Joseph Tydings

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Joseph Tydings
United States Senator
from Maryland
In office
January 3, 1965 – January 3, 1971
Preceded byJames Glenn Beall
Succeeded byJ. Glenn Beall Jr.
United States Attorney for the District of Maryland
In office
1961 – November 21, 1963
Preceded byLeon H. A. Pierson
Succeeded byRobert H. Kernon
Member of the Maryland House of Delegates
from the Harford County district
In office
1955–1961
Succeeded byW. Lester Davis
Personal details
Born
Joseph Davies Cheesborough[1]

(1928-05-04)May 4, 1928
Asheville, North Carolina, U.S.
DiedOctober 8, 2018(2018-10-08) (aged 90)
Washington, D.C., U.S.
Political partyDemocratic
Spouses
Virginia Reynolds Campbell
​
​
(m. 1955; div. 1974)​
​
​
(m. 1975)​
RelationsMillard Tydings (stepfather)
ChildrenMary Tydings Smith, Millard E. Tydings II, Emlen Tydings, Eleanor Tydings Gollob, Alexandra Tydings
Alma materUniversity of Maryland, College Park
University of Maryland School of Law
Military service
Branch/serviceUnited States Army
Years of service1946-1948
RankCorporal
Unit6th Constabulary Regiment
Battles/warsOccupation of Germany

Joseph Davies Tydings (né Cheesborough; May 4, 1928 – October 8, 2018) was an American lawyer and politician. He was most notable for his service as a Democratic member of the United States Senate representing Maryland from 1965 to 1971.

Born in North Carolina, Tydings moved to Maryland as a youth after he was adopted by his mother's husband, Millard Tydings, who also served as a U.S. Senator from Maryland. After serving in the military, he obtained his law degree and entered into practice. He served in the Maryland House of Delegates from 1955 to 1961, and as United States Attorney for Maryland from 1961 until his resignation in 1963 to run for Senate.

Tydings easily won election to the Senate in 1964. However, his controversial stances on gun control and crime in the District of Columbia cost him re-election in 1970. He made another attempt at his old seat in 1976, but was defeated in the Democratic primary election by Congressman Paul Sarbanes. He later served as a member of the Board of Regents of the University of Maryland, College Park and the University System of Maryland, and continued to practice law.[2]

Tydings also argued Eisenstadt v. Baird, in which the Supreme Court of the United States legalized birth control for single persons in 1972, something that had been prohibited in many states. The Eisenstadt decision has been described as among the most influential Supreme Court decisions of the 20th century.[3]

Early life, education, and military service[edit]

Tydings was born in Asheville, North Carolina,[2] the son of Eleanor Davies and Thomas Patton Cheesborough, who divorced in 1935.[4] He was raised in Aberdeen, Maryland, and was adopted by his stepfather, Millard Tydings.[2][5] His maternal grandfather was Joseph E. Davies, who served as U.S. Ambassador to Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Soviet Union, and whose second wife was the cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post.[6][7] Tydings went on to graduate from the McDonogh School in 1946. He served in the 6th Constabulary Regiment from 1946 to 1948 during the U.S. Army's post-World War II occupation of Germany and attained the rank of corporal.[8]

Following his military service, Tydings attended the University of Maryland, College Park, where he played football and Lacrosse. He graduated in 1951.[8] While attending college, Tydings became a brother of Alpha Phi Omega, and he graduated from the University of Maryland School of Law in 1953.[2] He was president of the Maryland Young Democrats in the 1950s.[9]

Legal career[edit]

Tydings had been admitted to the bar in 1952, before he completed his law degree, and he began to practice soon afterwards. In 1954 he was a successful Democratic candidate for the Maryland House of Delegates from Harford County, Maryland.[2] He served as a Delegate from 1955 to 1961, when he was appointed United States Attorney for Maryland by President John F. Kennedy, a close friend.[10] As U.S. Attorney, Tydings brought many political corruption cases, including against Congressman Thomas Francis Johnson and state House of Delegates speaker A. Gordon Boone, both of whom were imprisoned.[9] He also oversaw the prosecution of several people in the savings and loan business. In 1963, Tydings served as the United States representative at the Interpol Conference in Helsinki, Finland, and at the International Penal Conference in Bellagio, Italy.[2]

Election to the Senate[edit]

In the 1964 elections, Tydings was frequently mentioned as a potential candidate for the United States Senate seat of Republican James Glenn Beall.[11] While initially hesitant, Tydings resigned as U.S. Attorney on November 21, 1963, to test his political support across the state. On January 14, 1964, Tydings officially declared his candidacy, stating he was challenging the "old guard" of the Maryland Democratic Party political machine. He also said he would work to bring a "new era of leadership into Maryland".[10]

