Joe Waggonner - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: Joseph David Waggonner, Jr. (September 7, 1918 – October 7, 2007), better known as Joe D. Waggonner, was a Democratic U.S. Representative from Bossier Parish who represented the Fourth Congressional District of northwest Louisiana from December 1961 until January 1979. He was also a confidant of Republican U.S. President Richard M. Nixon, and in 1974 hosted Nixon's first public appearance after his resignation amid the Watergate scandal.
Waggonner was born in Plain Dealing to Joe David Waggonner, Sr. (June 11, 1873—March 9, 1950), and the former Elizzabeth Johnston (November 23, 1882 —December 24, 1957).[1] He graduated from Plain Dealing High School and in 1941 from Louisiana Tech University in Ruston, the seat of Lincoln Parish, where he was a member of Kappa Sigma.
On December 14, 1942, he married the former Mary Ruth Carter (born 1921). The couple resided in their later years in Benton, the seat of Bossier Parish, and then in the more populous Bossier City.
on July 23, 1960, Waggonner was nominated in the Democratic primary to the Louisiana State Board of Education, now the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. Waggonner won the seat for the Third Public Service Commission District, a configuration since disbanded that then included twenty-eight north Louisiana parishes. Waggonner unseated the incumbent, C. Raymond Heard, and was then unopposed in the November 8 general election. In this campaign, Waggonner posed as a more determined segregationist than his opponent.[3] One of his advertisements proclaimed: "For: Our Youth and Segregation; Against: Federal Aid to Education."[4] In 1961, Waggonner was chosen president of (1) the Louisiana School Boards Association and (2) the United Schools Committee of Louisiana. He had also been instrumental, along with Rainach, in the founding of the White Citizens Council in the late 1950s.
Waggonner ran a wholesale petroleum products distribution agency that serviced northern Bossier Parish.
In 1968, Waggonner easily turned back an African American primary challenger, Leon R. Tarver, II, later president of the Southern University System. Tarver's family operates a Shreveport funeral home. His brother, Gregory Tarver, would later serve on the Shreveport City Council and in the Louisiana State Senate. Over the years, Waggonner had only token opponents. He did not seek a tenth term in 1978.
Commenting on the founding of Rhodesia, Waggonner said on April 5, 1966:
In Congress, Waggonner often supported a Republican-Southern Democratic coalition on various issues, later known as the "Boll Weevils". He was fiscally conservative and opposed many federal social programs as well as civil rights legislation in 1964, 1965 and 1968. He took a "hawkish" position on the Vietnam War.
Three generations ago, a group of resourceful white men went into the jungle of what is now Rhodesia and carved a civilized land by the sheer force of their brains and management ability. The lesson of history was crystal clear then as it is now: the natives were not capable of producing any semblance of what we call civilization. Now that the white man had led them out of savagery, the Socialist, left-wing camp is up in arms to turn the country back to them. This is, of course, a not too subtle way of building a Socialist bridge from Democracy to Communism.[5]
Boll weevils was an American political term used in the mid- and late-20th century to describe conservative Southern Democrats.
During and after the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt, conservative southern Democrats were part of the coalition generally in support of Roosevelt's New Deal and Harry Truman's Fair Deal economic policies, but were opposed to desegregation and theAmerican civil rights movement. On several occasions between 1948 and 1968, a prominent conservative Southern Democrat broke from the Democrats to run a third party campaign for President on a platform of states' rights: Strom Thurmond in 1948, Harry F. Byrdin 1960, and George Wallace in 1968. In the 1964 presidential election, five states in the Deep South (then a Democratic stronghold) voted for Republican Barry Goldwater over Southern Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson, partly due to Johnson's support of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Goldwater's opposition to it. After 1968, with desegregation a settled issue, the Republican Party began a strategy of trying to win conservative Southerners away from the Democrats and into the Republican Party (see Southern strategy and Silent Majority).
Representative Howard W. Smith (D-VA) took up the boll weevil as a symbol in the 1950s, during the Eisenhower administration.[1]
Nonetheless, a bloc of conservative Democrats, mostly Southerners, remained in the United States Congress throughout the 1970s and 1980s (Conservative Coalition). These included Democratic House members as conservative as Larry McDonald, who was also a leader in the John Birch Society. During the administration of Ronald Reagan, the term "boll weevils" was applied to this bloc of conservative Democrats, who consistently voted for tax cuts, increases in military spending, and deregulation favored by the Reagan administration.
