John Rarick

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John Richard Rarick (born January 29, 1924) is a lawyer in St. Francisville, Louisiana in West Feliciana Parish who was a Democratic congressman from southren Louisiana between 1967 and 1975. A staunch conservative, he frequently quarreled with his party's increasingly liberal philosophy and leadership. In 1980, he sought the presidency as the nominee of the former American Independent Party founded by George C. Wallace, Jr., of Alabama.

Contents 1 Early years and military service 2 Unseating Congressman Jimmy Morrison 3 Challenging John McKeithen 4 Supporting George Wallace 5 Losing renomination in 1974 6 Running for Congress again, 1976 7 AIP presidential nominee, 1980 8 Rarick today 9 References 10 Further reading

[edit] Early years and military service

Rarick was born in tiny Waterford in Elkhart County, Indiana. He attended Goshen High School in Goshen. He studied at Ball State (then Teacher’s College) in Muncie, and he then transferred to Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.

Rarick served for three years in the United States Army in World War II. He was captured and later escaped from a German prison camp. He was awarded the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart.

After his military service, Rarick graduated from LSU and then the Tulane University School of Law in New Orleans in 1949. He was admitted to the Louisiana bar later that year and set up a law practice in St. Francisville, near Baton Rouge. He was elected as a district judge of the West Feliciana Parish-based Twentieth Judicial District on June 28, 1961. He resigned the judgeship on May 15, 1966, to declare his candidacy for the U.S. House.

[edit] Unseating Congressman Jimmy Morrison

Rarick had been raised as a Republican in Indiana, but became a Democrat when he moved to Louisiana because the Republicans were almost nonexistent in that state at the time (at one point, more than some 99 percent of the state's registered voters were Democrats). Calling himself a "constitutionalist," Rarick upset veteran Sixth District Congressman James H. "Jimmy" Morrison of Hammond in a Democratic primary runoff with 51.2 percent of the vote. (Jimmy Morrison is unrelated to the late New Orleans Mayor deLesseps Story Morrison, Sr., though the two shared a moderately liberal political philosophy.) Rarick's victory coincided with the selection of another controversial conservative, the late Lester Maddox, as the Democratic nominee for the governorship of Georgia. Maddox had become known for closing a restaurant in Atlanta to avoid compliance with the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

In those days, the Democratic nomination was tantamount to election in Louisiana. Ironically, both Rarick and his 1966 Republican opponent, Crayton G. "Sparky" Hall, later left their major parties. Hall was in 1976 a Sixth Congressional District elector for the fledgling Libertarian Party, pledged that year to the Virginian Roger MacBride. Rarick quickly compiled a very conservative voting record, even by Louisiana Democratic standards. He was also a member of the pro-segregation White Citizens Council. He often spoke at events sponsored by the anticommunist John Birch Society.

[edit] Challenging John McKeithen

In November 1967, with less than a year of congressional service to his credit, Rarick challenged popular Democratic Governor John Julian McKeithen for renomination. Rarick secured the support of various "far right" groups in the state, but was badly defeated, winning only 17.3 percent of the vote to McKeithen's 80.7 percent, among those two candidates. (There were several minor candidates not included in the percent breakdown.) Rarick did not poll a gubernatorial majority even among those voters expected to support Wallace for president in 1968. He appeared to have made the same error in judgment in running for governor as another freshman congressman, Gillis William Long of Alexandria, had done in 1963. Many who favored Rarick also supported the right-wing bookstore owner Ned Touchstone of Shreveport, who waged a futile campaign to deny renomination to incumbent Education Superintendent William J. "Bill" Dodd.

[edit] Supporting George Wallace

In 1968, Rarick supported Wallace for president against Democrat Hubert Humphrey and Republican Richard M. Nixon. Rarick himself was reelected to theU.S. Congress by a wide margin that year, and he was reelected two more times without opposition. West Feliciana Parish was the only parish in Louisiana to support Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern in the 1972 general election, which was ironic since Rarick had the most conservative voting record of any other member of the Louisiana congressional delegation.

