Clark MacGregor, 80; Led Nixon’s Reelection Effort After Watergate Break-In

Clark MacGregor, a Minnesota Republican who served suburban Minneapolis in the U.S. House of Representatives in the 1960s and was the public face of President Nixon’s 1972 reelection victory, has died. He was 80.

A resident of Washington, D.C., MacGregor died of respiratory failure Monday at a hospital in Pompano Beach, Fla.

MacGregor, a civil rights advocate in Congress who had cordial relations with the media and his Capitol Hill colleagues, joined the Nixon White House in 1971 as its chief congressional liaison. But his most prominent role was chairman of the Committee to Re-Elect the President from July to November 1972, handling strategy, fund-raising and other key efforts that led to the landslide win over former Sen. George McGovern (D-S.D.).

MacGregor succeeded former Atty. Gen. John Mitchell, who had resigned that July, a month after the Watergate break-in. MacGregor was never implicated in the scandal, in which men linked to the Nixon White House had broken into Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate complex.

A genial, tall, bespectacled figure, MacGregor performed work that required expert management of two dueling issues: constant optimism about Nixon’s reelection and the increasingly tense dealings between the White House and the press corps about the Watergate scandal.

Nixon trounced McGovern, carrying all but Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.

In his memoirs, Nixon praised MacGregor and other key election officials for doing a “magnificent job,” adding, “They were not only effective spokesmen for the administration, but [they] kept McGovern on the defensive with sharp thrusts against his far-left views.”

MacGregor’s family said that he and the president were never friends socially, and that they had no contact after he left the reelection committee. In a 1973 deposition connected with civil suits stemming from the Watergate arrests, MacGregor said he was “misled, deceived and ... lied to repeatedly” by the White House and campaign aides.

After leaving the Nixon camp, he remained a familiar figure on the Washington party circuit and sat on boards of such organizations as the Wolf Trap Foundation and the National Symphony Orchestra.

He also became vice president for external affairs for United Technologies Corp., handling congressional affairs work for the aerospace and building systems giant.

MacGregor was born in Minneapolis. His father was a lawyer and his mother a teacher. He served in the Army during World War II and was assigned to the Office of Strategic Services, a precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency, in the Burma-India theater.

He was a navigator on missions to air-drop supplies behind enemy lines. He received the Bronze Star and the Legion of Merit.

MacGregor was a cum laude history and government graduate of Dartmouth College and a 1948 graduate of the University of Minnesota law school. He spent 12 years as a trial lawyer in Minneapolis before defeating incumbent Democratic Rep. Roy Wier in 1960.

In the House, he served on the Judiciary and Banking and Currency committees. He did not seek reelection in 1970, instead running unsuccessfully against Democratic former Vice President Hubert Humphrey for the Senate seat vacated by Eugene McCarthy.

MacGregor was an early supporter of Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign.

After MacGregor lost his Senate bid, Nixon rewarded him with the White House congressional liaison job.

Survivors include his wife of 54 years, Barbara Spicer MacGregor of Washington; daughters Susan Wheelwright of Boston, Laurie MacGregor of Hanover, N.H., and Eleanor MacGregor of Kensington, Md.; and eight grandchildren.