Dorn, William Jennings Bryan. South Carolina Encyclopedia.

Retrieved from

https://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/dorn-william-jennings-bryan/

Fascinating Politics

Ideologically Evaluating Democratic Nominees, 2000-2024

I have noticed among online liberals on social media and in comment sections (I should never read most comment sections TBH), there is this notion that Democrats are moderate, or by the tellings of some radicals, even “conservative”. They will make certain surface level comparisons that do not involve how their nominees actually vote or cherry-pick a vote or two to obscure a larger picture. Thus, I have taken it upon myself to find out how often Democratic nominees running for terms in the 21st century figured ideologically, based upon votes. I use for this purpose votes that the liberal Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) counts as key votes, votes that the conservative American Conservative Union (ACU) counts as key votes, and in the cases of Al Gore and Joe Biden the conservative Americans for Constitutional Action (ACA) as they were in Washington before 1985. Also included of course is the academic measurement of DW-Nominate, which has -1 to 1 as its scale, the former being most liberal and the latter being most conservative.

Fortunately, all from 2000 on can be ideologically evaluated as they have legislative records. Bear in mind, my use of ADA, ACU, and ACA are based on agreement rates rather than the ratings they put out themselves. This means politicians are on record agreeing or voting for their positions. Thus, there is none of the nonsense of counting absences as against liberalism that ADA does, as well as the nonsense of counting non-votes (such as opinions on holding a vote to confirm Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court in 2016 and signing an amicus curiae brief in 2020) and weighing certain votes by more than one (although non-votes is a far greater beef for me) that ACU has done. Now, let’s look at the six nominees…

Kamala Harris, you will know why by the end of this post why her picture is being featured!

2000:

Al Gore

ADA: 70

ACA: 24

ACU: 15

DW-Nominate: -0.316

Al Gore was around far back enough to have been evaluated by Americans for Constitutional Action, an organization that shuttered its doors after releasing its 1984 ratings. Thus, ACA’s ratings only cover Gore’s House record. Interestingly, both of Gore’s ACA and ADA scores find him a moderate liberal. He is also the one individual for who ADA and ACU differ significantly. ACU finds him to be a solid liberal while ADA only finds moderate liberal.

2004:

John Kerry

ADA: 95

ACU: 5

DW-Nominate: -0.352

Remarkably, John Kerry’s agreement rates with ADA and ACU both reveal him as 95% liberal. However, Kerry’s DW-Nominate score places him more as a standard liberal than extremely liberal as both ADA and ACU agreement rates indicate. John Edwards is rather similar with ADA and ACU, and he is notably less liberal than any of the Democratic nominees here by DW-Nominate score.

2008 and 2012:

Barack Obama

ADA: 98

ACU: 9

DW-Nominate: -0.343

Given how much Obama agreed with ADA (he only differed with them on one vote!) and disagreed with ACU, it is safe to say that on key issues he was very liberal. However, DW-Nominate’s finding places him as standard liberal. None of the standards find him to be moderate or as some deluded and ridiculous people who are probably close to the ideology of Marx if not there find him, “conservative”. They view how much he was able to get done as a measure of his ideology as opposed to his stances. It kinda hurts your prospects at getting all of your agenda done when you don’t have united government. Obama only had the benefit of both the House and Senate being Democratic for his first two years. Yes, there are people out there who also think Obama as not being liberal because of some similarities Obamacare had to something crafted in the Heritage Foundation in the early 90s and initially supported by some Republicans. I may choose to do a takedown of that narrative some day.

2016:

Hillary Clinton

ADA: 97

ACU: 8

DW-Nominate: -0.367

Hillary Clinton is frankly not a huge surprise here. As a polarizing figure, she is with the liberal position over 90% of the time per ADA and ACU key votes. By DW-Nominate, she is just standard liberal, and the best case liberals have of her being on the moderate end. I suppose if one is comparing her to Bernie Sanders and using DW-Nominate that’s the case. But I suppose the questions that are always to be asked when comparative ideology is asserted is “by whose standard?” and “compared to who?” This is, of course, what I’m trying to accomplish in this post.

2020:

Joe Biden

ADA: 86

ACA: 19

ACU: 12

DW-Nominate: -0.314

Joe Biden as a senator was not an ultra-liberal, but rather solidly liberal as all the interest group ratings indicate, with ACU giving Biden the lowest marks on conservatism. His DW-Nominate score makes him the least liberal person the Democratic Party has run for president in the 21st century by that standard. However, I should note that much of his crossover votes were decades behind him by the time he was elected vice president in 2008.

