2 Watergate Veterans Debate Effect on Careers

Twenty-four years ago, Harold V. Froehlich, a scholarly Wisconsin Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, joined six GOP colleagues in voting articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon, a president of his own party.

Did he believe he was risking his political career?

“I didn’t dwell on it then, but it was certainly a problem in getting reelected,” said Froehlich, now a state judge in Appleton. “I have no regrets, however, because I based my vote on the evidence.”

Froehlich, a freshman who narrowly won his seat in 1972, believes that his loss in November 1974 “definitely” resulted from his impeachment vote four months earlier.

Nixon’s case never reached the House floor because he resigned about two weeks after the committee’s vote.

But Froehlich’s case is instructive because current attention is being focused on moderate House Republicans who may be put in a difficult position if they break party ranks--in this instance, by not voting for President Clinton’s impeachment later this week. Party loyalists and conservatives could well desert them in their next campaign.

The equation, however, is complicated. If they support their party’s drive for impeachment, these Republicans run the risk of alienating moderates in their districts who helped send them to Congress.

Only 2 of 7 Defectors Felt Backlash

In fact, the experience of Watergate shows that there is a debate to this day over how much impact the issue had on the careers of GOP incumbents because only two of those seven defectors--Froehlich and then-Rep. Lawrence J. Hogan of Maryland--had political troubles later that year.

Froehlich acknowledged that “there could have been other factors” in his defeat.

“But some Republicans told me point-blank they weren’t going to support me,” he recalled. “Democratic friends of mine congratulated me, but they voted for my opponent.”

The opponent, Robert J. Cornell, a Catholic priest and history professor, disputes the impact of Froehlich’s impeachment vote, saying that he never used it in the campaign because there were other more pressing issues.

Hogan, the first Republican on the Judiciary Committee to announce his vote for impeaching Nixon, gave up his relatively safe House seat after three terms to run for Maryland governor.

He blamed his subsequent defeat in the Republican primary that September on the weighty issue of presidential impeachment, saying that it unexpectedly alienated large numbers of Republicans in his state.

At a press conference before his vote, he charged that Nixon had “lied repeatedly” to the American people about the Watergate break-in and cover-up. Critics of Hogan said that he sought too much publicity by announcing his vote on the eve of the committee’s impeachment debate and then following it up with a statewide television broadcast that evening.

A leading Baltimore politician said at the time that “people here felt his jumping the gun on Nixon was done for political purposes . . that he made a political publicity show out of the nation’s trauma.”

Hogan said he was surprised at the reaction to his vote.

“After Nixon resigned, I thought my vote might be an asset [among Republican voters], but it wasn’t,” said Hogan, a former FBI agent. He recalls receiving about 15,000 mostly hateful letters, some addressing him as “Benedict Arnold” or “Judas Hogan.”

After Hogan’s defeat, other political analysts said at the time that it was attributable more to his overconfidence and failure to pay attention to the mundane aspects of primary election campaigning.

“Pride goeth before a fall,” one said, explaining that Hogan “assumed from the first he would easily win the GOP primary” and that he virtually ignored his primary opponent, Louise Gore, as he looked ahead to campaigning against powerful Democratic Gov. Marvin Mandel.

The judiciary panel on which Froehlich and Hogan served had worked for months behind closed doors before finally conducting open nationally televised hearings during the last week of July 1974, culminating in committee approval of three articles of impeachment.

Several days later, the so-called smoking gun Watergate tape of June 23, 1972, surfaced, showing that Nixon had directed his aides to pit the CIA against the FBI to thwart the federal investigation of the Watergate break-in. Nixon’s support in his party further eroded.

Representatives Urged to Vote Conscience

Other Republicans on the panel who had voted against Nixon, but who went on to win reelection, were M. Caldwell Butler of Virginia, Tom Railsback of Illinois, Hamilton Fish Jr. of New York, Robert McClory of Illinois and William S. Cohen of Maine, later elected to the Senate and now Clinton’s secretary of defense. Most of the lawmakers never faced serious reelection challenges.

“I never thought I was in any real jeopardy,” Butler said in a recent interview from his home in Roanoke, Va. “I felt like political considerations should be put aside. Besides, my district was pretty evenly divided over President Nixon.”

Even in defeat, Froehlich and Hogan said that they harbor no regrets about their votes and insisted that they would do it again.

“You have to put politics aside and vote your conscience for the good of the country,” Froehlich advised.