[This essay was originally written for publication. No one was interested in a piece about an obscure Oklahoma politician thought to be an electoral failure. But this son of a former Member of Congress and himself the youngest legally elected Member of Congress who served only two years before being defeated for re-election led a life instructive for all of us as we attempt to understand the giant social upheavals of the 1960s.}
Oklahoma west of Interstate Highway 35 is a land of short grass, wheat, cotton, and oil. It is a region of small cities and towns, farms, ranches, former reservations for Native Americans, and a large military installation at Fort Sill. Much of the land reminds one of the Dust Bowl era. Life for most of its inhabitants can be hard and cruel. Folks who grow up there are genuine hardscrabble survivors who brave wind, drought, extremes of heat and cold, tornados, and roller-coaster business cycles to provide for themselves and their families. They are taught to be self-reliant, patriotic, and religious.
Western Oklahoma, along with the rest of the state, was solidly Democratic and populist since statehood in 1907; that is until the 1960s. The shocking election of Republican Henry Bellmon, a wheat farmer who lived just west of I-35, as governor in 1962 sent shock waves throughout the nation. A national political transformation of Southern and Southwestern Democrats into Republicans was being demonstrated in the Sooner State. Oklahoma Democrats who wanted to win elections had to keep one ear attuned to the new liberal leanings of the national party that championed civil rights and social change and the other ear to the voices of the traditional voters concerned with big government interfering in their affairs. This political tightrope act is difficult.
To understand early Oklahoma politics, one must understand populism. Populists fought for the common farmer and small businessman against the interests of banks, railroads, oil, and other forms of big business. The article in the Oklahoma constitution that created the State Corporation Commission, which regulated big business, is reportedly longer than the entire United States Constitution. In addition, elected state officials in their oaths had to swear that they had not taken advantage of free rides on the railroads! However, populists generally supported Jim Crow laws that legalized racial segregation in many states, including Oklahoma. And Oklahoma was a base for the Ku Klux Klan and its sympathizers.
One such Democratic populist was Jed Johnson, Sr. Although born in Texas, Johnson was educated in Oklahoma public schools and the University of Oklahoma where he received his law degree in 1915. After graduate study in France and army service during World War I, Johnson began practicing law and publishing a newspaper in Walters, Oklahoma. He served in the State Legislature for seven years and was elected to Congress from the Sixth District. (Following the 1930 census Oklahoma had nine districts and following the 1940 census the number was reduced to eight.)
Johnson combined his Democratic partisanship and populist sentiments with strong support of President Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. While serving in the House of Representatives he championed rural electrification, farm-tenancy, the Civilian Conservation Corps, old-age pensions, veterans’ welfare, and soil and water conservation. Much of his political advocacy paralleled that of a Texas congressman named Lyndon Johnson. Despite his support of popular programs Johnson was defeated for re-election in his party’s primary in 1946. Then he was appointed a judge on the United States Customs Court, a position in which he served until his death in 1963.
In 1925 Johnson married Beatrice Luginbybl of Chickasha, Oklahoma and they had four children. Jed Johnson, Jr. was born in Washington, DC on December 27, 1939. While his father was in Congress Jed, Jr. attended public schools in Chickasha and when his father was appointed to the court he enrolled at Friends Seminary, a private K-12 day school in New York City associated with the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). Eventually, Jed, Jr. became a congressional page serving members of both houses and graduated from the Capitol Page School in Washington, DC in 1957. Then he attended the University of Oklahoma where he was elected student body president and graduated in 1961.
While in Congress Jed, Sr. had attended international peace conferences in France (1927) and Switzerland (1929). Jed, Jr. began to emulate his father in this regard. He attended various United Nations and international youth conferences in the early 1960s and was a member of the United States National Commission for UNESCO and a nongovernmental observer at the United Nations, as well as serving as president of the United States Youth Council. While working for the United Nations, Johnson’s office was just down the hall from Eleanor Roosevelt’s office, which was exciting for him due to his father’s political alliance with President Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal.