2024:

Kamala Harris

ADA: 100

ACU: 6

DW-Nominate: -0.709

Again, conservatives ironically make a better case for the Democratic nominee’s moderation than liberals! She never disagreed with ADA once, their only faults with her record was when she was absent. By the way, Harris’s “moderation” was only rhetorical for the 2024 election, as all three measures demonstrate, contrary to the narrative spun by much of our media. Her DW-Nominate score even places her to the left of Bernie Sanders, who gets a -0.545. Bernie Sanders’ DW-Nominate score is linked in References just in case you don’t believe me! One might argue that conservatives always will call Democrats extreme, but the case they had against Harris on that I think was rock solid. However, she did have a slightly higher incidence of agreement with ACU than John Kerry. Nonetheless, on two of three measures she ranks most liberal among the Democratic nominees.

Interestingly, with the exception of Kamala Harris, all Democratic nominees score between -0.3 and -0.4 by DW-Nominate. All three measures reveal barely any significant ideological differences between Clinton and Obama, and ironically ACU’s ratings make a better case for Clinton’s and Obama’s perceived moderation by left-wing Democrats than ADA’s ratings. However, the best case is their DW-Nominate scores, which place them as liberal, but not extremely liberal. On two of three measures, Clinton ranks as more liberal than Obama, but only very slightly. The differences between them were mostly a matter of establishment vs. not as establishment. Indeed, if we look at elections over the past 50 years it is consistently the candidate who is seen as less establishment who wins presidential elections with only two exceptions: George H.W. Bush in 1988 and Joe Biden in 2020.

References

ADA Voting Records. Americans for Democratic Action.

Retrieved from

Voting Records

Biden, Joseph Robinette (Joe), Jr. Voteview.

Retrieved from

https://voteview.com/person/14101/joseph-robinette-joe-biden-jr

Clinton, Hillary Rodham. Voteview.

Retrieved from

https://voteview.com/person/40105/hillary-rodham-clinton

Gore, Albert Arnold, Jr. Voteview.

Retrieved from

https://voteview.com/person/14423/albert-arnold-gore-jr

Harris, Kamala Devi. Voteview.

Retrieved from

https://voteview.com/person/41701/kamala-devi-harris

Kerry, John Forbes. Voteview.

Retrieved from

https://voteview.com/person/14920/john-forbes-kerry

Sanders, Bernard. Voteview.

Retrieved from

https://voteview.com/person/29147/bernard-sanders

Sen. Albert Gore. American Conservative Union.

Retrieved from

http://ratings.conservative.org/people/G000321

Sen. Barack Obama. American Conservative Union.

Retrieved from

http://ratings.conservative.org/people/O000167

Sen. Hillary Clinton. American Conservative Union.

Retrieved from

http://ratings.conservative.org/people/C001041

Sen. Joseph Biden. American Conservative Union.

Retrieved from

http://ratings.conservative.org/people/B000444

Sen. John Kerry. American Conservative Union.

Retrieved from

http://ratings.conservative.org/people/K000148

Sen. Kamala Harris. American Conservative Union.

Retrieved from

http://ratings.conservative.org/people/H001075

Fascinating Politics

Trade Agreements from NAFTA Onwards – Important Votes

President Clinton signs NAFTA into law.

Given Friday’s Supreme Court ruling on tariffs and Trump’s condemnation of the decision and his move forward under different laws, it strikes me that the way the parties are regarding tariffs these days are laser-focused on what Donald Trump thinks. And neither of the directions the Democrats or the Republicans are going are ones that have been consistent with what the parities have been standing for for the past few decades. Below I am going to show you the splits on trade agreements, and you will see where the parties have been standing and to what degree:

House

North American Free Trade Agreement

Passed 234-200: D 102-156; R 132-43; 1 0-1, 11/17/93.

China Trade Normalization

Passed 237-197: R 164-57; D 73-139; I 0-1, 5/24/00.

Andean Trade Bill

Passed 215-212: R 190-27; D 25-184; I 0-1, 7/27/02.

Dominican Republic-Central America-Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act

Passed 217-215: R 202-27; D 15-188, 7/28/05.

U.S.-Oman Free Trade Agreement

Passed 221-205: R 199-28; D 22-177, 7/20/06.

U.S.-Peru Free Trade Agreement

Passed 285-132: D 109-116; R 176-16, 11//08/07.

South Korea Trade Agreement

Passed 278-151: R 219-21; R 59-130, 10/12/11.

U.S.-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement

Passed 262-167: R 231-9; D 31-158, 10/12/11.

U.S.-Panama Trade Promotion Agreement

Passed 300-129: R 234-6; D 66-123, 10/12/11.

Trade Facilities and Trade Enforcement Act (Conference Report)

Passed 256-158: R 232-3; D 24-155, 12/11/15.

Senate

North American Free Trade Agreement

Passed 61-38: D 27-28; R 34-10, 11/20/93.

