Lee Atwater | |
|---|---|
 Atwater in 1983 | |
| 53rdChair of the Republican National Committee | |
| In office January 18, 1989 – January 25, 1991 | |
| Preceded by | Frank Fahrenkopf |
| Succeeded by | Clay Yeutter |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Harvey LeRoy Atwater (1951-02-27)February 27, 1951 Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. |
| Died | March 29, 1991(1991-03-29) (aged 40) Washington, D.C., U.S. |
| Political party | Republican |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 3 |
| Education | Newberry College (BA) University of South Carolina (MA) |
Harvey LeRoy "Lee"Atwater (February 27, 1951 – March 29, 1991) was an Americanpolitical consultant and strategist for theRepublican Party. He was an adviser to Republican U.S. presidentsRonald Reagan andGeorge H. W. Bush and chairman of theRepublican National Committee. Atwater aroused controversy through his aggressive campaign tactics, especially theSouthern strategy.
Atwater was born on February 27, 1951, inAtlanta, Georgia, the son of Alma "Toddy" (Page), a school teacher, and Harvey Dillard Atwater, an insurance adjustor.[1] He had two siblings, Ann and Joe,[2] and grew up inAiken, South Carolina. When Lee was five, his three-year-old brother, Joe, died ofthird-degree burns when he pulled adeep fryer full of hot oil onto himself.[3]
As a teenager inColumbia, South Carolina, Atwater played guitar in a rock band, The Upsetters Revue.[4] Even at the height of his political power, he would often play concerts in clubs and church basements, solo or withB.B. King, in the Washington, D.C., area. He released an album calledRed Hot & Blue onCurb Records, featuringCarla Thomas,Isaac Hayes,Sam Moore,Chuck Jackson, and King.[5] In theLos Angeles Times of April 5, 1990,Robert Hilburn wrote about the album: "The most entertaining thing about this ensemble salute to spicyMemphis-style 1950s and 1960s R&B is the way it lets you surprise your friends. Play a selection such as 'Knock on Wood' or 'Bad Boy' for someone without identifying the singer, then watch their eyes bulge when you reveal that it's the controversial national chairman of the Republican Party, Lee Atwater."[6] During the 1960s, Atwater briefly played backup guitar forPercy Sledge.[5]
Atwater attended W. J. Keenan Junior High School where he developed a reputation as a class clown and poor student. This frustrated his parents, and so they sent him toFork Union Military Academy for his tenth grade year, where his grades saw an improvement. However, he wanted to move to back to Columbia to attendA.C. Flora High School, and after lobbying his parents for the change, they obliged, and Atwater would spend his eleventh and twelfth grade years there before graduating in 1969.[7][8] In 1973, Atwater graduated fromNewberry College, a small privateLutheran institution inNewberry, South Carolina, where he was a member of theAlpha Tau Omega fraternity and earned a bachelor of arts degree in history[9] At Newberry, Atwater served as the governor of the South Carolina Student Legislature. He earned aMaster of Arts degree in communications from theUniversity of South Carolina in 1977.[2]
During the 1970s and the 1980 election, Atwater rose to prominence in theSouth Carolina Republican Party, actively participating in the campaigns of GovernorCarroll Campbell and SenatorStrom Thurmond. During his years in South Carolina, Atwater became well known for managing hard-edged campaigns based on emotionalwedge issues.[10]
Atwater's aggressive tactics were first demonstrated during the 1980 Congressional campaigns. He was a campaign consultant to Republican incumbentFloyd Spence when he ran for Congress againstDemocratic nomineeTom Turnipseed. Atwater's tactics in that campaign includedpush polling in the form of fake surveys by so-called independent pollsters, to inform white suburbanites that Turnipseed was a member of theNAACP.[11] He also sent out last-minute letters from Senator Thurmond telling voters that Turnipseed would disarm the United States, and turn it over to liberals andCommunists.[12] At a press briefing, Atwater planted a fake reporter who rose and said, "We understand that Turnipseed has had psychiatric treatment". Atwater later told reporters off the record that Turnipseed "got hooked up to jumper cables", referring toelectroconvulsive therapy that Turnipseed underwent as a teenager.[13] Spence went on to win the race.
