Historic Quote: “He doesn’t smoke, he doesn’t drink, he doesn’t womanize. So what the hell good is he?” An opponent of one of my below subjects, Ohio Congressman Chuck Whalen.
The debate over what has happened to the Republican Party of the days of yore inspired me to examine two rare species in the Party, even in the 1970s: Ohio Congressman Charles Whalen and his New Jersey colleague Florence Dwyer.
The six-termer from Dayton was staunchly pro-labor and anti-war but fiscally conservative. Whalen was not the only member of his party to harbor such views. But he was open about it more than many colleagues and his problems were such that less than a year after leaving office, he became a Democrat.
Whalen used many methods to express his views. One was the Wednedsay Group that was a composition of mostly moderate Republicans. They issued a report How to End the Draft: The Case for an All-Volunteer Army.” It focused on better pay and retirement benefits and proposed that an all-volunteer Army could get the job done. Most of the plan would be adopted in increments.
Whalen’s background was economics. He obtained his degree from the University of Dayton, then after returning from World War II (where his Army service took him to the Chinese-Burma-Indian theater), Whalen operated his father’s dress factory and taught economics. But his good looks and dignified pose almost made a political career inevitable.
Whalen’s first political office was the Ohio General Assembly, a seat which he won in 1954. Whalen served 12 years in the Legislature, moving to the Senate in 1960 but continued to teach economics, eventually rising to Chair the department. But his influence in the Legislature was high. He sponsored the first open-housing legislation law. Whalen made a run for Lieutenant Governor in 1962 but finished with just 32%.
Then came an opportunity to run for Congress. Incumbent Rodney Love was among the score of Democrats who had ridden LBJ’s coattails to Congress in 1964 but, two years later, was facing an electorate that was moving away from the Democrats. Building trades council head Mike Liskany posted a pamphlet entitled, “Inflation Street Riots, Elections” designed to help Love. But if Whalen could credit a single reason for his win, it may be that he simply outworked his foe. During the campaign, he embarked on an 880 mile walking tour of the sprawling district. But that was not his only gimmick. He pulled a child’s wagon where he handed voters copies of a recipe for chicken supreme.
Whalen would be assigned to the Armed Services Committee and was a member of the “Fearless Five,” and Whalen signed on to the Nedzi-Vanick amendment that would cut off funding for military operations in Vietnam and proposed a bill that would impose a year end deadline on the ceasing of Indochina. He opposed the ABM and believed in addressing urban decay, hunger, and education. He was a severe critic of Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty, which he found inefficient, corrupt, and overly centralized, and pioneered the idea of a negative income tax to replace the costly and paternal welfare bureaucracy.
One area in which Whalen’s conservatism stayed true was abortion. A Catholic, he was solidly pro-life.
Whalen’s iconoclasm did not do him any favors in his own party. One day, Whalen related to Michigan’s Don Riegel the discontent among fellow Republicans. One man told him it’s not a matter of “mending fences,” it’s now about “building” them. Whalen told Riegel he was thinking about running his next election as an Independent rather than as a Republican. Being rejected by the entire electorate he could handle but, losing to those “nuts” was a different story.
Whalen’s standing had become so precipitous that, near the end of his tenure, he found himself struggling simply to convince his fellow Republicans to return him to Washington. In the 1976 primary, they obliged but only by a 53-40% margin. The general election would be a routine landslide (in 1974, he was the only Congressional candidate in the nation to not face any primary or general opposition). His comfort level with his party continued going south. In 1977, his party loyalty score was just 12%, down from 19% the year before.
And by 1978, he had enough. “I had more trouble every year with the Republicans. I just decided I might as well give it up…I think I more nearly subscribe to the views of the Democratic Party.” He made the switch shortly after leaving office. Asked why he waited, he said, “I didn’t see much point in it. I was elected as a Republican and I didn’t want to hurt a lot of people who had helped me. I also didn’t want to give vent to a charge of expediency.” “I finally came to the realization that what some of my Republican friends were saying was right, I probably didn’t represent their views.”
In office, Whalen had published a book, “You’re Right To Know.” Upon leaving, he pursued it with even more vigor, Whalen pursued writing. “The Longest Debate: A Legislative History of the 1964 Civil Rights Act” and “The Fighting McCooks: America’s Famous Fighting Family” was about famous Ohio brothers who served in the Civil War.
Whalen would come to oppose the Iraq War. He died in 2011 at 90. Dick DeLon, his former Legislative assistant, said on his death “If there were more men and women in Congress today like Chuck Whalen, political debate would be far more civil and fact oriented and the public’s perception of Congress far more trusting and positive,” DeLon said. “I think he has given us a legacy worthy of his 90 plus years.”
If Whalen committed sin by frequently going against his party on issues, Florence Dwyer committed the unforgivable by opposing the party on a restructuring of the House Rules Committee. This committee is the backbone of struggle between the partisan wars and how it is structured is fundamental to who wins, who loses, and which bills will see the light of day.
