| Albert William Watson, Sr. | |
|---|---|
| U. S. Representative from South Carolina's 2nd congressional district | |
| In office 1963 – 1971 |
|
| Preceded by | Corinne Boyd Riley |
| Succeeded by | Floyd Spence |
| State Representative from Richland County | |
| In office 1955 – 1959 |
|
| In office 1961 – 1963 |
|
| Personal details | |
| Born | August 30, 1922 Sumter, Sumter County South Carolina, USA |
| Died | September 25, 1994 (aged 72) Columbia Lexington County South Carolina |
| Resting place | Crescent Hill Memorial Gardens and Mausoleum in Columbia, South Carolina |
| Political party | Democrat-turned-Republican GOP gubernatorial nominee, 1970 |
| Spouse(s) | Lillian Audrey Williams Watson (married 1948-1994, his death) |
| Children | Albert Watson, Jr. Kimberly C. Watson |
| Residence | Columbia, South Carolina |
| Alma mater | North Greenville Junior College |
| Profession | Attorney |
| Religion | Southern Baptist |
| Military service | |
| Service/branch | United States Army Air Corps |
| Rank | Weather Specialist |
| Battles/wars | World War II |
Albert William Watson, Sr. (August 30, 1922 – September 25, 1994), was a Democrat-turned-Republican politician from the U.S. state of South Carolina, whose career ended with defeat in the hotly-contested gubernatorial general election of 1970.
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Watson was born to Claude Ayers Watson, Sr., and the former Eva Clark in Sumter in Sumter County in central South Carolina.[1] He was reared in the state capital of Columbia, the seat of Lexington County, where he attended public schools. He subsequently enrolled at the former North Greenville Junior College in Greenville, South Carolina. Watson served as a weather specialist in the United States Army Air Corps, the forerunner of the Air Force during World War II. In 1950, Watson graduated from the University of South Carolina School of Law and established his legal practice in Columbia the following year. He was elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives from nearby Richland County in 1954, 1956, and 1960. He lost the 1958 Democratic primary election for lieutenant governor to Burnet Maybank, Jr., son of a former U.S. senator. In 1948, Watson married the former Lillian Audrey Williams (born 1926), and the couple had three children, Albert Watson, Jr., Kimberly C. Watson, and Clark P. Watson.[2][3]
A Southern Baptist deacon, Watson had a twin brother, Allan R. Watson (1922-2001), a minister in that denomination who served as the pastor of churches in Florida and Alabama and preached at the White House in September 1969.[4]A second brother, Claude Watson, Jr., of Columbia, died in 2003.
In 1960, Watson, as a Democratic candidate for a third nonconsecutive term in the South Carolina House, supported Republican Vice President Richard M. Nixon of California in the presidential campaign against U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts. Oddly, Watson's twin brother knew Nixon, who maintained a residence in Florida while the pastor was based there. Nixon in 1960 nearly carried South Carolina in the strongest Republican showing in the state since 1876. In 1962, Watson sought the Democratic nomination for South Carolina's 2nd congressional district. He won with 51.8 percent of the vote over Frank C. Owens, the former mayor of Columbia and the choice of party regulars. Watson then with 52.8 percent of the general election vote, overcame the Republican candidate Floyd D. Spence, a fellow state legislator from Columbia. In 1970, Spence won the seat that Watson vacated to run for governor and remained in Congress until his death in the summer of 2001. In the 1962 race, Watson carried the support of U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond, the former governor of South Carolina who ran for president in 1948 as the nominee of the one-election only third party known as the Dixiecrats.
