Everything about James L Buckley totally explained
James Lane Buckley (born
March 9,
1923 in
New York City) is a former
United States Senator from the state of
New York as a member of the
Conservative Party of New York. Buckley served from
January 3,
1971 to
January 3,
1977. Formerly, he was
vice president and
director of the
Catawba Corporation from 1953 to 1970, and afterwards served as Undersecretary of State for Security Assistance 1981–1982, President of
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Inc. 1982–1985, and as a
federal judge 1985–2000.
He was also the lead
petitioner in a landmark
Supreme Court case,
Buckley v. Valeo, in which he successfully challenged the
constitutionality of a law limiting
campaign spending in
Congressional races.
In 1970 he was elected to the U.S. Senate as a member of the
Conservative Party of New York, winning 38.7 percent of the vote in a three-way race, and served from 1971 until 1977. To date he's been the only member of his party, and the last member of a
third party, elected to the U.S. Senate.
Early life, education and early career
Buckley was born in New York City to lawyer and businessman
William Frank Buckley, Sr., of Irish-Catholic descent, and
Aloise Steiner, a Southerner of Swiss-German descent. He is the older brother of conservative writer
William F. Buckley, Jr. and the uncle of
Christopher Taylor Buckley. He is also the uncle of
Brent Bozell. His father was
William F. Buckley, Sr. A 1943 graduate of
Yale University, where he was a member of
Skull & Bones, Buckley enlisted in the
United States Navy in 1942 and was discharged with the
rank of
lieutenant in 1946. After receiving his
law degree from
Yale Law School, he was admitted to the
Connecticut bar in
1950 and practiced law until 1953, when he joined Catawba as vice president and director. Buckley is married to Ann Cooley Buckley and resides in
Washington, D.C. and
Sharon, Connecticut.
Senate career
In 1968, Buckley challenged
liberal Republican Senator
Jacob Javits for re-election. Javits won easily, but Buckley received a large number of votes from disaffected
conservative Republicans, and in 1970, ran for the U.S. Senate against liberal Republican incumbent
Charles Goodell. Goodell had been appointed to the Senate by New York Governor
Nelson Rockefeller following the assassination of Senator
Robert F. Kennedy and had made a name for himself in the Senate as an opponent of the
Vietnam War. Buckley's campaign slogan, plastered on billboards statewide, was "Isn't it time we'd a Senator?"
With Goodell and the Democratic nominee,
Richard Ottinger, splitting the liberal vote, Buckley won a
plurality (38 percent) and entered the Senate in January 1971.
In 1974, he proposed a "human life" amendment, which defined the term "person" in the
Fourteenth Amendment to include the embryo.
In his 1976 re-election bid, with Rockefeller's liberal GOP faction falling apart, Buckley received the Republican nomination. Initially, he was favored for re-election, because the frontrunner in the crowded
Democratic field was
Manhattan Congresswoman
Bella Abzug, a liberal
feminist reviled by the
right. But when
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the U.S. Ambassador to the
UN, made a late entrance into the Democratic
primary and narrowly defeated Abzug, Buckley could no longer count on getting the votes of
moderate Democrats. Moynihan went on to defeat Buckley by a wide margin.
After his loss, Buckley moved to
Connecticut, and in 1980 received the Republican nomination for the Senate seat being vacated by the retirement of
Abraham Ribicoff. He lost the general election to
Christopher Dodd, who still serves in the Senate.
He was the last Senator to be elected from a party other than the Democrats or Republicans. Since 1974, two independent candidates (
Bernie Sanders of
Vermont and
Joe Lieberman of Connecticut) have been elected, but no minor-party candidates have won election to the Senate.
1976 Republican National Convention
During the
1976 Republican National Convention, then-Senator
Jesse Helms encouraged a "Draft Buckley" movement, as an effort to stop the nomination of
Ronald Reagan for President. Reagan had announced that
Pennsylvania Senator
Richard Schweiker would be his running-mate if picked; Helms believed that Schweiker was too liberal. The "Draft Buckley" movement was mooted when President
Gerald Ford very narrowly won the party's nomination on the first ballot.
Judicial career
In the first
Reagan administration, Buckley initially served as an undersecretary of
State and then as
president of
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty from 1982 until 1985. Appointed a federal judge in 1985 by Reagan, he left his post at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty to serve on the
United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He became a
senior (semi-retired) judge of that Court in 1996.
Further Information
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