Dwyer was a progressive Republican from Elizabeth, New Jersey and she made no bones about it, to the point that Congressional leaders could tell by her wardrobe. Dwyer once told House Minority Leader Charlie Halleck, “When you see me walk on the floor and wearing pink, you’ll know I’m going to step to the left and vote with the Democrats. But if I’m wearing black or white, you’ll know i’m with the Republicans.” A look at her voting record shows she would definitely be wearing pink.
The vote on which Dwyer most notoriously opposed her party came in 1961. Speaker Sam Rayburn wanted to increase the size of the Rules Committee believing he would have a better chance to advance his more liberal agenda (the committee was chaired by segregationist Howard K. Smith of Virginia). The measure passed 217-212. Dwyer was one of the “saintly seven.”
Dwyer was born Florence Louise Price in Reading, Pennsylvania but eventually found her way to Elizabeth, New Jersey, then a bustling ethnic city just south of Newark. While Dwyer career in Trenton, New Jersey began as a lobbyist (she was State Legislation Chairman of the New Jersey Federation of Business and Professional Women), her hard work earned her the notice of Joseph Brescher, at the time Majority Leader of the General Assembly who would eventually ascend to the Speakership. This made Dwyer the first female Secretary to a Speaker. But a political career would await in her own right. Dwyer won an Assembly seat in 1949 and immediately focused on Equal Pay for Equal Work which Governor Alfred Driscoll would sign into law in 1952. She was then convinced by, among others, U.S. Senator Cliff Case, to seek a Congressional seat.
To get the nomination, Dwyer faced a former Assemblywoman with whom she had served, Irene Griffin of Westfield. But she won the nomination and proceeded to pass out campaign literature that said, “Ike wants Flo.” In a major upset, she edged freshman incumbent Harrison Williams by 4,000 votes out of 209,000 cast.
Dwyer brought her pursuit of equal rights to Congress. She co-sponsored a Congressional version of Equal Pay for Equal Rights and later, the Equal Rights Amendment which would pass the House. “Passage of a meaningful equal pay bill,” she told colleagues, “will end a long and unfortunate pattern of discrimination against women and it will place the Federal Government in the same desirable position as the 20 states which have enacted equal pay laws. It will help all areas of the economy, men as well as women, by stabilizing wage rates, increasing job security, and discouraging the replacement of men with women at lower rates of pay.” But she was not happy with all of the exemptions. And she pursued granting women the ability to serve on juries.
Dwyer’s advocacy for equal rights was by no means limited to women. In 1960, she introduced legislation that would create an “Equal Job Opportunity Under Government Contracts.” The goal was to add fairness to the process for minorities seeking business contracts. For Dwyer was unabashedly in favor of Civil Rights. Her advocacy was so fervent that in 1957, after just a single month in Congress, she would become the prime sponsor of the Eisenhower administration’s Civil Rights bill.
Beyond gender issues, Dwyer’s priorities included government efficiency and the environment. She backed much of the “Great Society,” including the Passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and Medicare, though opposed the Appalachian Regional and Development Act and creation of a cabinet level Department of Housing and Urban Fevelopment.
The Fair Credit Protection Act and the Consumer Protection Agency were also her bills. The latter, which she sponsored with New York Democrat Benjamin Rosenthal, saw very little success. During the single term in which Dwyer was still in office when proposing the bill, the House acted but the Senate did not. Much of the resistance came from her own party and some of it had to do with Rosenthal, a frequent critic of Nixon. “I like your bill but I don’t like the company you keep,” was one such comment.
Dwyer also proposed increasing the term for House members to four years, arguing that being confronted with re-election constraints less frequently would “greatly increase the quality of representation.”
Dwyer was not speaking from experience. Her own re-elections were non-worrisome. She proved enormously popular and, when when redistricting deprived her of much of her base, forcing her into Newark and suburban Union County, persevering by large margins. And as her House biography notes, Dwyer never used her gender to her advantage. “I am campaigning on my record. I have never campaigned as a woman. If I can’t take on any man running against me, I don’t deserve to represent the women and men of their country.” Interestingly, in 1962, she was challenged by another female, the first such pairing in history. But Dwyer won hands down.
Late in her career, Dwyer importuned Nixon to set up a task force which ultimately produced the report, “A Matter of Simple Justice.” She had lobbied him to create the Office of Women’s Rights but instead was forced to settle for a committee. As to the notion that she was a feminist. “None of us are feminists. We do not ask for special priviliges…Our sole purpose is to suggest ways and means by which women’s rights as citizens and human beings may be better protected, discrimination against women may be eliminated and women’s ability to contribute to the economic, social, and political life of the Nation be recognized.”
In 1972, Dwyer was 70 and faced another redistricting that would force her to introduce herself to many new perspective constituents. She simply decided with “reluctance” to retire. She returned to New Jersey and lived another four years, passing in 1976.