China Trade Normalization

Passed 83-15: R 46-8; D 37-7, 9/19/00.

Andean Trade Bill – Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru

Passed 66-30: D 25-25; R 41-5, 5/23/02.

Dominican Republic-Central America-Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act

Passed 54-45: R 43-12; D 11-33, 6/30/05.

U.S.-Oman Free Trade Agreement

Passed 60-34: R 48-5; D 12-29, 6/29/06.

U.S.-Peru Trade Agreement

Passed 77-18: D 30-17; R 47-1, 12/04/07.

South Korea Trade Agreement

Passed 83-15: D 38-14; R 45-1, 10/12/11.

U.S.-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement

Passed 66-33: R 44-2; D 22-31, 10/12/11.

U.S.-Panama Trade Promotion Agreement

Passed 77-22: R 46-0; D 31-22, 10/12/11.

Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act (Conference Report)

Adopted 75-20: R 47-3; D 28-17, 2/11/16.

As you can see, strong majorities of Republicans have consistently favored trade agreements and Democrats have opposed them, although their margins of opposition are a bit more variable. Interestingly, the Senate tends to be more favorable to trade agreements than the House. However, part of the Trump base are people who are deeply opposed to “globalism” and part of this means trade agreements. Whether we like it or not, Trump is the center of the US political universe for the time being, and the parties’ stances on this issue are increasingly motivated by where he stands and what he is doing on trade. Most Republicans are scared to death of being primaried by someone who promises 100% loyalty to Trump, while Democrats by and large want to make showings of opposition to Trump, especially since many of their base supporters are outraged with them based on a perception that Democrats don’t do enough against him. Since Democratic base voters are a dime a dozen in my part of Washington, I’ve noticed that they don’t seem to have a real idea of what would be sufficient against him aside from immediate removal from office, but they don’t have a legal means to do it within reach (they would have to win 2/3’s of the Senate or short enough of that for a few Republican rebels to vote for conviction).

Fascinating Politics

Mark Andrews: North Dakota’s Independent Voice

On July 18, 1963, 57-year-old Representative Hjalmar Nygaard, on his second term, went to see Dr. George Calver, the physician of Congress, for chest pains. However, it was too late, and he died in Dr. Calver’s office of a heart attack. This opened a vacancy in North Dakota’s 1st district. Quick to enter the race was Mark Andrews (1926-2020), a 38-year-old farmer who had run for governor the year before and narrowly lost. Some conservatives were rather suspicious of Mark Andrews, who had a moderate reputation. They did not think he was sufficiently conservative, and this resulted in the entry of John Bircher John W. Scott, who ran as an Independent. This had the potential to spoil the race for the Republicans, and it was of great help when Barry Goldwater stepped in. He endorsed Andrews’ run in a wire to him, “Your views on fiscal responsibility, less Government interference and a firm foreign policy are in accord with the sentiments of all Americans” (Time Magazine).

In Congress, Andrews proved to be in opposition to many new government programs, voting against the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, against federal aid to education in 1965, and against Medicare. However, he was more socially liberal, supporting funding for the arts. Andrews also voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but would be in opposition to busing as a means of desegregation during the 1970s. On civil rights, Andrews said, “It was the right thing to do. People need to be treated with dignity” (Shaw). He was also more supportive of government intervention in agriculture than most of his fellow Republicans, but this was a popular position in the wheat-producing North Dakota. In 1966 and 1973, Andrews supported minimum wage increases, and over the president’s veto in the latter case. Despite Goldwater having backed his run, Andrews preferred Nelson Rockefeller in the 1964 Republican presidential primary (McFadden). Although North Dakotans regularly saw fit to reelect Mark Andrews, one figure who apparently did not like him was Senator Milton Young. Apparently, Young had considered retiring in 1974, but it became clear that his obvious successor was going to be Andrews, thus despite his advancing age he decided to stick around for one more term (Hill). Depending on what ideological scale you use, Andrews’ peak conservatism was either during the Johnson Administration or the Carter Administration.