After the 1980 election, Atwater went to Washington and became an aide in theRonald Reagan administration, working under political directorEd Rollins. In 1984, Rollins managed Reagan's re-election campaign, and Atwater became the campaign's deputy director and political director. Rollins mentioned Atwater's work several times in his 1996 bookBare Knuckles and Back Rooms.[14] He stated that Atwater ran a dirty tricks operation against Democratic vice-presidential nomineeGeraldine Ferraro, including publicizing the fact that Ferraro's parents had been indicted fornumbers running in the 1940s. Rollins described Atwater as "ruthless", "Ollie North in civilian clothes", and someone who "just had to drive in one more stake".[15]
The day after the 1984 presidential election, Atwater became a senior partner at the political consulting firm ofBlack, Manafort, Stone and Kelly.[16]
During his years in Washington, Atwater became aligned with Vice PresidentGeorge H. W. Bush, who chose Atwater to manage his 1988 presidential campaign.[17]
As a member of the Reagan administration in 1981, Atwater gave an anonymous interview to political scientist Alexander P. Lamis. Part of the interview was printed in Lamis' bookThe Two-Party South, later reprinted inSouthern Politics in the 1990s with Atwater's name revealed.Bob Herbert reported on the interview in the October 6, 2005, issue ofThe New York Times. On November 13, 2012,The Nation magazine released a 42-minute audio recording of the interview.[18] James Carter IV, grandson of former presidentJimmy Carter, had asked and been granted access to the tapes by Lamis' widow. Early in the interview, Atwater argued that Reagan did not need to make racial appeals, suggesting that Reagan's issues transcended the racial prism of the 1968 "Southern Strategy":
Atwater: But Reagan did not have to do a southern strategy for two reasons. Number one, race was not a dominant issue. And number two, the mainstream issues in this campaign had been, quote, southern issues since way back in the sixties. So Reagan goes out and campaigns on the issues of economics and of national defense. The whole campaign was devoid of any kind of racism, any kind of reference. And I'll tell you another thing you all need to think about, that even surprised me, is the lack of interest, really, the lack of knowledge right now in the South among white voters about the Voting Rights Act.
Later in the interview, Atwater was questioned about the implicitly racist aspects of the "New Southern Strategy" carried out by the Reagan campaign:
Atwater: As to the whole Southern strategy thatHarry S. Dent, Sr. and others put together in 1968, opposition to theVoting Rights Act would have been a central part of keeping the South. Now you don't have to do that. All that you need to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues that he's campaigned on since 1964, and that's fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole cluster.
Questioner: But the fact is, isn't it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down onfood stamps?
Atwater: Y'all don't quote me on this. You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger". By 1968, you can't say "nigger"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff likeforced busing,states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this", is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger". So, any way you look at it, race is coming on the back-burner.[19]
Atwater's most noteworthy campaign was the1988 presidential election, when he served as campaign manager for Republican nomineeGeorge H. W. Bush.
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Democratic nomineeMichael Dukakis supported a felon furlough program originally begun in 1972, under Republican GovernorFrancis Sargent. In 1976, theMassachusetts legislature passed a measure to ban furloughs for first-degree murderers, but Governor Dukakis vetoed the bill.[20] Soon afterward,Willie Horton, who was serving a life sentence for first-degree murder for stabbing a boy to death during a robbery, was released on weekend furlough, during which he kidnapped a young couple, tortured the man, and repeatedly raped the woman. Horton then became the centerpiece of Atwater's ad campaign against Dukakis.
The issue of furlough for first-degree murderers was originally brought up by Democratic candidateAl Gore, during a presidential primary debate. However, Gore never referred specifically to Horton. Dukakis had tried to portray himself as a moderate politician from the liberal state of Massachusetts. The Horton ad campaign only reinforced the public's general opinion that Dukakis was too liberal, which helped Bush overcome Dukakis' 17-percent lead in early public opinion polls, and win both the electoral and popular vote by landslide margins.[21][22]
Although Atwater approved of the use of the Willie Horton issue, the Bush campaign never ran any commercial with Horton's picture, running a similar but generic ad instead. The original commercial was produced by Americans for Bush, an independent group managed byLarry McCarthy, and Republicans benefited from the coverage it attracted in the national media. Referring to Dukakis, Atwater declared that he would "strip the bark off the little bastard" and "make Willie Horton his running mate".[2] Atwater's challenge was to counter the "where was George?" campaign slogan Democrats were using in an effort to create an impression that Bush was a relatively inexperienced and unaccomplished candidate. Furthermore, Bush faced criticism from the Republican base, who recalled his pro-choice positions from the 1980 primary. Additionally, it was believed that the harder the campaign attacked Dukakis's liberal positions, the larger Dukakis's base turnout would become.