In the 1964 U.S. presidential election, Watson headed the "Democrats for Goldwater" organization in South Carolina in support of Republican nominees Barry M. Goldwater of Arizona and William E. Miller of New York. Thurmond himself switched parties in the midst of the Goldwater campaign, and Watson made the leap himself on February 1, 1965, after the House Democratic Caucus stripped him of his seniority for having backed Goldwater-Miller, instead of the Democratic national ticket of President Lyndon B. Johnson and Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey. Watson then resigned from the House and entered a special election to contest his vacant seat.[5]
With Spence's backing, Watson ran unopposed for the Republican nomination in the special election held on June 15, 1965. The Democrats nominated Preston Harvey Callison, a state senator who described himself as a "Mendel Rivers Democrat," a reference to L. Mendel Rivers, the long-time chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. Callison, later president of the South Carolina Baptist Convention, was considered "moderate" because he urged compliance with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, signed into law by President Johnson. By contrast, Watson equated the Civil Rights Act to the supremacy of minority rights over those of the southern white majority.[6]
Elder Democratic figure James F. Byrnes, who had endorsed Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower for president in 1952, branded the caucus action in which Watson, as well as John Bell Williams of Mississippi, lost his seniority as "punishment and humiliation" and urged voters to return Watson to Congress as the newest Republican member. Watson secured $20,000 and the services of a GOP field representative in what he termed "quite a contrast" to his treatment by House Democrats.[7]
Watson defeated Callison with 69.3 percent of the vote, a stronger showing than he received with his subsequent reelections in 1966 and 1968, when he scored 64.3 and 57.7 percent, respectively.[8]
Nestled between the coastal swamps and the piedmont, the Second District is the sole part of South Carolina to have continuous Republican congressional representation since Albert Watson's partisan defection in 1965. As early as 1960, Columbia and the outlying residential communities began moving toward the GOP. Numerous businesspersons relocated from the North; other area growth came from South Carolina natives taking jobs in state government, insurance, banking, and other endeavors. Formerly Democratic, these voters became attracted to the GOP as they financially prosper.[9]
The Second District includes several majority-black counties which are consistently outvoted by Columbia. In one of these counties, Orangeburg, highway patrolmen in 1968 shot to death three black teenagers engaged in a protest at South Carolina State University in Orangeburg.[10]To liberals, this "massacre" exemplified police overreaction; to Watson, outspoken defender of the police, the protest was "not peaceful dissent but just another step in the overall plan to disrupt the nation."[11]
Watson filled an open seat when the temporary Democratic Representative Corinne Boyd Riley of Sumter did not seek a full term. She had succeeded her husband, John J. Riley, who died in office on January 1, 1962.[12] Watson was not only the first Republican since 1896 to represent South Carolina in the U.S. House but the first member of his party to procure an undisputed House election in the state since Reconstruction. Watson was among the most outspoken critics within the Republican Party to civil rights legislation, in contrast, for instance, with such colleagues as George Herbert Walker Bush of Texas, who subsequently became U.S. president in 1989. Watson was the only House Republican to vote against the Jury Selection and Service Act of 1968, a measure designed to eliminate racial discrimination in jury selection.
Watson could have sought the governorship as a Republican in 1966, when he would have run on Thurmond's coattails, but he remained in the U.S. House. The gubernatorial nomination that year went to State Representative Joseph O. Rogers, Jr., of Manning, a former Democrat later named by President Nixon as a U.S. attorney and a U.S. district judge. Rogers polled nearly 42 percent of the vote against the Democratic Governor Robert Evander McNair, who succeeded to the office in 1965. By 1969, Watson was introduced by Thurmond as the "future governor" at a fundraising dinner featuring Goldwater.[13]
Watson was identified as a reliable social conservative, critical of such diverse elements as the Mafia, organized labor, the Black Panthers, the War on Poverty, and the Americans for Democratic Action, the liberal lobby allied with the Democrats.[14]
Watson joined Thurmond in 1968 in endorsing Richard Nixon for president though other South Carolina conservatives favored the American Independent Party choice, George C. Wallace, former governor of Alabama. Thurmond and Watson believed that Nixon could obtain textile import relief and, despite a contrary order from the United States Supreme Court, "freedom of choice" in desegregation.[15]By a small margin, Nixon became only the second Republican presidential nominee, after Goldwater, to carry South Carolina since the disputed election of Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876.