By 1980, Young was 83 years old and could not go for one more term, thus Andrews ran for the Senate. He won a resounding victory, winning with 70% of the vote and all counties. As a senator, Andrews would be quite independent from President Reagan, including voting for overriding one of his vetoes on an appropriations bill in 1982 and often voting in opposition to his military policies. He did vote for some signature conservative proposals, including a Balanced Budget Amendment in 1982 and the Eagleton-Hatch Human Life Amendment in 1983. However, Andrews opposed a school prayer amendment and a reinstatement of the federal death penalty in 1984. His bipartisan approach was described by his daughter who recounted him saying in his old age, “in those days people from both parties worked together and we got things done – Quentin Burdick was a good Democrat and I was a good Republican but we were good friends and we worked together for North Dakota. This not working together is foolishness!” (The Dickinson Press, 3). Indeed, the Reagan years appear to be Andrews’ least conservative period as a legislator. Despite his independence, he faced considerable headwinds in the 1986 election. Running against him was young and popular State Tax Commissioner Kent Conrad. Conrad ran a negative campaign against Andrews, and blamed North Dakota’s struggling farm economy on large trade and budget deficits (Wetzel). Andrews was well aware of the issues of the struggling economy and addressed it during his campaign. He even pledged not to run for reelection in 1992 if federal trade and budget deficits were not cut 80% by then (Wetzel). However, by the final weeks of the race he was clearly at risk of losing. President Reagan made a campaign stop on his behalf on October 17th in Grand Forks and he had plenty of money to fight, but 1986 was rough on Senate Republicans and Andrews lost by less than a point. Republicans lost a net of eight Senate seats, with Democrats regaining control of the Senate. This was the first time since 1944 that an incumbent senator had lost reelection. Andrews backed the position of the liberal Americans for Democratic Action 25% of the time while siding the conservative Americans for Constitutional Action 61% from the start of his career until 1984. His DW-Nominate score is a 0.087, an indicator of centrism.

Andrews did not run for public office again, but he started a consulting firm in Washington D.C. but continued to live in North Dakota. He lived many years after the end of his career and was cognizant until the end, dying on October 3, 2020, in Fargo, North Dakota, only months after the passing of his wife Mary, who he had been married to for 71 years.

References

ADA Voting Records. Americans for Democratic Action.

Retrieved from

Voting Records

Amundson, B. (2020, October 9). Former US Sen. Mark Andrews dies at 94. The Dickinson Press, 3.

Retrieved from

https://www.newspapers.com/image/1186532078/

Andrews, Mark. Voteview.

Retrieved from

https://voteview.com/person/10569/mark-andrews

Hill, R. (2021, July 5). Milton R. Young of North Dakota. The Knoxville Focus.

Retrieved from

https://www.knoxfocus.com/archives/this-weeks-focus/milton-r-young-of-north-dakota/

McFadden, R.D. (2020, October 7). Mark Andrews, North Dakota Farmer-Politician, Dies at 94. The New York Times.

Nation: More Sound Than Steam. (1963, November 1). Time Magazine.

Retrieved from

https://time.com/archive/6813021/nation-more-sound-than-steam/

Shaw, J. (2018, May 20). Commentary: We need more politicians like Mark Andrews. The Dickinson Press.

Retrieved from

https://www.thedickinsonpress.com/opinion/commentary-we-need-more-politicians-like-mark-andrews

Wetzel, D. (1986, October 30). U.S. Senate – Andrews fighting for political life in campaign; Conrad could make history with Senate victory. (1986, October 3). The Bismarck Tribune, 46.

Retrieved from

https://www.newspapers.com/image/346063779/
Fascinating Politics

Bill Nelson: From Reagan Democrat to Establishment Democrat

Some people of a conservative mindset may ask what happened to the Democratic Party. Interestingly, there are people whose records were considerably more moderate or even conservative before the politics of the 21st century. Some would say that a lot of Democrats back then would be Republicans now. However, this doesn’t account for politicians adapting to the directions of their parties. A prominent example of this is a recent politician in Clarence William “Bill” Nelson (1942- ).

An attorney by profession, Bill Nelson got his start in politics by working as a legislative assistant to Governor Reuben Askew with his election to the state legislature in 1972. He won reelection in 1974 and 1976, and this time put him in a good position to run for Congress. In 1978, Republican Lou Frey announced that he would not run for another term. Nelson was an ideal candidate for his time and place; a man of 36 with a model American family running against a politician who although had avoided jail-time was tied to a campaign fundraising scandal in 64-year old Republican Edward Gurney. Although this Florida district had been electing Republicans since 1962, when it first elected Gurney, Democrats had a 60-40 party registration advantage (Peterson). Furthermore, Nelson was running as a conservative Democrat thus Gurney couldn’t pin the label of liberal on him. He won the election by 24 points and established a record that was moderate to moderately conservative. Nelson opposed government funding of abortion, supported the death penalty, and backed the Reagan tax cuts in 1981. However, he supported rolling them back considerably with his support of the proposed 1983 Tax Equity bill and was supportive of funding increases for domestic programs and opposed to limiting food stamps. In 1986, Nelson was the second member of Congress and the first representative to travel into space in Space Shuttle Columbia. After all, he represented Florida’s Space Coast where Cape Canaveral is located.