During the primary election in May 1964, Tydings faced Maryland Comptroller Louis L. Goldstein, who had won the endorsement of both J. Millard Tawes, Governor of Maryland, and Daniel Brewster, the other U.S. Senator from Maryland.[10] Despite Goldstein's support from party leaders, Tydings trounced him by a nearly a two-to-one margin.[12]

Tydings faced Beall in the general election and the results gave Tydings nearly 63% of 1,081,042 votes cast.[13] His large margin of victory was due at least in part to the landslide win by fellow Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson for President in the same election, which likely increased voter turnout.[14]

United States Senator[edit]

Upon his election, Tydings began to lay out his legislative agenda for his upcoming term, which included water conservation, pollution and air purity, and mass transportation.[15] He played a crucial role in the enactment of the federal law governing multidistrict litigation.[16] He also expressed interest in serving on the Senate Committee on the District of Columbia. Tydings won a place on the DC committee, and was appointed chairman in 1969.[2]

Leading up to the elections of 1970, Tydings faced criticism from both parties for his actions as senator. In July 1970, syndicated columnist Marquis Childs noted that Tydings' problems on the left stemmed from his support of a crime bill for the District of Columbia, which was perceived as repressive against African Americans. There was also criticism directed at the bill for writing into law the practices of preventive detention and no knock warrants.[17]

Tydings voted in favor of the Voting Rights Act of 1965,[18] the Civil Rights Act of 1968,[19] and the confirmation of Thurgood Marshall to the U.S. Supreme Court.[20] Tydings opposed President Richard Nixon's nominations of Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell to the Supreme Court, earning him the enmity of Nixon.[9]

Known for his love of horses, Tydings was the Senate sponsor of the Horse Protection Act of 1970, which prohibited certain inhumane practices against horses.[9]

Tydings' difficulties with the right stemmed from his sponsorship of the Firearms Registration and Licensing Act, which would have required the registration of firearms.[21] An avid hunter himself, his efforts agitated the gun lobby and the NRA. One Maryland activist group, Citizens Against Tydings, was formed solely because of Tydings' gun registration platform.[22] Further complicating his relations with the right were the efforts by the American Security Council Foundation, which graded him as a "zero" on national security issues and spent over $150,000 to campaign against his bid for re-election.[23]

1970 election[edit]

In the Democratic primary, Tydings was challenged by perennial candidate and Dixiecrat George P. Mahoney and two others.[24] After a divisive campaign, Tydings beat Mahoney by 53% to 37%.[25]

For the general election, Tydings' opponent was freshman Congressman John Glenn Beall Jr. from Western Maryland, the son of James Glenn Beall, whom Tydings had defeated in 1964. Beall's campaign strategy "leaned heavily on his affable, noncontroversial personality" and avoided turning the campaign negative.[26] As a result of Tydings' unpopularity and Beall's campaign strategy, Tydings was defeated 51% to 48%.[26]

In a review of the election, The Washington Post noted one of Tydings' major problems was identifying with his constituents. Despite the 3–1 advantage of registered Democrats versus Republicans in the state, Tydings had been labeled as an "ultraliberal" by many Marylanders, and Vice President Spiro Agnew, formerly the Governor of Maryland, had called Tydings "radical" while campaigning for Beall. Tydings was also wealthy, and was seen as having an "aloof" disposition.[26]

Return to politics[edit]

Tydings resumed his legal career after he lost his Senate seat, entering into practice with a Washington law firm that included Giant Food President Joseph Danzansky.[27] After several years out of politics, he began traveling the state in 1975 to gauge his chances for winning a rematch versus Beall, who was coming up for re-election in 1976. On January 10, 1976, Tydings announced his candidacy for his former senate seat, which he argued was taken unfairly in 1970 due to an undisclosed $180,000 gift to the Beall campaign.[27]

In the primary, Tydings faced a strong challenge from Congressman Paul Sarbanes, who had entered the race several months earlier.[27] This head start gave Sarbanes a considerable organizational and monetary advantage, and he had already secured influential endorsements.[28] To fend off Sarbanes, Tydings hoped his name recognition and charisma on television would compensate for Sarbanes' other advantages. He also worked to relabel himself as more fiscally conservative than Sarbanes, since both candidates were seen as liberal.[28]

For the primary election, Tydings needed a large margin of victory from precincts in the Washington, D.C., suburbs of Prince George's and Montgomery Counties, where he was most popular.[29] Despite Tydings winning both counties, Sarbanes performed well in the rest of the state and defeated him by over 100,000 votes, 61% to 39%. Sarbanes had outspent Tydings two-to-one during the campaign.[29] After defeating Tydings, Sarbanes won the general election by a landslide and served as senator until 2007.[30]

