James Buckley's second and final term as the Mayor of New York City began on a rough note. After his highly controversial reelection against Robert Kennedy in 1973 and the ensuing strikes and riots which occurred directly and indirectly in relation to his reelection. Buckley set about continuing his some what authoritarian Conservative rule in the City and also continuing his economic austerity of his first term which had seen the City avoid bankruptcy (as was predicted when he came to power) and instead saw the City have it's budget go into the black and a surplus for the first time in many years. Strikes however remained a constant feature in the City with another public sector union calling one every week it seemed. Buckley - unlike Lindsay would have none of it and proceeded to crack down on the strikes using the state guard and the City's police force (even against some of their own striking members.)
By the end of the Mayor's second term the City was a 'shining city on a hill' as opposed to the race riots in Los Angeles under re-elected Republican Mayor Bob Dornan and the speedy decline of Chicago and Detroit in the Mid West after the elections of a communist black nationalist (Detroit) and the messy fall of the Daley regime in favour of an incompetent left wing Socialist candidate (Chicago.) In 1976 Mayor Buckley opted to run for the Republican nomination for President - he was largely eclipsed by fellow New Yorker Conservative, Senator Roy M. Cohn; he did however win the Connecticut primary after his brother (a resident of the state) pulled some strings in the local Conservative and Republican Parties to allow his brother a rather strong victory. By 1977 Buckley was visibly bored in his role and left most of the important work to his aides - he had been secretly informed that he was being tapped for the Supreme Court seat of Lorna E. Lockwood (which he was.) At the General Election the Conservative Party of New York City was rather sparse for candidates and proceeded to nominate conservative radio commentator Barry Farber as their candidate. Farber then won the Republican nomination as well and was somewhat well placed against a generic Democrat...
The Democrats surprised everyone when they (and the NYC Liberal Party) nominated feminist Congresswoman and failed 1976 Senatorial nominee Bella Abzug as their candidate for Mayor. The race was rather boring at first between the two flamboyant and controversial candidates; Farber held a distinct lead over Abzug up until the debates - however that lead evaporated after the debates when he made a series of comments that were perceived as sexist and misogynistic towards Abzug and women.
The polls instantly showed an Abzug lead and by polling day many expected that the Congresswoman would be the victor - however it would be Abzug, not Farber who delivered a concession speech the day after the close election. Some say it was the Abzug campaign's last minute withdrawing of ads and campaign staff, others say it was a last minute offensive by Farber campaign that let him overcome the distance between the two and pick up until then not very interested Republican voters.
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With the fairly distant loss of the Presidency in 1976, Henry Howell went home. It was a exhausting, mentally tiring job he felt he never should have had in the first place. Despite his own feelings of inadequacy and mild failure, he didn't want to just stop. He wanted to serve his country just a little bit longer.
So, for the first time in 144 years, a former President of the United States announced he was running for a governorship. Much like in 1833 Massachusetts, when John Quincy Adams ran, the President faced an open field for the office. Howell did not rest on his fame and his loins as President, however, he campaigned like a young man running for his first office.
His announcement captured not only state, but national and international attention. Even before half a year had passed from when he left office, people were talking about Howell as a possible candidate in 1980, a rematch against MacBride. Almost as quickly as the idea was brought up did Howell crush them, stating he had no intention of running for President again (even jokingly asking an audience to break his legs if he tries), and that he wanted to make up to his state for leaving them to go be Vice-President.
Immediately there were two major candidates on the Republican front, sitting Lieutenant Governor, and failed 1976 Senate candidate, John N. Dalton, and former Democratic Governor Miles E. Godwin Jr., who had left the Democratic Party after Howell's "
Liberal Purge" off the Byrd Machine. Godwin only officially joined the Republican Party a few weeks before filing to run for Governor, and was hit as a shameless turncoat and untrustworthy politician. Godwin fired back that Dalton would just give up in the last leg of the race, and that "
when the going gets tough, Dalton gets going". Dalton, meanwhile, didn't take this lying down. He publicly apologized for betraying the trust of Republican voters in the state, and that he hoped they would give him a second chance to atone for his political sins. Dalton just barely beat out Godwin for the Republican nomination.
And like another Virginia primary loser, he courted the Conservative Party. The party caucus, who now as a rule had their nominations after the Democrats and Republicans, voted for the former Byrd Machine Governor as their candidate. Immediately Howell was on the advantage. His two opponents hated each other and spent as much time fighting over the anti-Howell vote as they did trying to turn out their partisans.
Howell not only became the first Virginia Governor to be elected to a second full term, but the first Virginia Governor elected with over a million votes. And he wouldn't be the only member of his Presidency to be elected in the late 1970's.
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President MacBride entered with an ambitious agenda. Cutting tax rates by 30% across the board, repealing the National Environmental Act, repealing Medicare and Medicaid, and privatizing most of Social Security. As well as the repeal of several governmental cabinets and agencies. He justified his radical proposals by saying the need for the United States to cut back on spending was both fiscal and moral. Cutting back on aid would save on money in the long run, and would allow people the chance to do good to another another. "
I have a dream," quipped the President in early 1977, "
where no one has to rely on government assistance to make ends meet. Where our poor and weak can be helped by churches and volunteers, not cold, distant bureaucracies here in Washington who don't know where the money is being sent."
His words were met with harsh words by the late Martin Luther Kings' family, who complained about the disrespectful usage of his famous words. Coretta Scott King said her husband, buried in late 1975 after a severe heart attack, was a fierce advocate of governmental assistance to the poor and needy and would have fought against MacBride's plans. She took up his mantle and assembled nearly one hundred thousand people in D.C. to protest the then-discussed abolition of Medicare and Medicaid.