Meanwhile, Charleston businessman and legislator Arthur Ravenel, Jr., considered a moderate Republican, indicated that he would run for governor in 1970 if the GOP held a primary election. When the party decided to nominate by convention, Ravenel abandoned his candidacy, and Watson gained the nomination by acclamation.[16]Years later, Ravenel, later a U.S. representative and state senator, said that the failure to hold a primary weakened Watson by causing him mistakenly to assume moderate Republican support.[17]
John C. West, Watson's Democratic opponent, had been elected lieutenant governor under McNair in 1966, after having served as highway commissioner and state senator. Three days older than Watson, West was born in Camden, South Carolina; his father died in a fire-rescue attempt when West was only eight months old. Reared by his mother, West graduated from The Citadel and was a United States Army major during World War II. After the war, West attended the University of South Carolina and its law school. At the university, he briefly taught political science; among his students was Albert Watson, who received an "A" in the course.[18]
During his public career, John C. West avoided racial animosities, denounced the Ku Klux Klan in 1958, and supported all of the Democratic presidential nominees. In 1963, West addressed a testimonial dinner for Roy Wilkins, long-term executive director of the NAACP. West was primarily identified with such matters as industrial recruitment, health, education, and the environment. His low-key style made him appear bland in contrast to the assertive, flamboyant, and sometimes combative Watson.[19]
In February 1970, Albert Watson told a "freedom-of-choice" rally in Lamar in Darlington County to ignore those who call you "racist, bigot, and hard-core rednecks."[20] A few days later white militants in the area, armed with baseball bats and ax handles, tipped over three school buses in defiance of a desegregation order; though no one was injured, tear gas was used to restore order. Watson was seen by many as a bystander to the events.[21]
Undaunted, Watson adopted the slogan "Your Kind of Man", which some equated with racial overtones. The New York Times quoted a white trucker as having remarked, "Only one man is standing up for the white folks, and that's Albert Watson."[22]Watson vowed to oppose court-ordered desegregation on the basis of quotas, while West warned that no "reasonable alternative to compliance" was still feasible.[23]
Watson proved unable to lock up the George C. Wallace voter base in South Carolina. Former legislator Red Bethea of Dillon secured the American Independent Party gubernatorial nomination. Bethea claimed that Wallace was sympathetic to his candidacy, but Wallace was himself successfully seeking a third nonconsecutive term as governor of Alabama that year and took no part in the South Carolina campaign. Frank B. Best, Sr., of Orangeburg, the 1968 Wallace campaign manager in South Carolina, endorsed Watson, having objected to West's early backing of Hubert Humphrey in the presidential race that year. West had called Humphrey "a real friend of the South though he has had no credit for it."[24]Other Wallace leaders backed West, who led in ten of the twelve counties that Wallace had carried in 1968.[25]
Watson ran television advertisements featuring scenes from riots which occurred five years earlier in Watts, Los Angeles. The spots became so controversial that the Republican mayor of Greenville, R. Cooper White, Jr., cited them in his refusal to endorse Watson.[26] White's criticism alarmed Republicans who feared that Watson had painted himself into a minority ultra-conservative position. The Florence Morning News accused Watson of waging a "negative campaign" focusing on "those who stand for racial segregation above all else." The newspaper labeled the racial issue "phoney," claiming that Watson as governor would be "unable to turn back the clock ... and is powerless to defy the federal courts."[27]
Stressing "quality education" amid desegregation, Watson promised "some hope to our beleagurered students, teachers, and parents." He praised President Nixon for having opposed "busing for racial balance" and for supporting "neighborhood schools." He accused the Democrats of "surrender on the issue" of forced busing. West claimed that politics should be removed from the desegregation question and pledged never to "inflame or polarize class against class, rich against poor, or color against color," adding that the days of "magnolias, segregation, and discrimination" were history.[28]
The campaign focused on racial unrest in the fall semester of 1970 at institutions such as A.C. Flora High School in Forest Acres in Richland County. Watson questioned why a pupil was merely suspended for five days after striking a teacher; to Watson, the action was "not punishment but a reward. ... Education without discipline is worse than no education at all."[29]The Columbia Record dismissed discipline as a problem and stressed an "egalitarian philosophy ... that lifts the dignity of all individuals, rather than aristocratically elevating the few."[30]The Spartanburg Journal urged Watson to omit desegregation from campaign discussions and instead to accent matters over which a governor would have more direct control."[31]
When denounced as a "racist," Watson replied that he had raised funds for the historically black Allen University in Columbia and had as a congressman named several African American applicants to the national military academies. "Apparently, it is not racism for the other side to make deals to get the bloc vote, but it is racism to tell the people ... the truth about these deals," Watson replied.[32]Republican State Chairman Raymond Alexander Harris claimed that Democratic officeholders in South Carolina largely owed their existence to support from black voters.[33]
