First elected to Congress in 1994, Rep. Walter Jones came to Washington from North Carolina as a typical foot soldier in the “Republican revolution.” Though he compiled a mostly conservative voting record over the next quarter-century, that’s not how he will be remembered following his death on Feb. 10 at age 76.
Jones opposed President Trump’s signature tax cut, arguing it would balloon the national debt, and one of his party’s plans to partially repeal and replace Obamacare. He joined Democrats in calling for an independent commission to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. He twice voted against John Boehner, then the House Republican leader, for speaker. He voted for advancing articles of impeachment against then-Vice President Dick Cheney. Party leaders tossed him from the House Financial Services Committee after the 2012 elections.
“I’m not going to sacrifice my integrity for anyone or any party,” Jones told reporters on Capitol Hill after losing the plum committee assignment. “It’s the price you pay. I didn’t come up here to be a puppet for anyone.” Some Republicans viewed Jones’ independent streak differently, however.
“When will this madness end?” a GOP primary challenger to Jones asked in a 2007 statement. “With next Tuesday the deadline for switching Party affiliation for the May primaries, I call on Walter Jones to do the honorable thing — end this charade — and switch his Party registration.”
The son of a congressman, Jones had actually done that once before. He first ran to represent his father’s former district as a Democrat, finishing first in the initial round of voting but losing the primary in a runoff. Jones then switched parties. Before becoming a Republican, he had already converted from Southern Baptist to Roman Catholic.
Then came Jones’ most dramatic conversion of all. He represented one of the most military-heavy districts in the country, with two bases including Camp Lejeune, home to 40,000 Marines. “In total, the installation [and] surrounding community is home to an active duty, dependent, retiree and civilian employee population of approximately 180,000 people,” states Jones’ congressional website.
In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Jones voted to authorize the invasion of Iraq. To protest France’s opposition to the war, he borrowed a page from a restaurant in his district and called for congressional menus to designate French fries “freedom fries” instead. He accused the French of practicing the “self-serving politics of passive aggression.”
But Jones soon turned sharply against the Iraq War. Doubts about the intelligence reports concerning weapons of mass destruction gnawed at him. In 2003, he attended the funeral of a 31-year-old Marine sergeant in his district. Jones watched one of the man’s children drop a toy on the ground and a Marine give it back.
“And the boy looked up at him, and the Marine looked down, and then it hit me: This little boy would never know his daddy,” Jones later told the liberal magazine Mother Jones. “This was a spiritual happening for me. I think at that point I fully understood the loss that a family feels. … I think God intended for me to be there.”
Jones started writing letters to the families of service members who lost their lives in the war. By 2005, he was joining in efforts to withdraw troops from the region. He became a fierce opponent of future wars, once threatening to introduce articles of impeachment against then-President Barack Obama if he intervened in Syria without congressional approval. He also wanted to bring troops home from Afghanistan.
“Lyndon Johnson’s probably rotting in hell right now because of the Vietnam War, and he probably needs to move over for Dick Cheney,” Jones said in 2013. These kinds of comments helped inspire Republican primary challengers. One dubbed him “the poster-boy for the most radical elements of the liberal left.” Another said simply, “he’s changed.” In 2014, Jesse Helms’ widow cut an ad for Jones to support him in a particularly bruising primary.
Jones worried not just about Cheney and Johnson’s souls, but also his own. “I will never forget my mistake, because people died because of my mistake,” he told the Associated Press in 2017. “I bought into believing that President Bush didn’t really want to go to war. That’s how naive I was at the time … I could have voted no, and I didn’t.”
W. James Antle III is editor of The American Conservative and author of Devouring Freedom: Can Big Government Ever Be Stopped? Antle was previously the Washington Examiner‘s politics editor.
