Jimmy Quillen - Elected Into The U.S. Congress

Elected Into The U.S. Congress

During 1961, B. Carroll Reece, who had represented Tennessee's 1st congressional district for all but six of the last 40 years, died in office. His wife, Louise, took over as a caretaker until the next election. Quillen decided not to run for a fifth term in the state house in 1962, instead seeking the Republican nomination for the 1st District. This region was one of the few ancestrally Republican regions of the South; its voters had identified with the Republicans after the Civil War and had remained staunchly Republican ever since. Quillen won a five-way Republican primary with only 28 percent of the vote, and won the general election with 53.8 percent of the vote. He was reelected 16 more times. He only faced a relatively close race once, when he was held to 57 percent of the vote in 1976. He faced no major-party opposition in 1966 and 1980, and was completely unopposed in 1984 and 1990. Quillen eventually became de facto leader of the Republican Party in East Tennessee, and thus a statewide power broker within the tight circle of Tennessee Republican politics.

Quillen's popularity was not due only to his district's heavy Republican tilt, but also because he was widely perceived as providing strong constituent service. However, during his 34 years in Congress, Quillen managed to sponsor only three pieces of original federal legislation (including his legislation pertaining to the Social Security "notch babies" benefit adjustment and an anti-flag desecration amendment to the U.S. Constitution).