James L. Buckley

James L. Buckley

James Lane Buckley (born March  9, 1923 in New York City ) is a former American lawyer and politician who represented the state of New York in the US Senate . He was the candidate of the Conservative Party of New York and is to this day the last elected member of a third party to enter Congress .

Origin and early career

James Buckley's father, William Frank Buckley, was a successful businessman who also influenced politics in Mexico through his professional connections before he was expelled from the country during the presidency of Álvaro Obregón . Two years after James, his younger brother William was born, who became an influential writer, journalist, and commentator on the conservative spectrum.

After attending secondary school in Millbrook , James Buckley enrolled at Yale University , where he was a member of the Skull and Bones fraternity . He graduated from Yale in 1943; he had already joined the US Navy the previous year . During the Second World War he reached the rank of lieutenant before retiring in 1946. After returning to Yale and passing his law exam there in 1949, he was inducted into the Connecticut Bar the following year and began practicing in New Haven . In 1953 he joined the industrial company Catawba Corporation , of which he became Vice President and Director. He held this post until 1970.

Political career

In 1968 Buckley applied for the first time as a candidate for the Conservative Party for one of the two Senate seats for New York. The nomination of the Republicans again went to the incumbent Jacob K. Javits , who belonged to the liberal majority wing of the party around Nelson Rockefeller and was also supported by the Liberal Party of New York . Javits won safely ahead of the Democrat Paul O'Dwyer , but with almost 1.4 million votes Buckley achieved a good result in third. This was because he had received many votes from dissatisfied Conservative Republicans.

Two years later, Buckley ran again for the Senate election. The incumbent was Charles Goodell, a Republican, whom Governor Rockefeller had appointed two years earlier to succeed the murdered Democrat Robert F. Kennedy . Goodell had since made a name for himself in the Senate as an opponent of the Vietnam War . Buckley's advertising posters carried the slogan: "Is not it time we had a senator?" (About: Would not it about time to have a Senator?) Goodell was not more than 1.4 million votes, and so developing shared the liberal Electorate with Democrat Richard Ottinger , who received 2.17 million votes. Buckley achieved the victory with almost 2.3 million votes, which made up a share of 38.7 percent.

Buckley introduced a proposal in the Senate in 1974 that the term "person" in the 14th Amendment , which, among other things, contains the basics of citizenship law, should be extended to include the embryo . In 1976 he ran for re-election, this time also being the Republican candidate. Within the party, the liberal wing around Nelson Rockefeller , who had meanwhile been appointed US Vice President , had lost its influence. His chances were good at first, as the favorite for the Democratic nomination was the liberal feminist Bella Abzug . But when Daniel Patrick Moynihan , US Ambassador to the United Nations , entered the election campaign on the democratic side, the tide turned; the conservative section of the Democratic supporters that Buckley had hoped for remained loyal to their own party. Moynihan won with 54 percent of the vote; Buckley, who received 45 percent, had to leave the Senate after six years.

At the Republican National Convention in Kansas City in August 1976 , there were efforts to nominate Buckley as a candidate for the presidency; these came from Senator Jesse Helms from North Carolina , who wanted to prevent Ronald Reagan from being nominated. Although he was considered to be much more conservative than incumbent Gerald Ford , he had announced that if he was elected, he would appoint the liberal Senator Richard Schweiker from Pennsylvania as running mate . Helms wanted to prevent this; when President Ford won the first ballot with a narrow majority against Reagan, the project became obsolete.

After retiring from the Senate in January 1977, James Buckley moved back to Connecticut. There he was nominated by the Republicans in 1980 to succeed the outgoing Democratic Senator Abraham A. Ribicoff , but he lost the election to Democrat Chris Dodd , who subsequently held this mandate until 2011. The following year, officiated Buckley after the inauguration of President Ronald Reagan briefly as Secretary of State ( Under Secretary for International Security Affairs ) in the US State Department .

Another résumé

In 1982 Buckley left the Ministry to become President of Radio Free Europe . He stayed that way until 1985, when he was appointed a judge on the Federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia by President Reagan . In 1996 he switched to senior status, which meant that he remained a nominal member of the court, but in fact retired. He now lives in Sharon (Connecticut) with his wife Ann .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Chicago Tribune: If Gonzales gets boot, who should fill shoes?
2. ↑ www.ourcampaigns.com

Web links

• James L. Buckley's website
• James L. Buckley in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)
• James L. Buckley in the nndb (English)