During the election, a number of allegations were made in the media about Dukakis' personal life, including the unsubstantiated claim that his wife,Kitty, had burned a United States flag to protest theVietnam War, and that Dukakis had been treated for a mental illness. In the filmBoogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story,Robert Novak revealed that Atwater personally tried, but failed, to get him to spread these mental-health rumors.[23]
The 1988 Bush campaign overcame a 17-point deficit in midsummer polls to win 40 states.
During the campaign, future PresidentGeorge W. Bush took an office across the hall from Atwater, where his job was to serve as his father's eyes and ears. Bush wrote in his autobiography, "I was an allegiance enforcer and a listening ear."[24] In her memoir,Barbara Bush said Atwater and the younger Bush (whom Atwater called "Junior") became "great friends."[25]
After the election, Atwater was named chairman of theRepublican National Committee. Shortly after Atwater took over the RNC,Jim Wright, a Democrat, was forced to resign asSpeaker of the House and was succeeded by fellow DemocratTom Foley.
On the day that Foley officially became speaker, the RNC began circulating a memo to Republican congresspeople and state party chairpeople called "Tom Foley: Out of the Liberal Closet". The memo compared Foley's voting record with that of openly gay CongressmanBarney Frank, with a subtle implication that Foley, too, was gay. It had been crafted by RNC communications director Mark Goodin and byHouse Minority WhipNewt Gingrich. Gingrich had already been attempting to convince several reporters to print the rumor.[26] The memo was harshly condemned by both political parties. For instance, Republican Senate leaderBob Dole said in the Senate chamber, "This is not politics. This is garbage".[27]
Atwater initially defended the memo, calling it "no big deal" and "factually accurate". However, some days later, he claimed that he had not approved it.[26] Under pressure from Bush, Atwater fired Goodin, replacing him with B. Jay Cooper.[28]
Following Bush's victory, Atwater focused on organizing a public relations campaign against Arkansas governorBill Clinton.[29] Atwater viewed Clinton as a serious threat to Bush in the1992 presidential election.[29] At the time Atwater became ill in 1990, he was supporting the bid of RepresentativeTommy Robinson to gain the Republican gubernatorial nomination to oppose Clinton that fall. Robinson lost the primary to former Arkla Gas CEOSheffield Nelson.[30] In an indication of how much importance Atwater and the RNC placed on Robinson's bid, Missouri'sJohn Ashcroft, attended an Arkansas event where he was scheduled to endorse Robinson, only to discover that he had a primary opponent. Up to that point, when he met Nelson, Ashcroft thought Robinson was running unopposed. After Atwater fell ill, Robinson's RGA support evaporated.[citation needed]
In 1989, Atwater became a member of thehistorically blackHoward University Board of Trustees. The university gained national attention when students rose up in protest against Atwater's appointment. Student activists disrupted Howard's 122nd anniversary celebrations and eventually occupied the university's administration building.[31] Within days, both Atwater and Howard's president,James E. Cheek, resigned.[32]
Also in 1989, Atwater strongly criticized the candidacy ofDavid Duke for theLouisiana House of Representatives. He said: "David Duke is not a Republican as far as I am concerned...He is a pretender, a charlatan, and a political opportunist who is looking for any organization he can find to legitimate his views of racial and religious bigotry and intolerance...We repudiate him and his views and we are taking steps to see that he is disenfranchised from our party."[33]
Lee Atwater | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Atwater withJames Brown in 1981 | |
| Background information | |
| Genres | Rock,blues |
| Occupation(s) | Singer, guitarist |
| Instrument(s) | Vocals,guitar |
| Years active | 1960s–1991 |
In 1988, Atwater and several friends, includingDon Sundquist, founded a restaurant namedRed Hot & Blue inArlington, Virginia.[34] The restaurant, which has since grown into a chain, servedMemphis BBQ and playedMemphis blues music in the dining room.