In 1990, he opted against running for another term for Congress to run for governor. However, Nelson had a formidable primary opponent in former Senator Lawton Chiles Jr., and miscalculated in his campaign against him when he made Chiles’ health an issue, particularly his use of Prozac to treat depression, which was made worse by his running mate suggesting that Chiles was suicidal, a suggestion Nelson disavowed (Orlando Sentinel). Running against Chiles on mental health didn’t stick to the man that Floridians had thrice elected to the Senate, and he easily prevailed.  

If his 1990 gubernatorial race was the end of his national career, I would be fine with the common view of him that he was a centrist or even a moderately conservative Democrat. From 1979 to 1984, he sided with the conservative Americans for Constitutional Action 63% of the time. However, Nelson’s career had quite a way to go and in 1994 the reelection of Governor Chiles also saw the election of Nelson as Treasurer, Insurance Commissioner, and Fire Marshal of Florida (yes, it is all one office). He won reelection in 1998, and his experience positioned him for a Senate run. In early 2000, Nelson resigned to run for the Senate, and just like the state’s presidential race, its Senate race was close and heated. His opponent was conservative Republican Congressman Bill McCollum, and both ran strongly negative campaigns against each other. Nelson repeatedly labeled his opponent as an extremist who would sacrifice the elderly, the poor, and the working class to coddle the rich while McCollum labeled him as “a liberal who would tax everything that moves, and some things that don’t” (Bragg). At the time, Nelson had the more solid case for the political center given his record in the House while McCollum had a pretty consistent conservative record. As political science professor Aubrey Jewitt noted, “he was known as a fairly moderate Democrat and right now that’s a good ideological place to be” (Bragg). Although Bush very narrowly officially won the state by 537 votes in one of the nation’s most controversial elections, Nelson edged out McCollum in the Senate election by 5 points.

Senator Nelson

It should be noted that representing a district and representing a state can be a different ballgame and some politicians indeed have shifted left from when they represented a district as opposed to a state. Prominent examples include Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York who as a representative of an upstate district was pro-gun rights and now is pro-gun control and even more dramatically Charles Goodell of New York who went from moderately conservative establishment Republican to staunchly liberal anti-Vietnam War Republican in the Senate in what seems to have been an unsuccessful effort to make a Republican-Liberal Party coalition run for a full term in 1970. Indeed, the contrasts between Nelson as a representative and Nelson as a senator are considerable. Although in his first term in the Senate, you could make an argument that he seemed to represent was he was selling to Floridians, and contrary to what McCollum claimed he did vote for some tax reductions, notably ending the estate tax and extending the Bush tax cuts (although he had originally opposed them). However, in his first term he nonetheless sided with the American Conservative Union (ACU) 20% of the time and liberal Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) 79% of the time. As a representative, he had agreed with the ACU 55% of the time and ADA only 34% of the time. The 2006 election gave him a green light to be a party loyalist even more as he was reelected by 22 points not only due to a poor political climate for Republicans but also due also a weak candidate in Congresswoman Katherine Harris.

In his second term, Nelson was strongly with the liberal position and a loyalist to the agenda of the Obama Administration. He even stated his support for a “public option” for healthcare in 2009, an issue of contention among Senate Democrats (Dunkelberger). Indeed, Nelson sided with ACU 8% of the time in this term. Now wait…you might say, that’s just a conservative skew! However, he also sided with ADA positions 93% of the time! Thus, again, both conservatives and liberals agreed on where he stood on the American political spectrum. One area in which he was consistent over time on the conservative position was on favorability to free trade agreements. Furthermore, with Obama winning reelection not only nationally but also in Florida in 2012, Nelson pulled off an 11-point win. Once again, Republicans had run a weak candidate, this time in Congressman Connie Mack IV. A Florida Republican operative had said about Mack, “He’s a weak candidate. Let’s just be honest. He is a pale shadow of his father’s greatness as a politician” (Miller). Nelson’s third term represented more agreement with the Obama Administration as after all, Florida voters had opted to return him to office!