Not a single daily newspaper endorsed Watson for governor but he obtained "the neutrality of the Charleston News & Courier, which after the election urged the establishment of the two-party system.[34]In its endorsemednt of West, the Columbia State, edited by the 1962 Republican senatorial nominee, W. D. Workman, Jr., said that the Democratic nominee had "articulated a far more specific platform than any of his rivals -- at least with respect to state issues," but the paper questioned how West could fund promised teacher pay increases. The State also urged the election of more Republicans to the South Carolina General Assembly.[35]
The Anderson Independent ridiculed Watson for having been "unable to fault the state administration on any real issues" and had therefore "sent posthaste for 'Spiro the Lip' (a reference to Vice President Spiro T. Agnew) and young David Eisenhower (President Nixon's son-in-law) to come running to the rescue."[36]West discouraged out-of-state endorsements and relied instead on U.S. Senator Ernest F. Hollings, the Democratic members of the South Carolina congressional delegation, and Governor McNair, who termed West "my right arm in government."[37]United Methodist clergyman Angus McKay Brabham endorsed West and claimed that Watson carried the backing of various members of the KKK and the John Birch Society.[38]
Watson's campaign manager was Hastings Wyman, an attorney from Aiken and a former aide to Senator Thurmond and United States Secretary of Commerce Frederick B. Dent. Wyman is also a founding editor of the Southern Political Report, a non-partisan biweekly newsletter that covers the politics of thirteen southern states.[39]
The textile question played a role in West's election, as thousands of mill workers who had strayed from the Democratic Party to support Richard Nixon or George Wallace returned to their ancestral political home.[40] Each party blamed the other for the failure to obtain import restrictions. Democrats expressed alarm that textile workers were losing jobs as plants were unable to compete on the world market. Democrats urged President Nixon through executive orders to curtail clothing imports from the Far East; Republicans insisted that only Congress had the legal authority to limit the importation of man-made fabrics. Presidential counselor Harry S. Dent, Sr., of South Carolina, another former aide to Strom Thurmond[41] and the liaison official between the White House and the state GOP organizations, said that the administration was meeting with foreign competitors to devise voluntary restraints. Dent said that Nixon was pledged to veto bills with quotas on any item except textiles.[42]
Democrats charged that the opposition would spend $1.25 million in the 1970 campaign, compared to $350,000 for West and his lieutenant governor nominee, Earle E. Morris, Jr., of Pickens. State law at the time did not require financial disclosure, but it seems certain that the Watson-West race was the first in the state in which total party expenditures exceeded $1 million.[43]
Some viewed the South Carolina campaign as a referendum on President Nixon. According to the Anderson Independent, "Surely, the people will not be tricked again by the political snake oil salesman now occupying the White House," citing unfulfilled promises of "freedom-of-choice" on school desegregation and textile import relief.[44]The Greenville News perceived the contest as a litmus test of whether South Carolina would be aligned with the Upland South or remain the easternmost of the Deep South states. The Upland or Upper South stressed economic development, education, health, and employment, whereas the Deep South was seen as race-conscious and status-quo oriented.[45]As the campaign ended, the Greenville News declared that West's victory was significant enough as to place South Carolina into the "Upper South" tier of states.[46]
West accused Watson of making "reckless charges" without offering positive solutions: "I get resentful ... at those who talk down our state and have no positive plans or platform."[47]Greenville advertising executive James Marvin Henderson, Jr., Watson's running mate, questioned West's rhetoric: Why, he asked had family income in South Carolina declined over the previous two decades from 45th to 47th position nationally? Henderson noted that average wages were hihger in North Carolina or Georgia than in South Carolina.[48]
First District Republican Chairman James B. Edwards, an oral surgeon from Charleston, claimed that West had worked covertly in 1969 against the nomination of Clement Haynsworth to the United States Supreme Court. The Nixon nominee failed in the U.S. Senate, 55 to 45, on grounds of alleged bias against organized labor. Edwards predicted that West would install "an ultra-liberal, minority-dominated state government," citing the nominees ties to Hubert Humphrey and Roy Wilkins.[49] Edwards' principal political experience had been an unsuccessful race for Congress in 1971 against the Democrat Mendel Jackson Davis. In 1975, Edwards became West's successor as governor, the first Republican of the 20th century in the position. Despite the rhetoric of the 1970 campaign, West and Edwards later set aside partisan differences and became warm friends. In 1981, Edwards joined the incoming Ronald W. Reagan administration as secretary of energy at the time that West was stepping down as United States Ambassador to Saudi Arabia under President Carter.
