Photo via the John Brademas Congressional Papers at New York University
Photo via the John Brademas Congressional Papers at New York University
1958 was a year that ushered in throngs of new Democrats in Congress, one of whom was John Brademas of Indiana. While few outside the Notre-Dame-anchored Indiana Third Congressional district would ever hear of Brademas, his name evokes pride in America’s Greek community and Northwest Indiana, as Brademas was the first Congressman of Greek descent in U.S. history. Brademas, who later served as President of New York University, died recently at the age of 89. It was a fruitful life worth emulating.
Brademas was born in Indiana to a Greek restaurant owner, one of four children. He proved that he would advance to high places fairly quickly, going to Harvard and achieving a Rhodes Scholarship from Oxford. A Navy veteran, Brademas was an Executive Assistant to Adlai Stevenson early in his career.
In Congress, much of Brademas’s niche was geared toward education, as he played a major hand on the Elementary and Secondary Act and the National Higher Education Acts. He was instrumental in the creation of Head Start, the Environmental Education Act, and the Drug Abuse Education Act. The Comprehensive Child Development Bill, vetoed by President Nixon in 1969, was Brademas’s—so was the Child and Family Services Bill, designed to increase resources to parents. His partner on that: future Vice-President “Fritz” Mondale. Brademas called passage of the Omnibus Education Act “my most gratifying achievement since coming to Congress.” As a result of his impact, he was called “Education’s White Knight,” “Super Congressman,” and “Mr. Education”; he eventually chaired a Select Labor Committee and helped shepherd the renewal of the Older Americans Act of 1972 to House passage saying, “the bill seeks to improve the Administration on Aging, to upgrade its functions, to broaden its duties and to ensure that all federal programs and information affecting the older persons are more effectively coordinated and developed.” His record with liberal interests groups was significant. In 1972, he supported the ADA (Americans for Democratic Action) 100% of the time.
Yet Brademas’ connection to the arts may truly be his legacy: his legislation created both the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Brademas’s impact in this domain was such that a poll of 4,000 University Presidents asked to name the most influential individuals in the field of higher education voted Brademas into the top four. For northwestern Indiana, his greatest legacy may have been securing an $81 million government grant following the closing of the Studebaker Plant in Mishawaka. This closure left 5,000 people out of work but the grant enabled Kaiser to purchase the plant. The money helped restore many of the lost jobs.
Brademas witnessed many events during his tenure. The inauguration of John F. Kennedy was his most “dramatic moment.” He also got to serve as acting Speaker when Tip O’Neill and Jim Wright were out of the country for the greeting of the new Pope. Brademas’s 22-year tenure belied the fact that his hold on the district was quite tenuous. In fact, two previous attempts to win the position failed, though his 1954 bid fell just shy, as he lost to Shepard Crumpacker by just 2,000 votes, 51-49%. One person who was successful that year recruited Brademas to serve on his staff: Ohio Democrat Tom Ashley (ironically, both men were unseated in 1980). Crumpacker stepped down in 1956, and Brademas tried again. However, the Eisenhower landslide enabled Jay Nimtz to waltz past Brademas with 53%. 1958 reversed the climate, and Brademas roared past Nimtz 57-43%. His early win that evening foreshadowed a night of massive Democratic gain that night. Just after the election, Brademas told U.S. News and World Report that “my opponents followed national Republican lies centered almost entirely upon personal attacks [and] opposed me as a radical, Socialist, left-winger, tool of labor. It was completely ineffective.”
Strong challenges awaited nearly every cycle, and while his margins varied, only in the two Democratic tsunamis of 1964 and 1974 did he pass 60%. Republicans may have hoped Brademas’s 1960 showing may have led him into a false sense of security. He had won a second term by more than 10,000 votes as Nixon beat Kennedy in the district by 8,000. But he didn’t take that bait. His campaign skills were indefatigable.
In 1962, though, the organizational shoe was somewhat on the other foot. Two years earlier, it had been the Republican organization that was weak. This time, it was the Democrats. Brademas’s foe, Elkart County Attorney Ainlay, not only depicted Brademas as “ultra-liberal,” but also said the same of the Kennedy administration. One example was the farm bill which Brademas backed. That, Ainlay said, was “another outright power grab and attempt to control the lives of American farmers by decree from Washington.” Brademas won positive headlines by luring Defense Department officials to the district to look into ways for universities to be used for research. In the end, Ainlay’s efforts to tie Brademas to Kennedy may have helped, but not the way he had intended. The Cuban Missile Crisis bolstered the President’s standing which transferred to Democratic candidates (Birch Bayh). Brademas staved off Ainlay 52-48%.
