Ol' Strom

Today I kick off a 365-day tribute to the life of Strom Thurmond, South Carolina's former very very senior senator. (The closeness in appearance of the two words before this parenthetical is not a coincidence.)

Anyway, where to begin? We all know the highlights of Thurmond's life: his Dixiecrat presidential campaign in 1948, before my parents were born, his election to the Senate as a writein candidate (the only one ever), his party switch in 1964, his 24 hour filibuster in 1957 against a civil rights bill, his extreme longevity.

Boring early life stuff: born on Dec 5, 2004, in Edgefield, SC, also home of Preston Brooks, the man who was a little not fond of Charles Sumner. Attorney, SC Senate member, WWII veteran, governor, progressive for the time, but flaming racist.

He was elected to the Senate in 1954 and resigned in 1956, then won the special election caused by his vacancy. When first elected he pledged to face a contested primary (the one in 1956). He was a Democrat; they all were in the South. Thurmond became a Republican in 1964, one of the first Democrats to switch parties. I view this as an important milestone - he switched and survived. He was not the last to do this, either - this move foreshadowed many similar moves all across the South, until the time came when the white South was mostly Republican. In retrospect, the more interesting course was followed by Fritz Hollings, who remained a Democrat - but that is a topic for another day!

I understand the former Dixiecrat was the first Southern senator to hire black staffers. Not only that - he had an illegitimate child with a black woman as a young man. NB that this was not uncommon in the South (especially antebellum) but it was death to a political career. Anyway, time went on, great gobs of time. Ol' Strom married in 1968 a former South Carolina beauty queen (age 23) and fathered his first (legitimate!) child at age 67. Ol' Strom kept his pecker up.

Strom, if you're wondering, was his mom's maiden name. Anyway, his Senate career is mostly a wasteland after the 60s. What is there to be said? He was chairman of Judiciary in the 80s and of Armed Services in the 90s - now when he was chairman in the 90s he was also in the 90s. The Senate lives and dies by the seniority system, but it's my understanding that even some Republicans were unhappy with his chairmanship because he was so old. He left the chairmanship in 1999. He did not seek reelection in 2002.

What did Thurmond do, exactly? I've come to the conclusion that what he mostly did in the Senate was Constituent Service. His staff was excellent: each morning they would comb the SC newspapers for obituaries, wedding announcements, graduation lists in spring, etc, and Thurmond would call a lot of these people personally. Black, white, it didn't matter. The folks of South Carolina knew that if they needed government help, Strom Thurmond was there. Strom Thurmond got helicopters to fly over town parades and lobbied the Armed Forces to feed the members of the military more South Carolina peaches. There are many stories like those. The upshot of this is that everyone in SC had met or been helped by Thurmond or knew someone who had. That's why he kept winning reelection even when he was decrepit and not all there. By the end of his life, practically everything in the state was named after him. Well - maybe not practically everything, but he has his own lake and high school, various statues, buildings on college campuses.

The end of Thurmond's Senate career brought him back into the spotlight - two events mostly. One was the 50-50 Senate at the time (early 2001) - Thurmond was 98 and ailing and SC had a Democratic governor. There was kind of a Thurmond death watch at the time. A reasonable question might be, how can a 98 year old senator function? His staff: his chief of staff was the one who told him how to vote. No joke. Jim Jeffords switched away from the Republicans in June 2001, so the Senate was 51-49 Democratic after that and the deathwatch ended. The other event was his 100th birthday party, at which Trent Lott declared that if the rest of the nation had voted Dixiecrat in 1948, we wouldn't have had all those problems since. Well bless his heart. Lott was the Republican majority leader in the Senate at the time. He wasn't the majority leader too much longer, although after the 06 election he became minority whip (really!) and resigned in 2007. Thurmond died shortly after he left the Senate, in 2003 at age 100.

Thurmond was also famous for loving the ladies. See his beauty queen marriage. He also always talked about how much he loved ladies, and how it was good for the Senate to have more ladies and so on. He also groped them too, I understand. He kept his pecker up. What I'm getting at is that Thurmond's behavior towards women would be labeled sexual harassment if done by someone who wasn't really old and the very very senior senator of South Carolina. And rightly so, too! It totally was sexual harassment. Don't be in the elevator alone with Strom Thurmond. And yet he totally got away with it. It's reprehensible but a little impressive. Well bless his heart.

An interesting hypothetical: it's 1996, you're living in SC, Thurmond's up for reelection, he's 93, would you vote for him? I have a hard time answering that question. Yes he did all that bad stuff and it sucked. Yes he's senile. But...all that pork. He takes care of SC. He'd probably die if not reelected (not a joke). I know my parents would not vote for him (93???) but I'm a bit undecided. I'd probably vote for him just so I could say I voted for a Republican senator. Thurmond won reelection 53-44%, his narrowest Senate election since...ever, although 1978 was also kinda close. And that reelection margin really is pretty small for a legend like Strom Thurmond. Legend? Yes, absolutely - just because he was so damn old. And let me make this clear - he was around so long that people kinda forgave his sins. Let him be! He's old! You see a bit of this happening now with Ted Kennedy, I think - yeah, he did some bad things, but he's old and will die soon.

Heh, die soon - the graveyards of South Carolina are full of people waiting for the death of Strom Thurmond. Have 365 days elapsed? Yes, good, let us never speak of Thurmond again.