West and Watson argued as well over lesser issues, such as state aid for municipal sewer projects, a state college for Rock Hill, and anti-pollution guidelines.[50]Watson vowed if elected to sell the $600,000 governor's jet, which cost more than $150,000 per year to operate, but West countered that the plane is needed for industrial recruitment.[51]
Official results gave West 251,151 votes (52.1 percent) to Watson's 221,236 (45.9 percent) to Bethea's 9,758 (2 percent). West polled pluralities in thirty-six of the forty-six counties. Watson fared best in Lexington County (61.7 percent), Thurmond's home county of Aiken (54.5 percent), Colleton (54.4 percent), Darlington (54.2 percent), Greenville (52.1 percent), Newberry (50.5 percent), Sumter (50.4 percent), Florence (49.8 percent), and Lee and Saluda (both 49.6 percent). In Charleston and Richland counties, Watson received 45.9 and 43.9 percent, respectively.[52]
Black voters in 1970 numbered 206,394, or 46 percent of the African American voting-age population and 35 percent of the total registration. In Columbia's heavily black Ward 9, Watson polled 79 votes, compared to West's 1,066. About half of the white voting-age population was registered, and a majority favored Watson.[53][54]Watson lost some precincts which Nixon had won in 1968. In one Columbia precinct in which Nixon polled 667 votes to Humphrey's 132 and Wallace's 69, West led Watson, 433-410. Watson's loss was sealed by weak showing in the textile centers and the capital county of Richland.[55]
For lieutenant governor, the results were similar. Earle Morris received 254,745 (53.3 percent) to James Henderson's 216,745 (45.2 percent), and the AIP candidate received the remaining 7,320 votes (1.5 percent). The 1971 legislature had two senators and eleven state representatives of Republican affiliation.[56][57]
Among the Republican legislative winners was future U.S. representative and Governor Carroll Campbell, a lawyer from Greenville. Campbell blamed the media for Watson's defeat: "the state's press made his campaign racist when it knew it was the only way to beat him."[58]Senator Thurmond similarly accused reporters of "painting a false impression" that Watson was racist and explained that such a caricature adversely "affected some of the moderate vote." Thurmond blamed Nixon's "vacillation" over school desegregation guidelines as another factor in Watson's defeat.[59]
Watson attributed his loss to low turnout: 482,000. Chairman Raymond Harris predicted that Watson would have prevailed had the turnout been 550,000. Harris said the GOP had not repudiated African Americans but had to build according to political philosophy.[60]
Except in Tennessee, Republicans took heavy losses in the southern states in 1970, including the defeat of Governor Winthrop Rockefeller in Arkansas and Governor Claude R. Kirk, Jr., in Florida. In addition, Watson's House colleagues William C. Cramer and George H.W. Bush lost U.S. Senate race in Florida and Texas, respectively to Lawton Chiles and Lloyd M. Bentsen.
In 1971, Thurmond asked Nixon to appoint Watson to the United States Court of Military Affairs, but opposition arose from Democratic U.S. Senator George S. McGovern of South Dakota, who the next year became Nixon's general election opponent. Nixon retreated from a Senate showdown over the nomination because of civil rights ramifications that would emerge from a confirmation fight.[61]Years later, Thurmond expressed disappointment that Nixon did not pursue the Watson nomination because the former congressman was "so well qualified." In October 1972, Nixon instead named Watson to a one-year appointment, which did not require Senate confirmation, as special assistant in the Social Security Administration. Watson was charged with streamlining the appeals procedure. Watson later became a Social Security administrative law judge in Columbia, a position from which he subsequently retired.[62]
Watson died in Columbia in 1994 at the age of seventy-two and is interred there at Crescent Hill Memorial Gardens and Mausoleum. His gravestone reads, "Servant of His God, Nation, State and Country." [63]His political legacy was shrouded in the 1970 gubernatorial race. According to the Columbia State, most voters, in rejecting Watson for governor, "feared that too much oratory about school problems would aggravate, rather than ease, them."[64]John C. West said that he believed Watson's loss was "inevitable" after the bus incident in Darlington County because "South Carolina people are basically law-abiding and won't tolerate violence."[65]The Florence Morning News charged that Watson attempted to "mislead voters with emotional appeals and political razzle-dazzle. As long as the Republicans persist in a social-club approach to political organization and candidate selection, the two-party system will not achieve its full effectiveness as a political balance field."[66]
Thereafter Watson's defeat seemed to convince most southern candidates in either party that they could no longer realistically challenge or undermine the nation's acceptance and growing commitment to the removal of racial barriers in society.[67]
| Preceded by Corinne Boyd Riley |
United States Representative from South Carolina's 2nd congressional district
Albert William Watson, Sr. |
Succeeded by Floyd Spence |
| Party political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Joseph O. Rogers, Jr. (1962) |
Republican nominee for governor of South Carolina
Albert William Watson, Sr. |
Succeeded by James B. Edwards (1974) |