Atwater recorded a 1990 album withB.B. King and others onCurb Records, titledRed Hot & Blue.[5] He also performed withPaul Shaffer and his band in an episode ofLate Night with David Letterman.[23] The title track from the album earned Atwater a nomination for theGrammy Award for Best Contemporary Blues Recording at the33rd Annual Grammy Awards in 1991.[35]
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Atwater married Sally Dunbar in 1978.[36][37] They had three daughters, Sara Lee, Ashley Page, and Sally Theodosia.[2] His widow ran forSuperintendent of Education for South Carolina in2014.[38] She was endorsed by former PresidentGeorge H. W. Bush.[39]
On March 5, 1990, Atwater suffered a seizure during a fundraising breakfast.[2] Doctors discovered a grade 3astrocytoma, an aggressive form ofbrain cancer, in his rightparietal lobe. He underwent interstitialimplant radiation – then a new treatment – atMontefiore Medical Center in New York City, followed by conventionalradiation therapy atGeorge Washington University Hospital in Washington, D.C. The treatment left himparalyzed on his left side, disabled histone discrimination, and made his face and body swollen.[40] In January 1991 he finally resigned from his chairmanship of the Republican National Committee.[41]
In the months after the severity of his illness became apparent, Atwater said he had converted toCatholicism, with the aid of Fr.John Hardon.[42] (The Atwater family's pastor, James P. Rush, D. Min., disputed this in an editorial, claiming that Lee was under heavy sedation when he allegedly converted to Roman Catholicism and that he later renounced his conversion altogether.)[43] In an act ofrepentance, Atwater issued a number of public and written letters to individuals to whom he had been opposed during his political career. In a June 28, 1990, letter toTom Turnipseed, he stated, "It is very important to me that I let you know that out of everything that has happened in my career, one of the low points remains the so-called 'jumper cable' episode", adding, "My illness has taught me something about the nature of humanity, love, brotherhood, and relationships that I never understood, and probably never would have. So, from that standpoint, there is some truth and good in everything."[13] Turnipseed accepted Atwater's apology and later attended his funeral.
In a February 1991 article forLife, Atwater wrote:
My illness helped me to see that what was missing in society is what was missing in me: a little heart, a lot of brotherhood. The 1980s were about acquiring – acquiring wealth, power, prestige. I know. I acquired more wealth, power, and prestige than most. But you can acquire all you want and still feel empty. What power wouldn't I trade for a little more time with my family? What price wouldn't I pay for an evening with friends? It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth, but it is a truth that the country, caught up in its ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime. I don't know who will lead us through the '90s, but they must be made to speak to this spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society, this tumor of the soul.[44]
In the article Atwater apologized toMichael Dukakis for the "naked cruelty" of the 1988 presidential election campaign.[44][45]
In the 2008 documentary,Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story,Ed Rollins stated:
[Atwater] was telling this story about how aLiving Bible was what was giving him faith and I said toMary [Matalin], "I really, sincerely hope that he found peace". She said, "Ed, when we were cleaning up his things afterwards, the Bible was still wrapped in the cellophane and had never been taken out of the package", which just told you everything there was. He wasspinning right to the end.[23]
When Lee's widow, Sally, died in 2021, she left his papers, including an unfinished handwritten memoir, to the University of South Carolina.[46]
Atwater died on March 29, 1991 after suffering from abrain tumor for a year. He was 40 years old.[2]
Funeral services were held atTrinity Episcopal Cathedral in Atwater's final place of residence,Columbia, South Carolina. Hundreds of friends, opponents, and admirers attended, including prominent politicians and major celebrities such Strom Thurmond and James Brown; President Bush, however, was on vacation in Florida and did not attend.[47] A memorial service was held at theWashington National Cathedral on April 4, 1991.[2] This service was also well attended, with an estimated 1,500 mourners present; Bush attended but did not speak.[48] Atwater, dressed in his jogging outfit and clutching his album,Red Hot & Blue, was buried in Greenlawn Memorial Park, Columbia, South Carolina – minutes from his childhood home.[49][47]