Post-Senate career[edit]

Following his electoral defeat, Tydings returned to his law career at Danzansky's firm.[31] In 1971, he gave oral argument on behalf of Bill Baird in the Supreme Court case Eisenstadt v. Baird in November 1971; in its decision the next year, the Court held that a Massachusetts state law barring the use of birth control for single persons was unconstitutional.[32] The Eisenstadt decision has been described as among the most influential Supreme Court decisions of the 20th century.[3]

Tydings also worked as a partner in the law firm of Finley, Kumble, Wagner, Underberg, Manley, Myerson & Casey, which collapsed in 1987.[33] Later, Tydings worked at Anderson Kill Olick & Oshinsky from 1988 until his departure with Jerold Oshinsky in 1996 to join Dickstein Shapiro in Washington, D.C.[31]

In academics, Tydings was a member of the Board of Regents of the University of Maryland from 1974 to 1984, serving as chairman from 1982 to 1984; it became University of Maryland, College Park in 1988. In 1977, Tydings called for the Board of Regents of the University of Maryland to divest its endowment from companies doing business with the apartheid regime in South Africa.[34][35] He later served as a member of Board of Regents of the University System of Maryland from 2000 to 2005.[2] In September 2008, he was appointed by Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley to the board of the University of Maryland Medical System.[31] As of 2016, he resided in Harford County, Maryland.[2]

In the last two decades of his life, Tydings was an attorney at the firm Blank Rome.[9] Tydings was a member of the ReFormers Caucus of Issue One.[36]

Joseph Tydings died in Washington, D.C., from cancer, on October 8, 2018, at the age of 90.[9]

Personal life[edit]

Tydings married Virginia Reynolds Campbell of Lewes, Delaware, in 1955; they had four children. The couple divorced in 1974. In 1975, Tydings married Terry Lynn Huntingdon of Mount Shasta, California, with whom he had one child, actress Alexandra Tydings. Tydings and Huntingdon subsequently divorced.[9]

Marjorie Merriweather Post was the second wife of Tydings' maternal grandfather Joseph E. Davies and it came to pass that Davies' crest was displayed at Post's Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach. The heraldry had one word placed above it, "Integritas" (Latin for integrity). When the estate came into the hands of Donald Trump and was converted into a private club, the future President modified the logo and replaced "Integritas" with "Trump".[37] Tydings who as a boy had spent a good deal of time at the seaside home remarked about the irony...“My grandfather would be rolling over in his grave if he knew Trump was using his crest,” ... “I am sorry to say that banishing the concept of ‘integrity’ is a sad metaphor for the Trump presidency"...[38][39]

References[edit]

