George Rawlings

George Chancellor Rawlings, Jr. (November 7, 1921 – April 22, 2009) was an American politician and attorney at law from the U.S. state of Virginia. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as a member of the Virginia House of Delegates from 1963 to 1969.

Early life

A native of Fredericksburg, Virginia, Rawlings grew up in Ashland. He graduated from Randolph-Macon College with a Bachelor of Arts degree, and received a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1947. That year, he moved back to Fredericksburg and opened his own law firm.^[1]

In 1951, he made an unsuccessful run for Commonwealth's Attorney of Spotsylvania County. In 1963, he ran for the Virginia House of Delegates and won. He served until 1969. While a Delegate, he quickly gained a reputation as one of the leading liberals in the state and a major supporter of civil and political rights for African-Americans and the rights of organized labor.

Congressional campaigns

In 1966, he made his first run for federal office, seeking to challenge Congressman Howard W. Smith, an eighteen-term incumbent who had been in office since the Hoover administration, for renomination. Smith — a member of the Byrd Organization, the state's seemingly all-powerful political machine — was the chairman of the House Rules Committee and, as an avid segregationist and white supremacist, had used his position for years to block civil rights legislation. In the July 12 primary, Rawlings, drawing on the support of black voters who had only recently been enfranchised by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, defeated Smith by a vote of 27,115 to 26,470, a margin of just 645 votes.^[2]

The Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star declared his victory to be "the upset of the century." In the general election, however, he lost to Republican nominee William L. Scott, who received the support of most of Smith's primary voters, by a vote of 50,782 to 37,929, a nearly 15% margin.^[3]

In 1970, Rawlings, now retired from the House of Delegates, sought the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate. The seat was held by Senator Harry F. Byrd, Jr., the son of the Byrd Organization's late founder and boss, who had decided to change his party affiliation from Democratic to independent after refusing to sign a loyalty oath that pledged him to support all party nominees for office.

In the Democratic primary, Rawlings narrowly placed first with 58,874 votes (45.65%) over State Senator Clive L. DuVal II, a fellow liberal, who collected 58,174 votes (45.11%).^[4] Although DuVal was entitled to ask for a runoff, he declined to do so, and Rawlings became the Democratic nominee. In the general election, he placed second with 294,582 votes (31%), compared to 506,237 votes (54%) for Senator Byrd. Republican nominee Ray Garland placed third with 144,765 votes (15%).^[5]

Later life

Rawlings then returned to his law practice, but did not leave politics entirely. In 1972, he joined his friend and ally Henry Howell, a former Democratic State Senator who had been elected as Lieutenant Governor as an independent in a 1971 special election, as well as supporters of Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern, to attempt to purge the official machinery of the Democratic Party of the last vestiges of the Byrd Organization. As a result of these activities, Rawlings was elected as a member of the Democratic National Committee (a post he held until 1980) and as chairman of the Eighth District Democratic Committee (which he remained until 1993). The next year, Howell ran for Governor of Virginia as an independent without a Democratic opponent and with the support of the party organization.^[1]

In 1975, Rawlings and his wife, Rosalie, divorced after Rawlings came out to her as gay.^[1] After moving to Fairfax County with his new partner, he continued to practice law.

In 2000, he was caught embezzling from a client's account. He pled guilty and received a suspended sentence of five years.^[6] He died of natural causes on April 22, 2009 at Mary Washington Hospital in Fredericksburg.

References

External links

• State political force George Rawlings dies
• Virginia House of Delegates - Historical Bio for George C. Rawlings