Early Political Career
Barbour soon became a Republican political operative and moved up the ranks of Republican organizing quickly, running Gerald Ford's 1976 campaign in the Southeast and working on the campaign of John Connally for president in 1980. In 1982 Barbour was the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate election in Mississippi, but was defeated by longtime incumbent John C. Stennis, a conservative Democrat, 64% to 36%, despite an endorsement by President Ronald Reagan. During the campaign, the New York Times reported that a Barbour aide complained about "coons" at a campaign event. Barbour, embarrassed that the comment was overheard by a reporter, told the aide that he would be "reincarnated as a watermelon and placed at the mercy of blacks" if he continued making racist comments.
Barbour later served as a political aide in the Reagan Administration and worked on the 1988 Presidential campaign of George H. W. Bush.
Read more about this topic: Haley Barbour
Famous quotes containing the words early, political and/or career:
“Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it’s an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole.”
—Eudora Welty (b. 1909)
“Despotism can only exist in darkness, and there are too many lights now in the political firmament to permit it to remain anywhere, as it has heretofore done, almost everywhere.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)
“They want to play at being mothers. So let them. Expressing tenderness in their own way will not prevent girls from enjoying a successful career in the future; indeed, the ability to nurture is as valuable a skill in the workplace as the ability to lead.”
—Anne Roiphe (20th century)