His siding with ACU and ADA differed a bit in his third term: 3% for the former and 87% for the latter. I should note that it is my opinion based on what I’ve seen of their ratings that ACU under Matt Schlapp has made their grading of politicians tougher and more oriented towards the politics of Rand Paul. However, Nelson’s loyalty to the Obama Administration was noted by journalist Ledyard King (2014) when he wrote that a new analysis showed that along with 16 other Senate Democrats he “voted in line with President Barack Obama’s positions 100 percent of the time last year”. In 2018, although Nelson in theory had the benefit of a good political environment given that this was looking to be a backlash election against Trump, he undoubtedly lacked the benefit of a weak candidate. Rick Scott was reasonably popular as Florida’s two-term governor, and better yet for the Republicans they were making inroads with Hispanic voters overall and not just increasing their support among Cuban-Americans (Ogles). Furthermore, Florida was increasingly moving to Republicans and Nelson’s loyalist record to President Obama as well as his opposition to nearly all Trump policies wasn’t playing so well in Florida now. This was highlighted with his announcement before Trump picked a Supreme Court nominee in 2018 that he expected to vote against the nominee based on protecting Roe v. Wade (Smith). The issue of abortion was yet another way in which Nelson had flipped; as a representative he had had an almost entirely anti-abortion record while as a senator, he had a record almost entirely supportive of abortion rights, only voting to prohibit taking minors across State lines without parental consent for abortions in 2006. This election was so close that it was decided by just over 10,000 votes, or 0.13% of the vote, with Scott prevailing. Nelson subsequently served as the administrator of NASA from 2021 to 2025.

In his overall Senate career, Nelson sided with ACU 10% of the time and ADA 86% of the time. Both ADA and ACU found Senator Nelson’s peak year of dissent from the liberal position as 2006, when he only sided with the liberal position on 60% of the votes they considered to be most important. Over his entire career, he sided with ACU 27% of the time and ADA 65% of the time, with his DW-Nominate score standing at -0.193. While his overall record does paint him as a moderately liberal Democrat, it makes more sense to see Representative Nelson as distinct from Senator Nelson, much like it made sense to see Representative Goodell of New York as distinct from Senator Goodell of New York.

The change of Bill Nelson overtime:

References

ADA Voting Records. Americans for Democratic Action.

Retrieved from

Voting Records

Bragg, R. (2000, October 18). The 2000 Campaign: A Florida Race. The New York Times.

Retrieved from

https://archive.ph/20120714153120/http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB0712FA3C5A0C7B8DDDA90994D8404482

Chiles Says Slip in Pep Got Him Back on Prozac. (1990, August 8). Orlando Sentinel.

Retrieved from

CHILES SAYS SLIP IN PEP GOT HIM BACK ON PROZAC

Dunkelberger, L. (2009, October 11). Nelson says he supports public option for health care. The Gainesville Sun.

Retrieved from

https://www.gainesville.com/story/news/local/2009/10/11/nelson-says-he-supports-public-option-for-health-care/31725108007/

King, L. (2014, February 9). View from the Beltway: Nelson’s votes are parallel to Obama stance. Florida Today.

Retrieved from

https://www.floridatoday.com/story/news/local/2014/02/09/view-from-the-beltway-nelsons-votes-are-parallel-to-obama-stances/5319611/

Miller, J. (2012, June 20). Rep. Connie Mack IV Still Has Uphill Battle for Senate Seat. Roll Call.

Retrieved from

https://rollcall.com/2012/06/20/rep-connie-mack-iv-still-has-uphill-battle-for-senate-seat/

Nelson, Clarence William (Bill). Voteview.

Retrieved from

https://voteview.com/person/14651/clarence-william-bill-nelson

Ogles, J. (2019, January 13). Rick Scott pollsters show strong Hispanic support helped victory. Florida Politics.

Retrieved from

Rick Scott pollsters show strong Hispanic support helped victory

Peterson, B. (1978, September 10). Florida’s Ex-Sen. Gurney Striving to Return to Congress. The Washington Post.

Retrieved from

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1978/09/11/floridas-ex-sen-gurney-striving-to-return-to-congress/c5e22335-a52e-4634-bd54-07520df528e9/

Sen. Bill Nelson. American Conservative Union.

Retrieved from

http://ratings.conservative.org/people/N000032?year

Smith, A.C. (2018, July 2). Bill Nelson says he expects to vote against President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee. Miami Herald.

Retrieved from

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article214206684.html

Fascinating Politics

A Lot Changes: A Look at the Senate 40 Years in the Past

Bob Dole (R-Kan.), Senate Majority Leader

Back in 1986, Ronald Reagan is on his second term as president, having won a 49-state landslide and only narrowly losing Minnesota, the home state of his opponent, Walter Mondale. Like Trump, Reagan had the benefit of a Republican Senate although unlike Trump he never had the benefit of a Republican House. The composition of the Senate during this time presents a fascinating contrast to today. For one thing, although by this point the South is on presidents in the Republican column, it has yet to move there in its Senate composition. Today, the South’s senators are Republican save for Georgia and Virginia. In the 99th Congress, Democrats held one seat in Alabama, both of Arkansas’ seats, one of Florida’s, one of Georgia’s, both of Louisiana’s, one of Mississippi’s, one of North Carolina’s, one of South Carolina’s, both of Tennessee’s, and one of Texas’s. That’s right, in 1984 Tennessee overwhelmingly elected Al Gore to the Senate. Republicans actually hold both of Virginia’s Senate seats as back then it was a conservative state. Virginia and West Virginia have switched places since then, as both of their senators are Democrats. Another bizarre feature of this time was that Democrats held both of Nebraska’s seats! For reference, Nebraska has not voted for a Democrat for president since 1964 and its senators were among the conservative wing of the Democratic Party. Some of the social stances they held would have gotten them a quick cancellation among the base.