Sidney Blumenthal has speculated that, had Atwater lived, he would have run a stronger re-election campaign for Bush than the president's unsuccessful1992 effort againstBill Clinton andRoss Perot.[50]
Sally Atwater delivered opening remarks commemorating her husband on the first day of the1992 GOP Convention; later that day,B.B. King performed a concert organized as a tribute to Atwater.[51][52][53]
In February 1991, mere weeks before Atwater succumbed to his illness,Strom Thurmond endowed Newberry College with funds to establish a scholarship in his honor.[54]
Several months after Atwater died,the University of South Carolina raised $200,000 in honor of Atwater and Thurmond to establish a graduate fellowship in their names.[55] The inaugural J. Strom Thurmond/Lee Atwater Fellowship in American Politics was awarded the following year.[56] The Fellowship is still active and listed on USC's website.[57]
In December 1991, associates of Atwater published a notice of incorporation inThe State for The H. Lee Atwater Foundation, Inc., a charitable organization meant to "[p]rovide scholarships, grants, and other educational assistance in memory of H. Lee Atwater."[58] The Foundation awarded its first scholarship of $1,000 in 1992 to a sophomore at Wofford College.[59] In 1996, it donated $50,000 to Newberry College for the construction of a soccer field named after Atwater.[60][61] The Foundation was dissolved in 2011.[62]
In November 1995, Atwater protegeMary Matalin and her husbandJames Carville held a fundraiser on behalf of The Newberry College Foundation to establish a Lee Atwater Forum on Public Policy, intended to "bring four or five prominent political leaders to Newberry each year to discuss public policy in Atwater's honor."[63] The result of the fundraiser is unclear; the Forum itself appears to be defunct.
Atwater's political career is the subject of the 2008 feature-length documentary filmBoogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story.[23]
College Republicans, a buddy comedyspec script written by Wes Jones about Lee Atwater and Karl Rove, toppedThe Black List (survey) in 2010.[64] Since then, multiple iterations of the film have stalled in pre-production (seeDevelopment hell). In 2010,Shia LaBeouf was reportedly considering one of the lead roles, withRichard Linklater rumored to direct; in 2011,Paul Dano was reportedly attached to play Rove and Linklater to direct; in 2014,Daniel Radcliffe andDane DeHaan were reportedly set to star as Atwater and Rove respectively withJohn Krokidas to direct; and in 2020,Asa Butterfield andLogan Lerman were set to play Atwater and Rove respectively withJames Schamus to direct — this is the cast and director currently listed on the film'sIMDb page, which is labeled "Pre-Production."[65][66][67][68][69] In 2016,Black List Live! hosted a gender-swapped live staged reading of the script starringAlexis Bledel as Atwater andMae Whitman as Rove, directed by Jones.[70]
Atwater appears as a character, played by Dustin Seavey, in the second season of the 2019alternate history television seriesFor All Mankind.
The one-man playAtwater: Fixin' to Die by Robert Myers premiered in 1992 withDylan Baker at New York's West Bank Theatre, directed byEthan McSweeny, and has been performed in various venues more than a dozen times since. Shortly after the play's debut, Myers entered talks withHome Box Office to develop a film adaptation with Dennis Quaid as Atwater; however, the film never materialized.[71][72] The following year,The University of South Carolina rejected a producer's request to stage a production of the play at Longstreet Theatre, citing concern for Atwater's family; this decision proved controversial among students and faculty alike, some of whom viewed the decision as an act of censorship.[71][73]
The playSon of a Bitch by Lucy Gillespie in 2019 at The Hollywood Fringe Festival with Ben Hethcoat as Atwater, directed by Billy Ray Brewton.[74][75]
The playAtwater by Fred Thompson premiered in 2023 at PURE Theatre in Charleston, SC with Brannen Daugherty in the titular role.[76]
cut the heart out of efforts at inmate rehabilitation
Media from Commons
Quotations from Wikiquote
Data from Wikidata| Party political offices | ||
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| Preceded by | Chair of theRepublican National Committee 1989–1991 | Succeeded by |
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