[edit] Losing renomination in 1974

Two years later, the ghost of Jimmy Morrison came back to haunt Rarick. In 1974, Rarick was denied renomination (as he had done to Morrison eight years earlier) by a young Baton Rouge broadcaster, Jeff LaCaze, who made much of Rarick's conservative voting record. LaCaze, a "national Democrat," in turn lost the seat to Republican Henson Moore of Baton Rouge in a disputed November 1974 general election. In a special election rematch held in January 1975 to resolve the dispute, LaCaze lost by nearly eight percentage points to Moore. The seat has been in Republican hands ever since, first with Moore, then with Richard H. Baker, also of Baton Rouge.

[edit] Running for Congress again, 1976

Rarick resumed the practice of law after his congressional defeat. In 1976, he was an unsuccessful candidate for the American Independent Party nomination. The party had been founded by Wallace in 1968 to support his presidential bid. Thereafter, Wallace returned to the Democratic fold and largely let the new party fend for itself. Rarick lost the AIP nomination to Maddox. Rarick then turned his attention to returning to Congress. He ran in the suburban New Orleans-based First District in 1976 and ran for the seat as an independent. The seat had come open when 36-year incumbent F. Edward Hébert announced his retirement. Rarick polled only 12,227 votes (9.4 percent). However, he siphoned off enough votes that presumably otherwise would have gone to Republican Robert L. "Bob" Livingston to throw the election to Democrat Richard Alvin Tonry. In a surprise development, Tonry was forced to resign from the U.S. House in May 1977 because of allegations of electoral misconduct. Livingston thereafter won the seat in a special election held in August 1977.

[edit] AIP presidential nominee, 1980

In 1980, Rarick secured the AIP nomination with Eileen Knowland Shearer of California (the wife of AIP founder William K. Shearer) as his running mate, but he finished in seventh place, with 40,906 votes (or just 0.05 percent). Rarick's most respectable showings were in Louisiana, where he polled 10,333 votes (0.67 percent and about the same number that Maddox had received four years earlier) and in Alabama where he captured 15,010 votes (1.12 percent). Overall, his totals were so meager as to have been omitted from most presidential election tallies. He opposed the Republican Ronald Reagan for president that year on the grounds that Reagan was too accommodating to the welfare state to address the pressing needs of the nation in the 1980s.

[edit] Rarick today

Rarick is a widower in St. Francisville. His wife, Marguerite P. Rarick (born September 10, 1924), died on April 10, 2003.

He was among the charter members of the Council of Conservative Citizens, which some have considered to be a successor to the White Citizens Council. The CCC's leaders deny any connection to the old Citizens Council, but both groups have been accused of segregationist ties.

In an interview in 2004, "No Party" Rarick said that he has had no contact for many years with his former House colleagues, few of whom are still in office. He said that one of the lawmakers he came most to respect was then Congessman Steve Symms, an Idaho Republican, who was elected to the U.S. Senate in the Reagan sweep of 1980 and served two terms before retiring to become a lobbyist in 1993. Rarick said that his congressional service was well behind him and that he rarely thought about his past political activities which spanned nearly two decades of Louisiana politics.

[edit] References

• Email exchange, Billy Hathorn with John R. Rarick, 2004
• Billy Hathorn, "The Republican Party in Louisiana, 1920-1980," Northwestern State University at Natchitoches thesis (1980)
• Congressional Quarterly's Guide to U.S. Elections
• Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, September 3, 1977
• Shreveport Times, November 4, 1974

[edit] Further reading

• John R. Rarick Political Collection, Center for Southeast Louisiana Studies, Southeastern Louisiana University

Preceded by: Thomas J. Anderson

American Independent Party Presidential Nominee 1980

Succeeded by: Delmar Dennis

Preceded by: James H. "Jimmy" Morrison (D)

United States Representative for the 6th Congressional District of Louisiana 1967–1975

Succeeded by: William Henson Moore, III (R)