New England was different too, as Republicans held a seat in Connecticut, one of Maine’s, both of New Hampshire’s, one of Rhode Island’s, and one of Vermont’s. The West Coast is downright bizarre; although Democrats have held all of the West Coast states’ Senate seats since 2009, in 1985-1986 they only have California’s Alan Cranston. However, the Republicans who hold these seats would, save for Pete Wilson and perhaps Slade Gorton, be although to the right of Democrats holding these seats today, far from tolerable for the modern Republican base. In truth, 48 Senate seats are different in party affiliation between this time and now.  Kentucky at that time has freshman Senator Mitch McConnell, now in his last year of service, and the last Democrat to represent the state in the Senate in Wendell Ford. In Delaware, Joe Biden is there as a Democrat, but his colleague is Republican William Roth, who played a significant role in the crafting and passage of the Reagan tax cuts and is the Roth in the Roth IRA savings account. As hard as it may be to believe, both of Minnesota’s senators are Republican! One of them, Rudy Boschwitz, had a double-digit reelection in the same year Mondale won the state. How voters viewed the president and his party varied considerably and voters were far more willing to split their tickets than now. The states that remain the same partisan composition then as they are now are Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. However, a look at the agreement rates I have put up with the senators should indicate to you that the parties were far more ideologically diverse. For instance, many of the Southern senators would not pass muster in today’s Democratic Party. One of them, John C. Stennis of Mississippi, had first been elected to the Senate in 1947! Many of the New England Republicans would not be in today’s Republican Party; Lowell Weicker of Connecticut was a bane of Reagan Republicans and later identified as an Independent and supported Democratic candidates and even Gordon Humphrey of New Hampshire, the staunch Reagan conservative of the group, has been strongly anti-Trump in recent years. Neither John Chafee of Rhode Island or Robert Stafford of Vermont would be palatable to modern Republicans. I have below senators who served in both years of the 99th Congress and included are agreement rates from the liberal Americans for Democratic Action and the conservative American Conservative Union. These are a little bit different from their official ratings; I do not count absences either way unlike ADA, I count documented legislative pairs and opinions for, and I do not double-count votes unlike ACA. Each vote is weighted equally for position agreement.

1985-86 ADA and ACUDownload

References

ADA Today, 41(1). Americans for Democratic Action.

Retrieved from

Click to access 1985.pdf

ADA Today, 42(1). Americans for Democratic Action.

Retrieved from

Click to access 1986.pdf

Federal Ratings. American Conservative Union.

Retrieved from

http://ratings.conservative.org/congress

Fascinating Politics

The FACE Act – The Adoption of the Controversial Law Being Used in the Controversial Prosecution of Don Lemon

In 1992, the Democrats won the White House for the first time since 1976, and with united government they sought to make numerous changes in the liberal direction, and one of the many issues Clinton was firmly liberal on was abortion. Since the late 1970s, a major movement of protests of abortion clinics formed, but with non-violent protests there came incidents that went beyond standard protesting, such as intimidation, criminal harassment, stalking of abortion providers, and violence. A particularly notable group perpetrating these incidents was the terrorist group Army of God, whose members have committed numerous crimes against abortion providers, including murder. The escalation of tactics as well as the March 10, 1993 murder of Dr. David Gunn by pro-life extremist Michael Griffin motivated the Democrats to push for the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act.

While numerous of these activities were of course already illegal under state and local laws, the citations for trespass were not thought sufficient and in some jurisdictions local law enforcement was thought to be lax. Proponents also argued that the state and local authorities did not have sufficient resources to deal with the scope and scale of these incidents. The initial bill was passed in November 1993 and only covered abortion clinics, but in order to shore up additional support churches and other places of worship were added, thus creating two protected classes. In the House, the measure was sponsored by Reps. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Constance Morella (R-Md.) while the Senate sponsor was Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.).

Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) justified this new law, stating, “State and local law enforcement lack the resources – and sometimes lack the will – to battle large-scale, long-term operations that include trespassing, vandalism, and assault (Congressional Record).

Rep. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) opposed the bill, and stated in his opposition, “In the sixties, before passage of the Civil Rights Act, there were sit-ins, pray-ins and protests all around the country. Some were peaceful. Some were not. In some circles, the civil rights movement was not very popular, but Congress did not pass special laws to discourage civil rights protests because of their motivation or because of their viewpoint. He went on to say, “Yes, we should punish violence, threats of violence and intimidation. But this bill goes beyond that. It would punish people engaged in non-violent, free speech. It would create harsh new penalties for people who engage in non-violent civil disobedience” (Congressional Record).

Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) in support stated, “Most people would be outraged if they were prevented from entering a supermarket – or a church or an office building or any other place – by someone who disagreed with what was going on inside. We need this Freedom of Access bill because throughout our country, there continue to be bombings, assaults, threats, and even murders by people trying to prevent people from working in or using medical facilities which offer reproductive health services. In the previous Congress, the House passed the Farm Animal and Research Facilities Protection Act, which prevents violent blockades of facilities for research animals. If we care that much about facilities for animals, we ought to care about facilities for women. The right to choose is meaningless without the access to choose.”

Rep. Lynn Schenk (D-Calif.), shall we say, poured on the Tabasco sauce in this debate when she alleged the motives of the opposition, “Their true agenda is to continue the reign of harassment, terror, and physical intimidation against women and their doctors” (Congressional Record). Would it surprise you to learn that she is a lawyer?

Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), who continues to serve, had the most to say in opposition on the day of passage and in defense of abortion protestors, “The difference in what we are dealing with today are those acts of nonviolent civil disobedience, and I can tell you Mr. Speaker, if we applied the standard in this bill to those who have been involved in D.C. statehood, civil rights, women’s rights, animal rights, and a whole host of other very important causes, this particular legislation would never see the light of day on this floor. Mr. Speaker, just let me also make a very important point: that sidewalk counseling has saved tens of thousands of children throughout the last 20 years. Women, many of whom have had abortions frequently become sidewalk counselors and go to abortion clinics to speak out. These women, and I have pictures of women who have helped women through the difficult, distressful pregnancies they may be experiencing, they have helped women about to abort at that 11th hour (Congressional Record).

The bill passed the House on May 5, 1994 on a vote of 241-174 (D 201-43, R 40-131). The Senate followed up on a vote of 69-30 (D 52-3, R 17-27) a week later. Interestingly, among the Republican supporters was Mitch McConnell. The three Democratic dissenters were J. Bennett Johnston and John Breaux of Louisiana along with J. James Exon of Nebraska. None of these seats are held by Democrats today.

This law was controversial in passage as some non-violent tactics could result in jail time. For instance, in practice, one protest tactic that has resulted in jail time for offenders has been sit-ins. In particular, activist Herb Geraghty was imprisoned for doing so in Pennsylvania in 2020 and was sentenced in 2023. He was pardoned in 2025 by President Trump, and has advocated for the law’s repeal (Geraghty). It should also be noted that since passage of the law the number of violent incidents decreased surrounding abortion. I must note that it is interesting that the FACE Act is being used against Don Lemon yet the administration has made clear that it is only interested in using the FACE Act in egregious cases regarding clinics (Lucas). Selective prosecution does not seem to only been a feature of the present administration; the Biden Administration was also alleged to have used to the FACE Act selectively, in being willing to prosecute cases of attacks on abortion clinics at higher rates than attacks on pregnancy centers and churches (Kamman). That administrations, past and present, have used this law most selectively makes a case for repeal in this writer’s opinion. Earlier this year, Representative Chip Roy (R-Tex.) proposed to repeal the FACE Act.

References

A bill to amend the Public Health Service Act to permit individuals to have freedom of access to certain medical clinics and facilities, and for other purposes. Voteview.

Retrieved from

https://voteview.com/rollcall/RS1030507

Conference Report on S. 636, Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act of 1994. Congressional Record, 148(53).

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CREC-1994-05-05/html/CREC-1994-05-05-pt1-PgH40.htm

Freedom of Access to Clinics Act. Voteview.

Retrieved from

https://voteview.com/rollcall/RH1030753

Geraghty, H. (2026, February 6). I Was Jailed for 18 Months Under the FACE Act. It’s Time to Repeal This Unconstitutional Law. National Review.

Retrieved from

https://www.nationalreview.com/2026/02/i-was-jailed-for-18-months-under-the-face-act-its-time-to-repeal-this-unconstitutional-law/

Kamman, S. (2024, December 20). Biden admin. accused of failure to prosecute church attacks, ‘one sided’ FACE Act enforcement. Christian Post.

Retrieved from

https://www.christianpost.com/news/biden-admin-failed-to-prosecute-church-attacks-under-face-act.html

Lucas, R. (2026, March 9). Trump’s DOJ Limits on FACE Act enforcement fuel concern from abortion providers. NPR.

Retrieved from

https://www.npr.org/2025/03/09/g-s1-52616/abortion-face-act-access-enforcement