After the death of his father Jed, Jr. returned to Oklahoma and was elected to Congress from the Sixth District in 1964. He defeated Congressman Victor Wickersham in the Democratic primary but not without a fight. In the four-man primary Johnson was a distant second to Wickersham, who almost won the primary outright. Johnson was so weak that he won a majority in only one county and a plurality in another. Three weeks later in the run-off Johnson shocked Wickersham by winning. He gained over eighteen thousand votes while his opponent lost over eight thousand votes. In the general election influenced by President Lyndon Johnson’s landslide win over Senator Barry Goldwater, Johnson defeated his Republican opponent Bayard Auchincloss by over seventeen thousand votes.
It is interesting to note that because of redistricting in 1952 Wickersham had beaten Congressman Toby Morris in the primary. Morris was the Democrat who had defeated Jed, Sr. in 1946. However, this was not the same district from which his father had been elected. Because of national population shifts Oklahoma now only had six instead of eight or nine districts. Jed, Jr. represented virtually all of western Oklahoma in Congress. Also, Jed, Jr. was only 24 years of age when he was elected. However, he met the constitutional requirement of 25 years by the time Congress convened on January 3, 1965. (The youngest House member ever was William Charles Cole Claiborne of Tennessee. Born in 1775, he was elected in 1796 and re-elected in 1798 even though he did not meet the constitutional age requirement.) Johnson had reportedly planned this situation since he was 16 years old and working as a congressional page.
Another situation Johnson planned for was his marriage to Sydney Herlong after a long courtship. Sydney was the daughter of a congressman from Florida and had met Jed at a dance in 1956. They were both in high school. They went their own ways for college and work. After numerous proposals from Jed, they were engaged shortly after he entered Congress and they were married on September 25, 1965. As both a newlywed and the youngest member of Congress, Jed gained national attention. The publicity highlight of this situation was a very positive article on Jed and Sydney published in “The Ladies Home Journal” in March 1966 and entitled “A Happy Marriage of Love and Politics.”
In the article I feel Johnson is accurately portrayed as an idealistic and ambitious politician with an unlimited future in his profession. He seeks to bring progressive change to his district and to the nation. One senses by Johnson’s comments that the House of Representatives is a steppingstone or an apprenticeship to even greater political challenges and responsibilities.
As a member of the 89th Congress, Johnson already had his share of challenges and responsibilities. This Congress was the so-called “Great Society Congress” because of the massive social legislation President Johnson requested. Speaking to the graduating class at the University of Michigan on May 22, 1964, the President described his commitment to civil rights and economic prosperity for all Americans. His intent was not to build merely upon John Kennedy’s legacy but to create his own original program. It fell upon the new Congress elected that fall and assembled the following January to consider and pass the laws necessary to realize the Great Society.
Congressman Johnson began his term as an establishment Democrat in the tradition of Franklin Roosevelt and supporting Lyndon Johnson’s policies. In fact, he was often accused of merely being a rubberstamp for the President. Jed Johnson, Jr. was committed to the ideals of the Great Society not out of blind political loyalty or expediency, but because he truly believed in them. His education; his travels; and his wide reading, especially in history, shaped his world-view that progressive social chance was not only inevitable, but also desired. Johnson considered his “yes” vote to the Civil Rights Act as one of his proudest moments.
Johnson was assigned to the House Armed Services Committee. As such, he had a grand view of the action that would undermine the very foundations of the Great Society- the Vietnam War. At first the congressman supported American military action in Vietnam but slowly came to see the war as a mistake and as unwinnable. He also came to believe that the President and his administration were lying to Congress and the people about our chances in the conflict. Johnson was not alone in his doubts. A growing national dissent against the war erupted into protests and violence over the years. The conflict over American foreign policy undermined support and resources for the Great Society. As Richard Goodwin, speechwriter for both Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, observed, “Lyndon Johnson’s war destroyed Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society.”
