Though his name has since faded into obscurity, Bill Brock was instrumental in rehabilitating the Republican Party’s image after Watergate, turning from the “party of crooks and thieves” in most people’s eyes into a party the people would vote for.
Without Bill Brock, the Republican Party would’ve never bounced back so quickly after Watergate and retake the Oval Office after only four years of Democrat Jimmy Carter, eventually leading to 12 years of Republican presidents!
Early Life
William Emerson Brock III, better known to the public as simply “Bill Brock”, was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee on November 23 1930 – the height of the Great Depression.
Despite this, the Brock family was relatively prosperous. Bill’s parents, William Emerson Brock Jr. and Myra Kruesi, owned the Brock Candy Company, a large, well-respected confectionery business that boomed during the Depression.
Bill’s grandfather, William Emerson Brock Sr., was born in North Carolina in 1872 before he moved to Tennessee in 1909.
Here, he founded the Brock Candy Company in the early 1910’s and remained involved with it until his death in 1950. He had also joined the Democratic Party and served in the US Senate, representing his adoptive state of Tennessee between 1929 and 1931.
Growing up in an era of immense poverty, Brock’s was one of the few whose prosperity never seemed to fade, with the family ensuring that the next generation had the best possible chance at success.
To that end, Bill’s parents paid for him to attend the prestigious prep school, The McCallie School, in his hometown of Chattanooga, Tennessee, where he graduated in 1949.
Going on to attend Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, where he graduated in 1953 with a bachelor’s degree in commerce. Immediately after graduation, a 23-year-old Bill Brock joined the Navy, which first introduced him to the world of politics.
Serving for three years (1953-1956), Bill rose to the rank of Lieutenant before mustering out to join President Eisenhower’s campaign (despite Bill being a Democrat from a strong Democrat family, and Eisenhower being a Republican).
According to Eisenhower himself, Brock was instrumental in helping the former General-turned-politician win his home state of Tennessee – and the 11 electoral votes that came with it.
Despite helping a Republican gain office, Bill remained a staunch Democrat, but once again helped Eisenhower’s Vice-President, Richard Nixon, run for the presidency in 1960, albeit unsuccessfully.
Though they ultimately lost by only one state (Illinois), Brock and Nixon spent much time together, with Brock coming to realize that his beliefs were more in line with those of the Republicans, not the Democrats.
Before the campaign was over, Brock had reregistered as a Republican, a move that his family were surprisingly accepting of.
Since he’d left the military, Bill had taken up a position at his family’s company, often splitting his time between Brock Candy Co. and whatever campaign he was running on campaign years.
A marketing genius, Bill perfected marketing techniques for his family’s company and then used those same techniques to encourage more people to vote for Eisenhower and/or Nixon. At the same time, he also came up with new marketing techniques for the Eisenhower/Nixon campaigns and brought them back with him to his family’s company.
This allowed him to climb the ranks of both the Eisenhower/Nixon campaigns as well as those at Brock Candy Co., quickly rising to become the VP of marketing.
Political Career
But he wasn’t content with merely using his marketing techniques to get somebody else elected. Bill Brock wanted to use them to get himself elected.
House of Representatives
In 1962, Bill Brock decided to run as the Republican candidate for Tennessee’s 3rd Congressional District, a longtime Democratic stronghold that had once been represented by Estes Kefauver, who was then serving as Tennessee’s senior senator.
Incidentally, it also encompassed Bill’s hometown of Chattanooga too.
Quickly winning the Democratic nomination, Bill faced off against his Democratic counterpart – Wilkes Thrasher Jr., a man who had almost a decade on Bill and whose family had long been leading members of Tennessee community.
Safe to say, the odds were not in Bill Brock’s favor. Yet, Bill wasn’t ready to run the kind of token campaign his predecessors had.
Surrounding himself with young, like-minded Republicans and securing an abundance of campaign funds, Brock put up arguably the strongest Republican opposition in the South during the 1962 election.
Using this, as well as his extensive background in marketing, Brock was able to save his campaign thousands in costs, allowing them to suavely deflect the Democrats’ notions that Brock was an “arch-Conservative” and a “spoiled candy bar kid”.
And it seemed like this worked, with Brock beating Thrasher by a narrow margin. Inaugurated on January 3 1963, Bill Brock was re-elected in 1964, 1966 and 1968, serving from the 88th through 91st Congresses.
In power during arguably one of the most politically turbulent times in living memory, the main issue on everyone’s minds were civil rights, and whether (or not) they should be granted.
Starting his career off by voting against civil rights, Brock was one of the Representatives who voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Acts of 1965, though both later passed anyway.
