Jan. 2, 1965 - House Democrats stripped two Southerners of their seniority rights today for party disloyalty in the 1964 Presidential election.
The Democrats, in party caucus, also approved proposals for major changes in House rules to curtail the power of conservatives to obstruct President Johnson’s legislative program.
The two Southerners, Representatives John Bell Williams of Mississippi and Albert W. Watson of South Carolina, were disciplined for openly supporting the Republican Presidential candidate, Sen. Barry Goldwater, in the November election.
In a joint statement, the two men called the action “repugnant to our representative government” and the start of an attack on the Congressional seniority system that would lead to its demise.
Neither would say what he planned to do about it, but Watson hinted he might leave the Democratic party.
“I don’t intend to be a second-class Democrat,” he said today. “In a matter of a week or so, I will reach a decision as to how I can best represent my people — as a purged or denied Democrat, as an independent, or as a Republican.”
Both Williams and Watson will lose their seniority ranking on the Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee. The ranking determines the order in which members move up to the chairmanship.
Williams, who has been in House for 18 years, is the second-ranking Democratic member of that committee and thus had been first in line to succeed the chairman, Oren Harris of Arkansas. Watson, now beginning his second term, ranks 18th.
Both will go to the bottom of the committee’s seniority list — below freshmen Democrats in the new Congress, which convenes tomorrow.
Researchers for the Democratic Study Group said they believed it was the first time in history that any House Democrat had been disciplined for party disloyalty in an election.
In their joint statement, Williams and Watson made no apologies for supporting Goldwater. They also recalled that no disciplinary action had been taken against Rep. Adam Clayton Powell of Manhattan, a Democrat, for supporting Dwight D. Eisenhower for President in 1956.
Today’s action, they said, “creates classes within the Democratic party when we are stripped of our seniority while a Harlem congressman is rewarded with a committee chairmanship.”
Powell, a Negro, became chairman of the Education and Labor Committee in 1960 under the customary seniority system.
Support this project at patreon.com/realtime1960s
Comments