Floyd Spence
Spence in 1976
Chair of theHouse National Security Committee
In office January 3, 1995 – January 3, 2001
Speaker	Newt Gingrich Dennis Hastert
Preceded by	Ron Dellums
Succeeded by	Bob Stump
Member of theU.S. House of Representatives fromSouth Carolina's2nd district
In office January 3, 1971 – August 16, 2001
Preceded by	Albert William Watson
Succeeded by	Joe Wilson
Member of theSouth Carolina Senate from the 7th district
In office January 14, 1969 – December 15, 1970 Serving with Michael Lukens Laughlin, Gilbert Edward McMillen
Preceded by	Frank Laney Roddey
Succeeded by	Albert John Dooley
Member of theSouth Carolina Senate from the 22nd district
In office January 10, 1967 – January 14, 1969 Serving with Eugene Cannon Griffith
Preceded by	District created
Succeeded by	District abolished
Member of theSouth Carolina House of Representatives from Lexington County
In office January 8, 1957 – January 8, 1963 Serving with Pat Lindler, Ryan C. Shealy, Albert John Dooley[1][2][3]
Preceded by	Jack Reel Callison[4]
Succeeded by	Pat Lindler[5]
Personal details
Born	Floyd Davidson Spence (1928-04-09)April 9, 1928 Columbia, South Carolina, U.S.
Died	August 16, 2001(2001-08-16) (aged 73) Jackson, Mississippi, U.S.
Resting place	Saint Peter's Lutheran Cemetery,Lexington, South Carolina
Party	Democratic (c. 1946–1962) Republican (1962–2001)
Spouses	Lula Hancock Drake ​ ​ (m. 1952; died 1978)​ Deborah E. Williams ​ (m. 1988)​
Children	4
Alma mater	University of South Carolina (BA) University of South Carolina School of Law (JD)
Profession	Attorney
Signature
Military service
Branch/service	United States Navy Naval Reserve
Years of service	1947–1988
Rank	Captain
Battles/wars	Korean War Vietnam War
Floyd Spence's voice Floyd Spence on modifications to theNunn–Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program Recorded June 13, 1995

Floyd Davidson Spence (April 9, 1928 – August 16, 2001) was an American attorney and a politician from the U.S. state ofSouth Carolina. Elected for three terms to theSouth Carolina House of Representatives fromLexington County as aDemocrat, in 1962 Spence announced his decision to switch to the Republican Party, as he was unhappy with shifts in the national party.

He lost a contested seat that year for United States Representative fromSouth Carolina's 2nd congressional district to DemocratAlbert W. Watson, who had the support of powerful senatorStrom Thurmond. Watson shifted to the Republican Party in 1965 and ran unsuccessfully for governor in 1970. That year Spence won the congressional seat, and was re-elected for fourteen subsequent terms, serving until his death in 2001. He became ranking Republican on theHouse Armed Services Committee in 1993 and chairman in 1995.

Born inColumbia, the capital of South Carolina, Spence spent most of his life in nearbyLexington County. Shortly after graduating from high school, he enlisted in theUnited States Navy Reserve, from which he retired in 1988 as acaptain. He graduated in 1952 from theUniversity of South Carolina in Columbia with a degree in English. Four years later, he completed hisJuris Doctor degree from theUniversity of South Carolina School of Law.

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After law school, Spence joined theDemocratic Party. He was elected to theSouth Carolina House of Representatives in 1956 as a Democrat from Lexington County. He was reelected in 1958 and 1960, but on April 14, 1962, Spence announced that he wasswitching to the Republican Party, having become uncomfortable with the national Democrats' increasinglyliberal platform. He also opposed a loyalty oath required by South Carolina Democrats. He was the first Republican to serve in either house of the state legislature since Reconstruction–an example of the political realignment that had begun in South Carolina and in the entire South during the 20th century.

On the same day, he announced that he would seek the Republican nomination for the state's2nd congressional district, based in Columbia.

He had been urged by several friends to run before his switch, especially after the death of the previous congressman,John J. Riley, but declined to do so. Spence faced the Democratic nominee, fellow state representativeAlbert W. Watson of Columbia. Watson won his party nomination with 52 percent of the vote over Frank C. Owens, the former mayor of Columbia and the choice of party regulars. Watson defeated Spence with 53 percent of the general election vote, the closest congressional race in South Carolina in memory. The 2nd had a conservative bent; the area's old-line Democrats had begun splitting their tickets in national elections as early as the 1940s. Watson's win was helped by the support ofU.S. SenatorStrom Thurmond, the former governor who had run for president in 1948 as the nominee of the one-election only third party, the States Rights Party, popularly known as theDixiecrats.