However, by 1968 Brock had changed his tune, coming to regret his decisions and became one of the most vocal pro-civil rights members of Congress, being instrumental in getting the Civil Rights Act of 1968 to pass through the House.
Senate
Serving four terms in the Senate, Bill Brock declined to seek re-nomination, instead focusing his efforts on getting elected to Senate in the 1970 election.
Putting his name forward for the Republican nomination for Senate representing Tennessee, the experienced Bill Brock easily won the nomination over country singer Tex Ritter.
Campaigning hard and fast, Bill had to convince the people of Tennessee that three-term Democratic Senator Albert Gore Sr. was no longer acting in the best interests of Tennesseans.
Citing his liberal voting record when it came to contentious issues like Civil Rights and his longstanding friendship with the much-hated Kennedy family, as reasons why the 63 year-old Senator had lost touch with his voters. And the electorate agreed.
Taking his seat as the first Republican to represent the state in the Senate since 1913, Bill wasted no time making a name for himself, authoring the Congressional Budget Act and joined the Committee on Government Operations, Subcommittee on Budgeting, Management, and Expenditures.
He also co-chaired the Stevenson/Brock Committee with Adlai Stevenson III (son of the presidential candidate in 1952 and 1956) that helped establish the US Senate Energy Committee.
Other notable achievements of his time in the Senate include: altering banking regulations to allow women to open accounts and get lines of credit without their father/husband’s permission and raising unemployment benefits during the 1973-1975 recession.
Much like he’d later do as GOP chairman, Brock was instrumental in bringing together both liberals and conservatives alike, to put the country, not themselves, first.
Thanks to his bipartisan efforts, groundbreaking legislation like the Clean Water Act of 1972, Endangered Species Act of 1973, Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974, and Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, all passed with minimal or no opposition in the Senate!
In recent years, both the Republicans and Democrats have called for Bill Brock-style bipartisanism to be brought back to the mainstream – though this hasn’t happened to date.
Unseated
Serving his six year term, Bill Brock stood for re-election, even though his Senate seat was deemed to be quite vulnerable by the GOP, mostly due to how Bill had only won the seat by a narrow margin six years earlier.
Standing for election nonetheless, there were several high-profile Democrats vying for the nomination to oppose him.
Initially, the favorite to win the Democratic nomination was John Jay Hooker, a wealthy Nashville, Tennessee lawyer and businessman who was also a descendant of former Senator and Declaration of Independence signatory William Blount.
Despite his lofty ancestry and experience running for governor in 1970, Hooker lost the nomination to the relatively unknown Jim Sasser, who had been Al Gore’s right-hand man and campaign manager during his losing 1970 election.
With Sasser mounting a stronger campaign than he’d expected, Bill Brock’s campaign was constantly on the defense – and looked weak to many political commentators and the electorate as a whole!
Sasser’s campaign exploited resentment from the Watergate Scandal (which had only broke two years prior, whilst Brock was in office as a Republican).
Using an old interview where Brock credited Nixon as the reason he became a Republican, the Sasser campaign was able to paint it as though Brock and Nixon were close friends, when in fact they weren’t.
Though it caught Brock’s campaign between a rock and a hard place (between denouncing his party or essentially admitting to having known about Watergate), it wasn’t even the most damning tactic Sasser’s campaign used.
As per Congressional rules, al Congressmen and Senators must release their tax returns whilst they are in office.
Getting their hands on Brock’s, the Sasser campaign revealed that Brock made $44,600 per year as a Senator, but through skillful manipulation of the tax code, paid only $2,000 in taxes – much less than many Tennesseans who made much less.
Though he tried to mount a campaign that made him look like the benevolent “man of the people (of Tennessee)”, the people of Tennessee didn’t see it that way, and voted Sasser into office by a 5% margin.
Post-Congressional Life
Despite leaving the Senate in 1976, Bill Brock’s career was not over. At least not yet. Bill would remained involved in politics in some way or another for the next decade and a half before finally retiring… and even then, he still remained fairly politically-active.
GOP Chairman
Realizing that at least part of his political downfall was due to resentment of the Watergate Scandal (with many previously ardent Republicans saying they’d never vote for the party ever again), Bill Brock ran for, and was elected, the chairman of the Republican National Committee in 1977 – essentially making Bill Brock the leader of the GOP.
Interestingly, his election as GOP chairman was meant to be a compromise.
At the time, the Republican Party was split between the more liberal (for the time) faction led by former President Gerald R. Ford and the other, more conservative faction led by Californian Governor Ronald Reagan, as both men were vying for control of the party.