Meanwhile, the conservative nature did little to dissipate Brademas’s liberalism, which garnered him the respect of many Democratic colleagues who frequently saw him as a candidate for a leadership position in the House. He looked at the position of Majority Whip following the 1970 elections. The position went to Tip O’Neill who named Brademas deputy whip. When O’Neill became Speaker, he elevated Brademas to Majority Whip, a move that did not come without controversy.
During Watergate, Brademas gave an uncharacteristically angry speech on the floor. It was the day before Nixon resigned, and the House was debating a campaign finance measure that would address at least some of the allegations that led to Watergate. Brademas spoke of Nixon’s impending resignation, bellowing “And why? Because we have witnessed over the last several months, month after month, revelations of the most spectacular lawlessness and corruption in the 200 years of the history of this country.” Gesturing to the Republican side of the aisle, Brademas yelled, “It seems to me that upon your party … there should now be some sense of public responsibility to … help clean up federal elections in this country.”
Also in 1974, Brademas backed a suspension of aid to Turkey. “In a very small island republic of some 700,000 people,” 200,000 of these people are now refugees. Those people have been bombed, murdered and wounded with weapons supplied by the people of the United States in direct violation of the law; in violation of the provisions of the Foreign Assistance Act; in violation of the Foreign Military Sales Act, both of which make clear that weapons that are supplied by the taxpayers of the United States are to be used for defensive purposes only and not for aggressive purposes.”
Brademas was friends with Park Tong Sun and ultimately received $5,000 in campaign contributions from the man ultimately charged with influence peddling. That scandal had brought down John McFall, the California Democrat whom Brademas was replacing as Whip. Brademas had disclosed the payments; McFall had not, likely a key reason an Ethics investigation cleared Brademas of wrongdoing. Brademas, in acknowledging his longstanding friendship with Sun, said, “If one knew earlier what we knew today, one wouldn’t have had anything to do with him.”
When the Carter administration proposed reducing Social Security benefits, Brademas said “they’re going to run into a buzz-saw.” Work on issues involving Greece also were a feature Brademas’s tenure. He criticized the Carter administration for elimination an arms embargo on Turkey following its invasion of Cyprus and he spoke out against military aid to Turkey. He surmised that it “might be an attempt to appear decisive in order to reverse his decline in polls.”
Brademas had another side which few of his constituents saw, yet made him legendary in D.C. He was long among the city’s most eligible bachelors and he convinced O’Neill it might be beneficial to to hit the DC nightlife. He later joked that he “got him, inadvertently into trouble.” By the mid-1970s, however,
Brademas was picked off. He married a prominent physician.
However, 1980 produced a Republican tractor-trailer that ran over he and many of his fellow liberals. At first glimpse it seemed as though his challenger, 27 year old John Hiler, would be no more imposing than any of Brademas’s previous foes. Brademas himself argued that he was too politically inexperienced to handle the challenges of being a Congressman. But the high national unemployment transferred to Indiana, which hit 15% in many parts of the district. Hiler homed in on that issue, and with Reagan at the top of the ticket, he beat Brademas 55-45%. Tip O’Neill called his loss “the sorriest moment of the day.” Many felt he eventually would have won the post when O’Neill retired. Brademas took a glass half-full view of the defeat saying, “Life goes on. It is a great satisfaction to me personally to have served in the House for 22 years. It’s a satisfaction in and of itself. I don’t think of the years I spent of as wasted … Looking back on my career, I was the sponsor of a number of pieces of legislation that opened the door for millions of Americans for education—college for young people, handicapped education for young people, handicapped rehabilitation for adults and services for our senior citizens.”
As first-rate as Brademas’s accomplishments in Congress were, it’s possible that, in defeat, his best was yet to come. He served as President of New York University for 11 years and was so successful at bringing in money that one colleague noted “Brademas seems to know everyone worth knowing in this country.” Indeed, actress Paulette Goddard left a sizable fortune to New York University largely because she liked and admired Brademas. His role was by no means limited to the university, however. He served on a number of boards, including chairing the New York Federal Reserve Board and the Rockefeller Foundation’s RCA Corporation. But he made clear his heart was in the big city. “If like me you have a low threshold of boredom,” he told one admirer, “this is the perfect job. I feel very much at home here, and in this part of town.”
In the 1990s, Brademas became President Clinton’s appointee to chair the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities, which published a report, Creative America that focused on keeping interest in the arts alive. Many other roles, including an extensive travel schedule, encompassed his arts and humanities grant-making. He still resided in New York upon passing.