William Anderson (naval officer)
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William Robert Anderson (born June 17, 1921) is a former officer in the United States Navy and a former member of Congress from Tennessee.
[edit] Early life and Naval career
Anderson was born in Humphreys County, Tennessee in the rural community of Bakerville, south of Waverly. He graduated from the former Columbia Military Academy in Columbia in 1939, and from the United States Naval Academy in 1942.
Anderson's service in World War II was distinguished. He was awarded the Bronze Star and several other combat decorations from participation in a total of eleven combat submarine patrols. He was selected by Admiral Hyman G. Rickover to be the skipper of the first working nuclear submarine to be placed into service, the USS Nautilus, and was its commander from 1957 to 1959. Anderson and his crew received international notice when the Nautilus became the first submarine to sail successfully under the polar ice cap surrounding the North Pole.
[edit] Political career
Upon retiring from the Navy, Anderson entered politics. He mounted an independent campaign for governor of Tennessee in 1962, finishing second to former Democratic governor Frank G. Clement. While the race was not particularly close, he made several important political contacts and provided Clement with his main competition outside of the Republican stronghold of East Tennessee.
In 1964 Anderson entered the Democratic primary to replace Sixth District Congressman Ross Bass, who was running for the United States Senate to finish the term of the late Estes Kefauver, and won both the nomination and the subsequent general election. (Fellow retired Naval officer George W. Grider was elected to the Ninth Congressional District seat, representing the Memphis area, on the same day.) Anderson was reelected three times. He only dropped below 70 percent in 1968, when Richard Nixon won the state.
Anderson proved to be somewhat more liberal than expected for a Naval veteran representing a largely rural district in western Tennessee. In fact, in the Tennessee congressional delegation of that time, only Richard Fulton of the neighboring 5th District (Nashville) had a more liberal voting record. Anderson was well-regarded in some Democratic circles and was sometimes mentioned as potentially having a bright future, with some even suggesting him as a potential vice presidential nominee in 1972 based largely upon his military record.
However, Anderson's independent gubernatorial race and his progressive tendencies had not been forgotten by many of his fellow Democrats, particularly in the General Assembly. Tennessee was slated to lose a congressional district as a result of the 1970 census and Anderson's district was considerably reconfigured prior to the 1972 elections. In reapportionment, his district received a large area around Memphis where Republican influence was strong and growing while simultaneously losing some solidly Democratic areas.
Observers felt that if there was a vulnerable Democratic incumbent in the Tennessee congressional delegation in 1972, it was probably Anderson. This came to pass in the gigantic Republican landslide of 1972, in which President Nixon carried 49 of 50 states and 90 of Tennessee's 95 counties and Anderson lost to Republican state personnel commissioner Robin Beard by 12 points. Since then, the district—renumbered the Seventh in 1982—has become the state's most Republican district outside of East Tennessee, and Democrats have only made three serious bids for the district.
Anderson retired from public life. He served as an officer with the Public Office Corporation and currently lives in Alexandria, Virginia.
