Nixon Couldn’t Stop Pete McCloskey, Republican Who’s For Impeachment

The upstart who tried to beat President Nixon in the 1972 New Hampshire primary; the man who calls himself “the furthest out of the Republican congressmen.”

The Washington Star-News, June 9, 1974: It is Thursday morning and Pete McCloskey’s staff can’t stop smiling. Their boss has just squeaked through to victory with 867 votes in the 11th Congressional District Republican primary in California after a hairy election night during which he conceded twice.

Then, from the corridor outside his office, comes a triumphantly whistled version of “Give My Regards to Broadway.” “There he is!” says one of the women on his staff. And in comes Paul N. McCloskey Jr., 46, tall, good-looking and clearly walking on air.

Pete McCloskey — everyone calls him Pete — the upstart who tried to beat President Richard Nixon in the 1972 New Hampshire primary; the heretic whose speech calling for Nixon’s impeachment last June was muffled after six minutes by Rep. Earl F. Landgrebe, R-Ind.; the man who calls himself “the furthest out of the Republican congressmen.”

Before he accepts congratulations from his staff and thanks them, he settles in his office for an unexpected early morning interview and is soon joined by his friend and fellow-upstart, Rep. Donald Riegle, who last year switched from the Republican to the Democratic party. McCloskey has just finished a play-by-play description of election night but he does a rerun for Riegle.

Until about midnight Tuesday, he was losing. “Everybody was gloomy and they asked me what I thought. I said I couldn’t pretend to represent the majority of the Republicans in my district. I was on the wrong side of all the issues. I am for amnesty, for abortion, against capital punishment, for legalizing marijuana and for impeachment. That went over the wires as a concession speech,” he says chuckling. “Look what I’ve got,” says Riegle, holding high a piece of wire copy. He reads: “McCloskey, trailing Atherton businessman J. Gordon Knapp in the early returns, told a reporter, ‘I think my defeat is inevitable.”

Both men laugh exultantly. Later when Riegle leaves, McCloskey says fondly: “It’s been a long road here and that was a special moment.” He and Riegle started the movement among Republicans to overturn the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, fought together against the Vietnam War and advocated Nixon’s impeachment long before other Republicans ventured even minor criticism of Nixon’s role in Watergate.

McCloskey attributes his newest victory to Vice President Gerald Ford, who came out to California on his behalf. “It’s a funny story,” he says still laughing. Ford had told him he would come on the condition that John H. Rousselot, R.-Calif., “probably the most conservative congressman,” sat on the platform with them. “Ford said he couldn’t endorse any individual candidate in the primary but he could show party solidarity.”

Even so, Ford’s generous gesture toward his old friend was an act of independence. “Every Republican from the White House to Gov. Ronald Reagan’s staff was pleading with Ford not to appear with that idiot McCloskey. And Jim Buckley (New York Republican senator) was speaking about a block away at the same time. He was mad.”

Topping off Ford’s contribution to McCloskey’s campaign was the heroic effort of Rousselot to get on that platform. His high school classmate and friend “Johnny” Rousselot had just returned to Washington from Denver when McCloskey reached him by phone at the airport and asked him to board a plane for San Francisco immediately. “The next morning, a bleary-eyed Rousselot and I met Jerry at the airport,” McCloskey says.

With such a narrow victory, McCloskey counts every vote, including that of his former wife, Caroline, who divorced him a couple of years ago. She’s since remarried but “we’re still good friends,” he says. Caroline had switched over to the Democratic party after the divorce because she was “sick of politics” and sick of Watergate, McCloskey recounts. “But she switched back so she could vote for me by absentee ballot in the California primary.” That vote, he says, accounts for his winning the absentee ballot count, 362 to 363.

Still another factor was the college vote. Two thousand Stanford and Santa Clara students reregistered from the Democratic to the Republican party. “They did it blatantly to save Pete McCloskey. My Republican opponent was mad as hell, he said I was rigging the election, that I’d brought in 2,000 people who weren’t ‘real’ Republicans.”

McCloskey smiles wryly and adds: “My victory can’t quite be construed as a mandate that the Republicans want Nixon impeached.” During 10 days of ringing doorbells, McCloskey became convinced that the opposite was true. “I would guess that 40 percent of the Republican party, particularly the older people, just can’t face impeachment. They don’t want to even look at the transcripts. They’d far rather say it was a conspiracy of the liberal press.”

McCloskey himself is unequivocal about Nixon’s involvement. “My personal conviction as an ex-district attorney is that the things Nixon has committed constitute major crimes.” He has his own theory about “the genesis of Watergate.” McCloskey believes the president’s role as commander-in-chief got the upper hand over his role as caretaker of the laws of the land. “Nixon’s plan to end the war in Vietnam was essentially to increase military pressure on North Vietnam but at the same time he had to meet public opinion and withdraw troops to keep the American people happy,” he says.

“This crunch caused Nixon to begin the secret bombing of Cambodia, double the bombing of Laos and step up the bombing of the North,” says McCloskey. “His policy required absolute secrecy through deception. Finally, when he was losing militarily, he had to invade Cambodia and that triggered the campus uproar. Then he and that group around him commenced to think of the whole anti-war movement and Riegle and myself as enemies.”

McCloskey claims that when John Charles Houston, former president of Young Americans for Freedom, “recommended that they use illegal means to get intelligence on their ‘enemies’ on campus and in politics, Nixon authorized the burglary, the wire tapping, the breaking into the mails. And so it all came together. You got those dirty guys around the President, knowing the President has authorized illegal conduct. And, of course, you’ve got those idiots Stans and Mitchell (former cabinet members Maurice Stans and John Mitchell) out raising money from every fat cat by promising benefits or threatening governmental action.

“And it all comes back to the head man himself.” McCloskey is particularly hard on his friend John Ehrlichman, who was on his Stanford debating team “He is a good lawyer but he thought national security and winning the war in Vietnam justified burglary in the United States.” Aware that he is still persona non gratis in the Republican party, McCloskey has no plans for leaving it as Riegle did. “I’m going to spend the next six months trying to rebuild the Republican party if I can. If they’ll let me.”

But first he has to beat his Democratic opponent, Gary Gillmor, a man for whom he has great respect. “The only trouble,” he says laughing, “is both of us will be urging impeachment of the President.”

Originally published in The Washington Star-News, June 9, 1974 as McCloskey, the Republican Nixon Couldn’t Stop