Fewer things that got Bill Brock angrier than suggestions he was less-than-committed to civil rights for minorities.
I felt this during an interview in 2000 with the former senator (1970-76) and Republican National Chairman (1977-81) from Tennessee, who died last week at age 90.
Al Gore, then the Democratic nominee for president, had repeatedly told black audiences how his namesake-father lost his bid for re-election to the Senate from Tennessee because of his commitment to civil rights.
“That is absolutely untrue—baloney!” snapped Brock when I read Gore, Jr’s words to him. Gore, Sr. was unseated in 1970 by Brock, who had always reached out to Blacks as U.S. Representative from the Chattanooga area from 1960-70.
Like fellow Republican Reps. Fletcher Thompson or Georgia and George H.W. Bush of Texas in the 1970’s, Brock would never miss an opportunity to address a Black audience.
True, he had voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Like his political hero Barry Goldwater, the Tennessean felt that Section II — denying the right of anyone to refuse rental to someone — was unconstitutional and Title VII — requiring no discrimination in hiring — would create “a police state” that would dictate hiring and firing nationwide.
But he did vote for the Civil Rights Act of 1968, which banned discrimination based on race, religion and national origin in the sale or rental of housing.
That meant that Brock’s votes on the two major civil rights bills of the 1960’s were identical to those of Gore Sr.—who not only opposed the ’64 bill but filibustered against it, and later supported the ’68 measure.
“Civil rights were definitely not an issue in our race,” Ken Rietz, manager of Brock’s winning campaign, told Newsmax, “Gore’s opposition to the Vietnam War and to Nixon’s two Southern nominees to the Supreme Court certainly hurt him. So did the ‘law and order’ issue.”
If there were any doubts about Brock’s commitment to outreach to minorities, they were ended by his tenure at the helm of the Republican Party.
Whether it was inviting Jesse Jackson to speak to a Republican National Committee meeting or encouraging Black and Hispanic candidates to run for Congress in 1978, the genial, pipe-smoking Brock made it clear his party was open to all.
A native of Chattanooga and namesake-grandson of a Democratic senator, William Emerson Brock, III graduated from the McCallie School and Washington and Lee University in Virginia. Following a stint in the U.S. Navy, he returned home to work for his family’s candy business.
A nominal Democrat, the young Brock became a Republican and decided to seek office after reading Barry Goldwater’s “Conscience of a Conservative.”
The Arizona senator, Brock recalled to Goldwater biographer Lee Edwards, “took my breath away. He was so doggoned honest. There was no question in my mind that [he] could win the nomination and the election [in 1964]. Jack Kennedy was not popular. Questions were being raised about his leadership.”
In 1962, Democrats in Tennessee’s 3rd District yielded a big shock. Seven-term Rep. James Frazer, Jr., who had opposed the Kennedy Administration on creating Medicare, lost the primary by 269 votes to liberal attorney Wilkes Thrasher, Jr. Frazer’s conservative backers bolted to first-time candidate Brock, who went on to become the district’s first Republican U.S. Representative in four decades.
“When I went to work for [Wisconsin’s freshman Republican Rep.] Bill Steiger in 1967,” Rietz recalled to us, “He and Bill Brock and George [H.W.] Bush would go wherever there was a group of young people. They wanted to bring in the young because they would be the future of the party.”
In 1976, Brock was defeated for re-election by Democratic State Chairman Jim Sasser. Jimmy Carter carried the Volunteer State and Brock was hurt by his refusal to release his tax returns. That was a “must do” for politicians, until Donald Trump proved it was not a fatal to refuse release.
During his eight years in the House and one term in the Senate, Brock voted a solidly conservative line and was considered the conservative outside while his state’s more moderate senior Sen. Howard Baker was regarded as “the establishment.”
But this view of him among conservatives changed after he assumed the helm of the RNC. Many of those who backed Ronald Reagan for President in ’76 never forgave Brock for supporting incumbent President Gerald Ford.
Reagan himself was not bothered at all by this and, after becoming president, named Brock U.S. Trade Representative. In that capacity, he negotiated major trade agreements with Israel, China, and Mexico.
Brock subsequently named by Reagan to be secretary of labor. The late AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland had been at dagger’s ends with Reagan’s first labor secretary, Ray Donovan, but agreed to lunch with Secretary Brock as soon as he was sworn in.
In later years, Brock took on two assignments that most of his friends agreed were mistakes: He managed Bob Dole’s 1988 presidential campaign and was caught up in clashes with old Dole hands, and in 1994, as a Maryland resident, he became the Republican nominee against Democratic Sen. Paul Sarbanes (losing by 59 to 41 percent).
“I knew Bill back in his Senate days, when I came to Washington,” Bob Juliano, longtime lobbyist for restaurant workers’ union, told us, “We didn’t agree on some things — some of it important stuff — but Bill would always think of something we did agree on and could work on together. He was a heckuva guy.”
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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