So the election of the comparatively moderate Brock was meant to heal the party, as he was not aligned with either faction and wasn’t a confidant of either leader, seemingly making him the best fit to heal the fractured party.
And he did this job to the letter.
Insisting that Republicans “have to stop just talking to one another” and focus more on the voters, Brock began to reach out to trade unions, African-Americans and other traditionally Democratic voters to get a sense of what they wanted.
He even went as far to invite these people to speak to the Republican National Committee directly. Though it may seem weird, it wasn’t random. Brock used what he learned to set the Republican agenda for next four years.
Other initiatives included entering the modern era, acquiring computers and a central database to store the names and locations of Republican donors, which replaced the paper-based system the party had used since its inception.
Not only did this put this list in one central location, it also allowed any member of the Republican Party to view it.
During things like local or state elections, Republican candidates could look at their past donations to see who to tap up for a donation, but could also look at the central list to see who in their area had donated to the party (say in a presidential election) that they could try to get a donation from.
This followed an emphasis on getting Republicans elected to local and state offices, with the intention of then using this as a springboard for Congressional, Senatorial and Presidential campaigns for the years to come.
Another thing Bill Brock did, was restructure the party’s organization, creating new roles for the new era and removing those roles that were either no longer applicable in the modern world, or whose roles had been merged into another one.
Using his extensive marketing background and the media contacts he’d acquired during his time in Congress, Bill Brock began running ads showing the positives of his “new” Republican Party.
At the same time, he also gave dozens of TV and newspaper interviews explaining how the party had changed under his leadership, emphasizing that the Republican Party was not the same as it had been under Nixon.
Cabinet Member
Though you could describe his relationship with Ronald Reagan (and Gerald Ford for that matter) to have been standoffish, both men had a deep respect for the other – even if they didn’t agree on everything with one another.
As such, when Reagan gained the White House in 1980, Reagan promoted Brock to the cabinet-level position of US Trade Representative in 1981, ending his four-year tenure as GOP chairman.
For the next four years, Bill Brock was Reagan’s right-hand man when it came to American foreign trade, and was at least in part, responsible for Reagan’s rejection of protectionism and his promotion of free trade.
Despite appearing to be the best of friends, Reagan and Brock still had some animosity, with Reagan acting upon this by never fully making Brock a member of his inner circle in spite of his Cabinet position – a Cabinet within a Cabinet if you will.
However, when it counted, both men could rely on each other doing the right thing for their country.
Supposed to remain US Trade Representative throughout both of Reagan’s terms, on April 29 1985, Brock ceased being US Trade Representative and was made Secretary of Labor that same day.
Whilst viewed as odd by many, Reagan didn’t do this on a whim. He did this to protect his party.
Brock’s predecessor as Secretary of Labor, Raymond J. Donovan, became the first Cabinet member in the history of the Union to be indicted, after it was revealed he had connections to organized crime – primarily the Genovese Crime Family.
Safe to say, the country had been shocked that someone so high up in government could have connections to organized crime, then public enemy number one, without anyone being the wiser.
This shock caused instability within the country and within the Republican Party, and Reagan needed to restore public confidence quickly. To that end, he gave Bill Brock the job – knowing that Republicans and Democrats alike respected him.
Though Reagan’s presidency is characterized as being anti-union, Brock immediately reached out to the heads of several large unions, many of whom hadn’t spoken to a Secretary of Labor in over four years, and asked how he could help.
It was thanks to this that the union busting that defined Reagan’s first term – though it still still continued – began to slow and take other approaches, many of which are now hallmarks of Reagan’s presidency!
Campaign Manager
Brock held the position of Secretary of Labor until 1987, when he resigned to be the campaign manager for Bob Dole’s campaign for the Republican nomination for president in the 1988 election.
You see, Dole was well-known for being a micro-manager who was known to over-stretch himself without realizing, often leading him to not campaign towards those voters who would vote for him, and focus largely on those who wouldn’t.
Dole’s hope was, that by bringing in outside help in the form of the well-respected Bill Brock, that he’d be able to close the gap on the favorite – Vice President George H. W. Bush – and win the nomination by a narrow margin.
Sadly, Brock joined Dole’s too late, and was unable to cut Bush’s substantial lead, with Bush ultimately winning the nomination and later the presidency.
In trying to cut Bush’s lead, Bill spent vast sums of cash on extra staff and advisers, which whilst they provided valuable insights, drained Dole’s campaign funds considerably and meant he couldn’t afford ad time on Super Tuesday.
This later led Dole (and many of his supporters) to accuse Bill of mishandling campaign funds.
