The Price of Trusting Nixon

Of all the contests in the 1974 elections, the role of Watergate came into sharpest focus in those involving members of the House Judiciary Committee. Each member had either defended or assailed Richard Nixon and cast votes for or against his impeachment last summer as a national television audience looked on. While other considerations also affected each race, the overall pattern of results was significant. Of the 33 members seeking reelection, only one Congressman who voted in favor of at least one article of impeachment was defeated. Of the ten members (all Republicans) who opposed impeachment on each televised roll call, four were defeated and one has retired.

The lone loser among the pro-impeachment Representatives was Republican Harold Froehlich, who lost to a Norbertine priest and history professor, Robert Cornell, 54, in a largely rural Wisconsin district where inflation was a top issue. The other Republicans who voted against Nixon all won, some by impressive margins. All of the anti-Nixon Democrats survived, including such Southerners as Alabama's Walter Flowers, South Carolina's James Mann and Arkansas' Ray Thornton. Committee Chairman Peter Rodino's margin in New Jersey over John Taliaferro was an overwhelming 49,600 to 8,666.

Two of the four defeated Nixon loyalists were from New Jersey: Charles Sandman Jr. and Joseph J. Maraziti. The gravel-voiced Sandman, whose raucous defense of Nixon had variously appalled or delighted millions of viewers, was beaten in his seaside district by William J. Hughes, a former assistant county prosecutor who had narrowly lost to Sandman four years ago. Although defeated this time, 108,486 to 76,962, Sandman said he had no regrets about his pro-Nixon stance. "If I had to do it over, I would do the same thing," he declared! Maraziti succumbed to the combination of Watergate, newspaper reports that he kept a woman friend on his office payroll although she did no work, and the competence of a strong challenger: Helen Meyner, wife of former New Jersey Governor Robert Meyner.

The two other Nixon defenders to lose were Indiana's David Dennis and Iowa's Wiley Mayne. The waspish Dennis' legalistic fight against impeachment seemed a big factor in his loss, since he had defeated the winner, Ball State University Political Science Professor Philip R. Sharp, twice before, and the area had not gone Democratic since 1958. The articulate Mayne had similarly beaten his opponent, Millionaire Manufacturer Berkley Bedell, in 1972.

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