MOBILE, Alabama — Former Alabama Rep. Jack Edwards died here peacefully this morning, a week after his 91st birthday. In addition to being a consummate gentleman and honorable, constructive public servant, Edwards was the last surviving “Goldwater Republican” elected from the Deep South in the 1964 elections.
People forget that even as Arizona Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater was trounced nationally for president while carrying just six states (five from the Deep South), eight southern Republican congressional candidates rode his coattails to win in what since Reconstruction had been the Democratic “Solid South.” Most of them didn’t last in office long, but the amiable Edwards proved popular and lasted in office until he retired from Congress on his own terms in 1984.
In holding office for so long, and without playing up divisive racial issues, he helped lead the realignment of the South from a Democratic stronghold into a Republican one.
Edwards was a conservative, but not a hard-liner. He made his biggest mark on defense policy, where he was said to be President Ronald Reagan’s House “point man” in the early 1980s, and on conservation issues, where he spearheaded the creation of Alabama’s Weeks Bay National Estuarine Reserve and the Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge. Four years after leaving Congress, he served as the co-chairman of the reformist 1988 national Base Realignment and Closure Commission.
Today’s politics could use a return to the personal decency and principled bipartisanship of Edwards, a man who didn’t stray far from his conservative beliefs but still worked to find common ground.
Until just about a year ago, Edwards remained a vibrant presence in southern Alabama (when he wasn’t at his mountain retreat in North Carolina), not in politics but with friends and at various haunts around Mobile Bay. He had a hearty laugh and great personal warmth. He will be very fondly remembered.