Congress's reaction to the President's plan were not much nicer. Senate Majority Leader Long arose as the main enemy to the President's plans. While the two were able to seek some major reductions in taxes, the biggest since the Kennedy years, the thin Democratic majority in the Senate was bolstered by liberal and moderate Republicans who saw the New Deal and Great Society programs, if expensive, rather successful and popular. Very few men wanted to go home and explain to the voters why they voted to kill Social Security and to starve grandma.
Some Democrats saw the divide between the President, a committed ideologue, and most of the Republicans in Congress, men of convenience by trade. Senate Democrats worked to split that divide as hard as possible. One such instance revolved around Republican Senator George Murphy's attempts to combat drug trafficking and addiction, who wrote the
Comprehensive Anti-Drug Trafficking and Addiction Law of 1977, which passed both Houses of Congress rather easily. The President vetoed it on constitutional grounds, further earning him the appellation of hippie by his enemies on the right.
One particular tactic, called Merry-go-Round-Boxing by one White House insider, consisted of the Democrats hitting MacBride from all sides. The conservatives would hit him as a "
hippie", "
abortionist", and "
coward on foreign policy", while the liberals would hit him as a "
racist", "
economic cutthroat", and "
Coolidge-lite". This enabled them not only to deadlock the Presidents ambitions, but attack any given Congressional Republican on any given issue.
Howard Baker relieved the worst of it, labeled a "
baby-killer" and the "
White House's #1 Stooge" by the press one day, and a "
poor hating snob" the next. His Democratic opponent, William Robert Anderson, a former Naval Officer and exceptionally liberal Congressman by Tennessee standards, hit him for his support of the President's "Social Security reforms", which said was little better then throwing out the elderly and poor to the wolves. "
The President and Senator Baker may want to take us back to before the New Deal, before the days of job safety, but I don't." Anderson had won the Democratic Primary by beating a large and divided group of candidates, emerging with more then 40% of the vote compared to many who fell just under 10 and 20%. Some old time machine Democrats, remembering his independent candidacy for governor back in 1962, and not liking the brazen liberalness of the man, moved to back Baker.
However, the race was not quite a simple two man battle. Seeing the success of the New York Conservative Party, and the growing strength of Virginia's Conservative Party, Tennessee conservatives moved to establish a party of their own. They ran the popular speaker, and John Birch Society member, Thomas Jefferson Anderson. He made the election that year far more lively, handing out "Howard Baker cakes" at events ("
filled with nothing but dough, like our Senator"), travelling around the state to ecstatic crowds, and taking potshots at everything under the sun. The President was hit as a castrated Yankee dog, the incumbent Senator as the weak-willed puppet of the Northern Republicans, and the similarly named Democratic candidate as a "
proud friend of North Vietnam."
Whether Baker could have won without facing the Conservative Party candidate is unknown, what is known is that nationwide Conservative Parties (named that or something else) were popping up like weeds. New York, Virginia, Tennessee, and more.
Baker wasn't the only incumbent to lose his seat, as seven new Democrats joined the Senate, two new Independents (James B. Longley of Maine and John Bell Williams of Mississippi, both former Democrats; Williams caucused comfortably with the Republicans, while Longley would be a very maverick member of the Democratic caucus), one new Conservative (Patrick Robertson of Virginia, who also joined the Republican caucus after receiving tacit Republican support) and two new Republican (Rudy Boschwitz who narrowly beat DFLer Walter Mondale, and Admiral Jeremiah Denton who beat Democrat Fob James for Alabama's special Senate election that year).
Another interesting newcomer to the Senate was former Vice-President Brewer, formerly the President of the upper house, now a regular member. In 1979 the Senate voted to give him the honorary title Deputy President of the Senate, along with the same pay as the party leaders and President Pro Tempore. this title would also stand for any other former Vice-President who later joined the Senate.
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Speaker Gerald Ford, having achieved his life goal of being elected Speaker of the House in 1973, decided to voluntarily retire by 1976 and not continue in the House much longer. But he didn't want to just go out quietly. Having achieved his life goal, he made one strong push to become President of the United States under the new primary rules. He failed, holding not grudges, and left office in 1977, passing the Speakers gavel to friend and fellow Republican John Jacob Rhodes Jr. from Arizona. With Carl Hayden having been President Pro Tempore for a dozen years, and now Rhodes holding the Speakership, Arizona was one of a few states to have their men lead both Houses of Congress.
Rhodes was popular, respected, and very competent at his jobs of Representative and Speaker. Unfortunately the White House gave him a third job, having to be their policy champion in the House, the one branch of Congress they controlled. Rhodes worked to pass the tax cuts, to curb the power of labor unions and labor bosses, and to eliminate as much from the trio of Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare as possible.
Unfortunately, despite his power as Speaker, he only had a narrow majority of the House seats to work with, and thus Rhodes wasn't able to achieve much of the last request. Governmental streamlining? Easy. Fighting the unions? Popular and doable. Attacking the third rail of politics? A Herculean task that Rhodes would failed to do even if he had a veto-proof majority.
While the loses in the Senate were moderate, the House dropped seventy Republican members and handed Californian John Joesph McFall the Speakership. The lack of any major success for the MacBride Administration during it's first two years, generally the most productive, was an ill omen of things to come. The non-Democratic or Republican caucus grew in size to be the biggest since 1938. Unlike 40 years ago, when it was only 8 Wisconsin Progressives and 5 Minnesota Farmer-Laborers, this caucus came from all over the US, elected on a bewildering number of party names. Freedom, American Independent, several states sent a Conservative or two, and Constitution. With the growing size of these men, they would move to establish themselves as a real party. A National Conservative Party in fact.
