James L. Buckley - Political Career

Political Career

In 1968, Buckley challenged liberal Republican Senator Jacob K. Javits for re-election. Javits won easily, but Buckley received a large number of votes from disaffected conservative Republicans. In 1970, he ran on the Conservative Party line for the U.S. Senate, facing a Democrat and the Republican incumbent Charles Goodell. Goodell had been appointed to the Senate by Governor Nelson Rockefeller following the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy. Goodell had moved left, especially as an opponent of the Vietnam War. Buckley's campaign slogan, plastered on billboards statewide, was "Isn't it time we had a Senator?"

With Goodell and the Democratic nominee Richard Ottinger splitting the liberal vote, Buckley won with 39% of the vote, and entered the Senate in January 1971. "He performed well in New York City itself, at a time when the city still had a beating conservative heart in the middle-class neighborhoods of the outer boroughs."

In his 1976 re-election bid, with Rockefeller's liberal GOP faction falling apart, Buckley received the Republican nomination. Initially, he was favored for re-election, because the frontrunner in the crowded Democratic field was Manhattan Congresswoman Bella Abzug, a liberal feminist reviled by the right. But when Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the U.S. Ambassador to the UN, made a late entrance into the Democratic primary and narrowly defeated Abzug, Buckley could no longer count on getting the votes of moderate Democrats. Moynihan went on to defeat Buckley 54% to 45%.

After his loss, Buckley moved to Connecticut, and in 1980 received the Republican nomination for the Senate seat being vacated by the retirement of Abraham Ribicoff. He lost the general election to Christopher Dodd, who would go on to hold the seat until his retirement in 2011.