As he prepared for his re-election bid in 1966, the congressman faced several dilemmas. First, he spent much of his time in Washington and not in Oklahoma. The demands of the President’s legislative program, being a newlywed, and the relatively difficult airline travel to Oklahoma in those days kept Johnson in Washington much of the time. Also, there were fewer public opinion polls than today; timely polling could have indicated political problems for him. In addition, he may have received bad political advice encouraging him to stay as much as possible in Washington. Thus, Johnson may have lost touch with his constituents or at the very least lost the power of his incumbency. While his wife remembers receptions in all 23 counties of the Sixth District and 76 air flights either to and from Oklahoma or from one part of the district to the other, his opponent was campaigning full time. During September and October Johnson especially felt compelled to stay in Washington to vote for the President’s legislative agenda. He knew he was in a no-win situation.
Second, the Republican Party was reviving itself after its disastrous defeat in 1964. The South, the Southwest, and the West looked ripe for Republican victories. Editorials in the Oklahoma City newspapers denounced the congressman as a communist sympathizer. To Oklahoma Republicans, Johnson was vulnerable as a liberal in a growing conservative state that was letting go of its populist leanings.
Johnson defeated Wickersham again in the Democratic primary in 1966 by over four thousand votes but lost the general election to James V. Smith, Republican of Chickasha by fewer than three thousand votes. The irony of the election was that Smith was a conscientious objector during the Korean War. Johnson did not bring this issue up in his pro-military district because he felt this would be a personal attack. If he had done so, he would have won the election. Johnson did not broadcast his doubts about the Vietnam War, either. His feelings against the war were not yet fully developed.
It is still a matter of opinion whether Johnson was specifically targeted by Republicans for defeat. On the one hand, Johnson was a young high-profile incumbent with progressive views ahead of most of his constituents. On the other hand, the Republican candidate with a record as a conscientious objector was not the ideal candidate to defeat a perceived liberal. Furthermore, Smith was himself defeated for re-election two years later. As a result of re-districting, he ran against veteran Democratic congressman Tom Steed of Shawnee, a politician more like Jed, Sr. than Jed, Jr. in that he was regularly seen and felt in his district. There is some wisdom in the saying that the first duty of a politician is to get re-elected. In Johnson’s case re-election would have meant he would have a congressional seat (and perhaps beyond) to advocate his views.
Perhaps we can understand the demise of Johnson’s political career in Oklahoma by examining two other state politicians- David Boren and Mike Synar. Like Johnson, Boren was the son of an Oklahoma congressman (Lyle Boren) and was also born in Washington, DC within a year and a half of Johnson. Boren graduated from Yale and was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. He then graduated from law school at the University of Oklahoma. After teaching at Oklahoma Baptist University Boren was elected governor of Oklahoma and then United States Senator where he eventually chaired the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee. He resigned from the Senate to become President of the University of Oklahoma. He did this while surviving a divorce and false charges of homosexuality. Despite sharing a relatively similar background with Johnson, Boren nevertheless charted a reform conservative course that was keeping with traditional Oklahoma populism.
Mike Synar grew up in northeastern Oklahoma and graduated from the University of Oklahoma in 1972, attended graduate school at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and Northwestern University, and returned home to receive his law degree from the University of Oklahoma. He then immediately entered politics by running for Congress from Oklahoma’s Second District. Like Johnson, Synar defeated the incumbent Democrat and then allied himself closely with the national party. Unlike Johnson, Synar was successful at keeping his office, serving eight terms. However, his national party ties caught up with him and he was defeated in the 1994 Democratic primary. The Democrat winner then lost to the Republican candidate. And tragically like Johnson he died at an early age (45 from brain cancer).