"Boll weevils" was sometimes used as a political epithet by Democratic Party leaders, implying the boll weevils were unreliable on key votes or not team players.
Most of the boll weevils eventually retired from politics, or in the case of some, such as Senators Phil Gramm and Richard Shelby, switched parties and joined the Republicans.[2] Since 1988, the term "boll weevils" has fallen out of favor. A bloc of conservative Democrats in the House, including some younger or newer members as well as the remaining boll weevils who refused to bow to pressure to switch parties, organized themselves as the "Blue Dogs" in the early 1990s. A different bloc of Democrats also emerged in the 1990s, under the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), espousing conservative pro-business views on economic issues and moderate views on social issues.
Waggonner was personally and politically close to President Nixon and opposed Nixon's impeachment over Watergate-related matters. While leading southern conservatives in the U.S. House, he wielded power with Nixon that was often reserved for the Speaker or a key committee chairman. He was an influential member of the House Ways and Means Committee and a key player the Republican president needed to get legislation passed in the House. Waggonner later revealed that he also had close contacts with Democratic Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, neither of whom were particularly popular in the 4th District.
In the 1964 gubernatorial second primary and general election, Waggonner endorsed Democrat John McKeithen who, like Waggonner in 1961, was opposed by the Republican Charlton Lyons. Waggonner objected to the strengthening of the Republican Party in Louisiana. He once said that Louisiana, unlike other southern states, already had a two-party system through its "Long" and "anti-Long" factional competition. Nevertheless, in his later years, Waggonner did occasionally endorse Republicans, including the 1996 presidential nominee Robert J. "Bob" Dole of Kansas, who had been Ford's vice-presidential running mate in 1976.
In 1981, President Ronald W. Reagan, who had campaigned for Charlton Lyons for governor of Louisiana in 1964, appointed Waggonner to the 15-member National Commission on Social Security Reform, headed by Alan Greenspan.
Waggonner was a member of the First United Methodist Church of Plain Dealing but later attended the First United Methodist Church of Benton.
Daughter Carol Johnston told Shreveport Times that her father was "a strong Christian. As long as he was physically able, he never went to bed without getting on his knees to say his prayer. Everything he did was the result of following what he thought was the example of Jesus."
Son David Waggonner (born ca. 1950) said that his father was "a real man. ... He really liked people and cared about them." David, who was twelve when Waggonner was elected to Congress, went to Washington with his father in the summer of 1962.
Waggonner had a stroke and suffered from heart problems. He had been hospitalized for several weeks prior to his death at Promise Specialty Hospital in Shreveport.
Services of forty-five minutes in length were held on October 9, 2007, at the Brown Memorial Chapel of Methodist-affiliated Centenary College, another institution of higher learning which Waggonner supported. Centenary President Emeritus Donald Webb officiated, with assistance from the Reverend Lynn Malone of the First United Methodist Church of Benton. Webb quipped that Waggonner had insisted thirty years earlier that Webb preach Waggonner's funeral, and Webb said he often hoped that Waggonner would outlive him and thus relieve Webb of that responsibility for which he felt "inadequate". Webb called Waggonner a "balanced man who could see both sides and bring them together." Reverend Malone said that Waggonner was the "ultimate patriot who loved his country." Waggonner himself requested the reading of that passage from Ecclesiastes about there being a time to everything.
"Joe Waggonner was quite a character, representing our state during a tumultuous time in Congress. He was an economic development pioneer for Northwest Louisiana, and will be remembered for his hard work to lift up the region," Blanco said in her statement.
Former Governor Buddy Roemer, whom Waggonner opposed as his successor in the House in 1978, remarked: "He was bipartisan, or better yet, nonpartisan. He kept putting his district, his state, his country first, not his party. The first thing they said was 'Democrats vote this way, Republicans vote this way,' and Joe Waggonner said 'Nonsense!'"[8]
In the spring of 1976, Waggonner was arrested in Washington on a charge of soliciting a police decoy for purposes of prostitution. He was released without formal charges because of a provision of the United States Constitution which forbids the arrest of a congressman on a misdemeanor charge while Congress is in session. Waggoner's arrest prompted a change in prodceedure allowing Congressmen to be arrested and prosecuted to the same extent as other citizens.[9]
Despite the incident, voters overwhelmingly renominated Waggonner in the August 14, 1976, primary, which turned out to have been his last election victory.[10] In that same primary, Jerry Huckaby of Ringgold in Bienville Parish had unseated Waggonner's colleague Otto Passman. Huckaby went on to defeat Frank Spooner to win the seat.
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