In 1988, Bill moved to Maryland and became a legal resident of the state. Six years later, in 1994, Brock was eligible to run for Senate, representing Maryland, and chose to run in that year’s election.
Facing off against real estate developer (and future convicted felon) Ruth Ann Green in the Republican primary, the more experienced Brock easily won the nomination and proceeded to mount a campaign against his Democratic rival.
Campaigning against popular, three-term, incumbent Senator Paul Sarbanes, Brock’s campaign was a losing one. When the results came in, Bill Brock had only won 41% of the votes, compared to Sarbanes’ 59%!
Later Life
Following this resounding defeat, a now 64 year-old Bill Brock decided to retire, spending part of the year in West Palm Beach, Florida with his family. With this, the name “Bill Brock” began to fade out of people’s minds.
Staying out of politics for the remainder of the 1990’s and most of the 2000’s, Bill re-entered politics in the mid-2010’s when he joined Issue One, a bipartisan non-profit that aims to reduce the role of money (eg. lobbying) in politics.
Here, Bill lent his experience as a politician (and the recipient of money from wealthy private and corporate donors) to help the new organization devise ways of preventing so-called “dark money” from corrupting politics whilst not stopping donations wholesale.
Though this work only slightly put him on the radar – mostly local news outlets running articles about how an 80-something year old veteran politician was trying to change campaign finance laws – Bill Brock gained national attention in 2016.
That year, he gave a passionate speech denouncing Donald Trump, who was then attempting to win the Republican nomination for president, claiming that the former real estate mogul-turned-reality star lacked what it takes to run a country.
Eventually, however, Trump won the nomination, and Brock occasionally resurfaced by making speeches or giving interviews about how politics today had lost its civility – just like it had within the Republican Party before he rebuilt it.
During the 2020 Presidential Election, Bill Brock gave several interviews with major news outlets, including The Chattanooga Free Press and The Tennessean, about how he was genuinely torn between both candidates.
As a Republican, and the man who rebuilt his party, he had always voted for his party. However, he despised President Trump’s “lack of civility” but also found Biden too liberal for his tastes.
Ultimately, he never revealed who he voted for…
Death
On the morning of March 25 2021, Bill Brock, the man who singlehandedly rebuilt the Republican Party after Watergate, died in his Fort Lauderdale, Florida home due to complications with pneumonia.
His death was announced by a family spokesperson, who made it clear that Bill had been suffering with pneumonia for several months and his death was not related to the COVID-19 pandemic, which was then hitting the US particularly badly.
Following his death, several members of the Republican, including former Tennessee governor/senator Lamar Alexander, Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn and Senator Bill Hagerty, issued condolence to his family and paid tribute to the Tennessean who rebuilt their party.
A memorial service was held for him in Florida on September 29 2020, whilst his funeral wasn’t held until May 14 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Held in Annapolis, Maryland, where he’d lived for so long, his funeral was attended by his wife, Sandra, two brothers, Pat and Frank, six children, 19 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, who came together to mourn the loss of their friend and relative.
Other attendees to his funeral included Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, several high-ranking members of the Republican Party, and those political allies that were still alive.
Legacy
Arguably the largest and most important part of Bill Brock’s legacy was his rebuilding of the Republican Party, which gained him many nicknames, the most famous being “The father of the GOP”.
In the wake of Watergate, the entire world was shocked. Nobody – not even members of the Republican Party – could believe that a president would stoop so low, and many of Nixon’s voters felt ashamed of having voted for him and angry that they did.
Many high-profile Republicans even went as far to say that they’d never vote for the Republicans again.
Yet with Brock’s complete revamp of the GOP, including a change in focus from Congressional, Senatorial and Presidential elections to local ones, and a few interviews and political ads, people were clawing to vote for the GOP.
Without Bill Brock, there probably wouldn’t have been a Reagan presidency, and by extension, a Bush Sr. one either, as the voting public would’ve still believed the GOP was full of liars and crooks like Nixon.
Although he wasn’t the first Republican to criticize Trump for his overuse of Twitter (often to insult other politicians, world leaders or high-profile members of the public) and for his lack of civility, he brought it into the public eye.
Even ardent Trump supporters, who’d voted Republican for as long as they could remember, had to stop and at least listen to what Bill Brock had to say, not because they necessarily agreed with what he was saying… but out of respect.
Brock’s speaking out against Trump gave other Republicans – those currently in office – the confidence to also speak out against the 45th President, such as Mitt Romney, Larry Hogan and former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
In part this has begun the anti-Trump sect of the Republican Party, which although passionately against Trump, remains quite small in number.
What do you think about Bill Brock? Did he make or break the Republican Party? Tell me in the comments!