In 1966, Spence was elected to theSouth Carolina Senate; he became the minority leader of a six-member caucus. He was reelected to the senate in 1968.

In 1970, Spence ran for the 2nd congressional district seat again. Watson had become a Republican in 1965, a year after Thurmond's own switch; he was giving up his congressional seat ran in 1970 forgovernor. He was defeated by the Democraticlieutenant governor,John C. West. Spence won a narrow victory, becoming the first freshman Republican congressman elected from South Carolina since 1896; he was the second Republican to be elected from the state since Reconstruction (Watson was the first, elected as an incumbent after his switch to the Republican Party). Both he and Watson represented conservative whites, rather than the majority African-American Republicans in South Carolina who had supported the party of Abraham Lincoln. Spence was unopposed for reelection in theNixon-Agnew landslide of 1972 and reelected fourteen times thereafter. In 1974, Spence defeated challengerMatthew J. Perry, an African-American Democrat who had made his reputation in civil rights cases.

Aided byRonald W. Reagan at the head of the Republicanticket, Spence was reelected in 1980 with 55 percent of the vote. After cruising to reelection in 1982 and 1984, Spence found his margin reduced to seven percent in 1986. That yearCarroll Campbell became the second Republican to win the South Carolina governorship since Reconstruction. Spence faced another tough campaign in 1988, but did not face major-party opposition again until 1998.

For his first eleven terms, Spence represented a relatively compact district in the central portion of the state. Redistricting after the 1990 census resulted in shifting most of Spence's African-American constituents to the6th District, which was reconfigured as a black-majority district. That district was taken by Columbia resident and state human affairs commissionerJim Clyburn, who became the first Democrat to represent Columbia since Watson's party switch in 1965.

To compensate for this loss in population, Spence's district was pushed to the south and west, as far south as the resort city ofHilton Head Island and as far west as the fringes of theAugusta suburbs. By this time, the district had become very racially polarized, with African-American voters making up much of the Democratic base while whites supported Republicans. The loss of most of the district's black voters was a likely factor in the Democrats not running a candidate against Spence for most of the 1990s.

In 1993, Spence became the ranking Republican on theHouse Armed Services Committee, having been a member of the panel since his first term. The 2nd District includesFort Jackson. He became the committee's chairman in 1995 after the Republicans underNewt Gingrich ofGeorgia gained their first majority in the House in forty years.

Spence renamed the House Armed Services Committee the "Committee on National Security" when he took over as chairman. He focused on military readiness, calling it "the best insurance we have both for peace and freedom." Spence was also a strong advocate of missile defense.^[6] He stepped down as chairman after the 106th Congress because of caucus-imposed term limits. He later served as chairman of the House subcommittee on military procurement.^[6]

Spence married his first wife, Lula Hancock Drake, on December 22, 1952. She died in 1978.^[7] They had four sons.^[7] On July 3, 1988, he married his second wife, Deborah E. Williams.^[7]

Spence died at St. Dominic Memorial Hospital inJackson, Mississippi, on August 16, 2001, at the age of seventy-three, from complications following brain surgery.^[6] He had been admitted to the hospital three weeks earlier for testing and treatment for nerve pain in his face. In 1988, he had received a doublelung transplant at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.^[8] This standalone lung transplant (without heart transplant) was among the first in history, and at time of the procedure Spence was the oldest patient to have received it (at 60 years of age). At the time of his death 13 years after the lung transplant, he was the longest-surviving lung transplant patient without a re-transplant, and this was a record he had held for nearly 10 years. He was buried at the Saint Peters Lutheran Church Cemetery in Lexington, South Carolina.^[9]

Upon Spence's death, his former aide, Republican State SenatorJoe Wilson, won thespecial election for the vacant seat.

• List of American politicians who switched parties in office
• List of members of the United States Congress who died in office (2000–present)#2000s

• Floyd Davidson Spence Papers at South Carolina Political Collections at the University of South Carolina

• United States Congress."Floyd Spence (id: S000718)".Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
• Appearances onC-SPAN

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