  1. ^ "Joseph Davies Cheesborough - North Carolina Birth Index". FamilySearch. Retrieved October 9, 2018.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i "Tydings, Joseph Davies". United States Congress. Retrieved July 7, 2008.
  3. ^ a b Lucas, Roy (Fall 2003). "New Historical Insight on the Curious Case of Baird v. Eisenstadt". Roger Williams University Law Review. IX (1): 23–37. doi:10.2307/1600542. JSTOR 1600542.
  4. ^ Schudel, Matt (June 11, 2006). "Eleanor Tydings Ditzen; D.C. Society Fixture". The Washington Post. Retrieved October 9, 2018.
  5. ^ "Papers of Millard E. Tydings". University of Maryland, College Park. Archived from the original on June 12, 2010. Retrieved June 29, 2008.
  6. ^ "Miss Tydings Has Wedding". The New York Times. October 27, 1985.
  7. ^ "Heiress". The Washington Post. May 28, 1978. Retrieved June 8, 2021.
  8. ^ a b "Joseph D. Tydings papers". digital.lib.umd.edu. Retrieved May 13, 2018.
  9. ^ a b c d e f g Christina Tkacik, Frederick N. Rasmussen & Jacques Kelly (October 9, 2018). "Joseph D. Tydings, former progressive U.S. senator from Maryland, is dead at 90". The Baltimore Sun. Archived from the original on May 25, 2019.
  10. ^ a b c Maffre, John (January 15, 1964). "Tydings Enters Race With Rap At 'Old Guard'". The Washington Post. p. B1.
  11. ^ Maffre, John (November 22, 1964). "Tydings Quits U.S. Post To Test Political Support". The Washington Post. p. A1.
  12. ^ Chapman, William (May 21, 1964). "Tydings Victory Sets Up Change For Democrats". The Washington Post. p. B1.
  13. ^ "Senate General Elections, All States, 1964 Summary". Congressional Quarterly. Retrieved June 29, 2008.
  14. ^ Dessoff, Alan L; Willard Clopton (November 4, 1964). "Tydings Defeats Beall in Senate Race, Sickles, Mathias Keep House Seats". The Washington Post. p. A1.
  15. ^ Eagle, George (November 8, 1964). "Tydings Ready to Serve On D.C. Unit if Asked". The Washington Post. p. B10.
  16. ^ Bradt, Andrew (2018). "The Looming Battle for Control of Multidistrict Litigation in Historical Perspective". Fordham Law Review. 87 (1): 87–106. Retrieved August 20, 2022.
  17. ^ Childs, Marquis (July 20, 1970). "Tydings' Legislative Proposals Stir Up Both Right and Left". The Washington Post. United Feature Syndicate. p. A19.
  18. ^ "TO PASS S. 1564, THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT OF 1965. -- Senate Vote #78 -- May 26, 1965". GovTrack.us. Retrieved June 8, 2021.
  19. ^ "TO PASS H.R. 2516, A BILL TO PROHIBIT DISCRIMINATION IN ... -- Senate Vote #346 -- Mar 11, 1968". GovTrack.us. Retrieved June 8, 2021.
  20. ^ "CONFIRMATION OF NOMINATION OF THURGOOD MARSHALL, THE FIRST NEGRO APPOINTED TO THE SUPREME COURT". GovTrack.us.
  21. ^ Cohen, Richard (June 21, 1970). "Tydings Is Target of U.S. Gun Lobby". The Washington Post. p. 53.
  22. ^ Jeremy Barr, "45 Years Later, Tydings' Gun Control Bill Remains a Cautionary Tale" Archived November 4, 2013, at the Wayback Machine, Southern Maryland Online, April 11, 2013.
  23. ^ Nossiter, Bernard D (October 26, 1970). "Group Earmarks $150,000 to Defeat Liberals". The Washington Post. p. A3.
  24. ^ Eisler, Kim Isaac (1990). Shark Tank: Greed, Politics, and the Collapse of Finley Kumble, One of America's Largest Law Firms. Beard Books. p. 98. ISBN 9781587982385.
  25. ^ Kalb, Deborah (2015). Guide to U.S. Elections. CQ Press. p. 28. ISBN 9781483380384.
  26. ^ a b c Meyer, Lawrence (November 5, 1970). "History Full Circle In Tydings' Defeat". The Washington Post. p. A1.
  27. ^ a b c Walsh, Edward (January 11, 1976). "Tydings Sets Race to Regain Old Senate Seat". The Washington Post. p. 21.
  28. ^ a b Peterson, Bill; Harold J. Logan (May 16, 1976). "Voter Turnout Termed Key". The Washington Post. p. 1.
  29. ^ a b McAllister, Bill; Harold J. Logan (May 19, 1976). "Sarbanes Easy Victor". The Washington Post. p. A1.
  30. ^ "Paul S. Sarbanes". US Congress. Retrieved October 9, 2018.
  31. ^ a b c "Senator Joseph D. Tydings". Dickstein Shapiro. Archived from the original on June 4, 2008. Retrieved February 6, 2009.
  32. ^ David J. Garrow, Liberty and Sexuality: The Right to Privacy and the Making of Roe v. Wade (Open Road Media, 2015).
  33. ^ Goldstein, Tom (March 25, 1990). "Finley Kumble Sat On A Wall". The New York Times. p. A1.
  34. ^ Polk, Ryan. "Career Notes and Time Line: Senator Joseph Tydings". Archives of Maryland Online. Retrieved October 6, 2014.
  35. ^ "Historical List, House of Delegates, Harford County". Maryland Manual On-Line. Maryland State Archives. April 30, 1999. Retrieved March 5, 2023.
  36. ^ "ReFormers Caucus". Issue One. Retrieved June 2, 2017.
  37. ^ "Joseph Tydings, the anti-Trump". Baltimore Sun. Retrieved December 31, 2018.
  38. ^ Hakim, Danny (May 28, 2017). "The Coat of Arms Said 'Integrity.' Now It Says 'Trump.' - The New York Times". The New York Times. Retrieved December 31, 2018.
  39. ^ Roberts, Sam (October 12, 2018). "Joseph Tydings, Ex-Democratic Senator and Nixon Target, Dies at 90 - The New York Times". The New York Times. Retrieved December 31, 2018.

External links[edit]

U.S. Senate
Preceded by U.S. senator (Class 1) from Maryland
1965–1971
Served alongside: Daniel Brewster, Charles Mathias 		Succeeded by
Party political offices
Preceded by Democratic nominee for United States Senator from Maryland
(Class 1)
1964, 1970 		Succeeded by

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