Any successful politician knows the difficult choices one has in balancing constituent needs and constituent wants. As a result of these choices, a politician can come to be known as a leader or as a hack. In his seminal book Leadership, James MacGregor Burns distinguishes between “transactional” leadership and “transforming” leadership. Transactional leaders are more numerous; they trade (transact) jobs for votes, subsidies for campaign contributions, and the like. Transforming leaders also transact, but they in contrast, intentionally and actively seek opportunities to stimulate and engage followers to fulfill higher needs so the leader and followers are transformed into moral agents for change. (Burns, p. 4)
There is no doubt that Johnson, Boren, and Synar attempted to be transforming leaders. Yet Johnson was not successful in electoral politics. The late Baptist theologian James William McClendon, Jr. also has insight here. In his Biography as Theology, he maintains that a person’s theology is evident not by professed beliefs, but by one’s life. McClendon also maintains that certain people who are destined to be change agents rise up in communities “…who embody the convictions of the community, but in a new way; who share the vision of the community, but with a new scope or power; who exhibit the style of the community, but with significant differences.” These persons, according to McClendon, alter the community’s moral vision. (McClendon, p. 22) Although he does not specifically state it, a key to change is that those persons being identified with the community, not merely wanting to change the community. This process works not only in theology, but also in politics. In Johnson’s case, he lost re-election not because of convictions, vision, or style but because the majority of voters of the Sixth District in 1966 did not identify him as one of their own. Former House Speaker Tip O’Neill remarked that all politics is local. If that observation is correct, then so is that all politics is personal. Johnson may have represented the district for two years but he was not perceived as being from the district. In contrast, Boren and Synar were identified as “one of us” by the voters during much of their political careers.
t is more in his defeat of 1966 than in his victory of 1964 that truly demonstrates Johnson’s success as a moral and change agent. Many persons would have retired from public life. Johnson refused to do so. He attempted a political comeback by running for the United States Senate and was defeated in the Democratic primary. He also was the Oklahoma coordinator for the presidential bid of the late Senator Paul Simon of Illinois. But it was his leadership of the United States Association of Former Members of Congress (USAFMC) that set the tone of his post-congressional career. Two former House members who founded the USAFMC, Walter Judd (Republican) and Brooks Hays (Democrat), asked Johnson to be the organization’s first executive director.
Through his leadership “in the background” as executive director of USAFMC Johnson sought to demonstrate the strengths and virtues of democracy and its institutions through international visits and exchange programs. He encouraged and supported the emerging democratic leaders of Eastern Europe as their countries gained freedom from Soviet domination. Monitors were sent to these countries to observe elections and congressional fellows stayed “in country” for up to two years to advise national leaders; in turn these nations sent representatives to the United States to participate in seminars and consultations on democratic systems. The USAFMC began to serve as a bridge between the Congress and representative bodies from other nations to foster understanding, to discuss values, and to strengthen ties between the United States and other democracies. The organization permitted former members of Congress, whether voluntary retired or defeated for re-election, to use their time and experiences in further service to our country.
With a grant from the Lilly Foundation, the USAFMC under Johnson initiated the Congress-to-Campus program in which a former member of Congress would be sent to a college campus to hold formal seminars and informal discussions with faculty and students on the role of Congress in our government system. Today the program continues in a revised format; bi-partisan teams are sent to colleges. With grants from the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, foreign policy seminars were conducted. Particular attention was given to Germany and Japan. A special study group on trade policy with Japan was organized during the height of the automobile debates.
An oral history project was begun under Johnson’s leadership. Former members of Congress had the opportunity to share their vast wealth of information and experiences with others. Books were published on the relationship between the president and Congress on foreign policy and on comparisons of Congress with the Japanese and German parliaments. Johnson personally was awarded the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit by the German government for his service. The USAFMC grew to become larger than the Congress.
While as a congressman Johnson reflected that, “In politics you have to remember that people have a right to defeat a man for a good reason, a bad reason, or for no reason at all,” as an former congressman he never forgot that the voter, the ordinary man and woman, is what makes democracy work, and that a public servant has various avenues in which to serve the voter. Thus, the “Last Campaign of Jed Johnson, Jr.” was not his electoral defeat of 1966, but his democratic idealism at work from that point onward in promoting progressive populism for all citizens regardless of national identity.