- Robin Beard
Infobox Congressman
name =Robin Beard
small
state =Tennessee
district =6th
term_start =January 3, 1973
term_end =January 3, 1983
preceded =William R. Anderson
succeeded =Al Gore
birth_date =birth date|1939|8|21
birth_place =Knoxville,Tennessee
death_date =death date and age|2007|6|16|1939|8|21
death_place =Charleston,South Carolina
nationality = flagicon|USA American
party =Republican
spouse =Catherine Beard
relations =
children =
residence =
alma_mater =Vanderbilt University
occupation =
profession =
religion =
website =
footnotes =Robin Leo Beard, Jr. (August 21, 1939 – June 16, 2007) was a Republican member of the
United States House of Representatives fromTennessee who served from 1973 to 1983.Early life
Beard was a graduate of
Nashville 's prestigiousMontgomery Bell Academy andVanderbilt University , where he was a member of the Sigma Chi Fraternity. He was a former lieutenant in theUnited States Marine Corps Reserve. He later moved to Somerville, a suburb of Memphis.Political career
In 1970, Beard was appointed Tennessee personnel commissioner by newly elected Republican Governor
Winfield Dunn . In 1972, he entered the GOP primary for the newly-reconfigured Sixth Congressional District. It was widely speculated that the district had been drawn in such a way as to putincumbent Democrat William Anderson of Waverly in a precarious position as punishment for his presumed liberalism and his musings about running for vice president in 1972. Also, many Democrats still remembered Anderson's 1962 gubernatorial bid as an independent against their nominee,Frank G. Clement . The Democrats in the state legislature shifted several Republican-trending portions near Memphis into the Sixth and removed several solidly Democratic areas.In November, Beard defeated Anderson by twelve percentage points. Tennessee Democrats had not anticipated the depth of the massive Republican landslide fueled largely by the presidential candidacy of
George McGovern , who carried only five of Tennessee's ninety-five counties; the Republicans were able to win a majority in the state's congressional delegation for the first time since Reconstruction. However, Beard's victory was not considered an upset; the redrawn 6th was considered the only Democratic-held district in Tennessee in which a Republican had a realistic chance of winning.Beard proved to be popular in much of his district, even though almost none of its residents had been previously been represented by a Republican. In part due to taking conservative positions on almost all issues, and in part from his constituent services, Beard was reelected to four subsequent terms. His first reelection coincided with the 1974 nationwide
Watergate debacle which ended the careers of many Republicans. Beard was frequently reelected by margins of over 30 percentage points, rivaling the totals usually scored by Republicans inEast Tennessee . His only serious threat probably came in 1976, when he was opposed for reelection by former SenatorRoss Bass , who had represented the district from 1955 to 1964. However, Bass found himself running in a large amount of territory that he had never represented in Congress, and was defeated by over 34 points. Beard's blowout win over Bass was one of the few bright spots for Tennessee Republicans in a year in which state politics were largely otherwise dominated by Democrats, who regained more of the ground that they had lost four years earlier.Beard did not run for a sixth term in 1982, opting instead to run for the Republican nomination to oppose freshman Democratic Senator
Jim Sasser . While Beard won the primary, he was a heavy underdog against Sasser from the beginning (even thoughRonald Reagan had carried Tennessee two years before), and histelevision ads didn't help the cause. In one of the advertisements, Sasser was likened to a then-populartoy mouse which was wound up and started performing back flips, emphasizing Sasser's "flip flop" record according to Beard; in another, a fatigue-wearingFidel Castro look-alike lit hiscigar with what appeared to be American money, saying, "Gracias, Señor Sasser!" In the end, Beard lost in a massive 20-point landslide. This was a considerable embarrassment to the Tennessee GOP, especially considering that Republican GovernorLamar Alexander was handily reelected. The Republicans would not win another statewide race until 1994, when they captured the governorship and both Senate seats.Subsequent to his Senate defeat, Beard was appointed as a
NATO deputy secretary-general and spent several years (1984–1987) inBelgium , an experience that he enjoyed so much that he repeated it again later (1992–1995). He was subsequently quoted as saying that losing the Senate race was the best thing that had ever happened to him or his family, which he again found time for once removed from the constant travel andfundraising associated with service in Congress. He later ran aWashington, D.C. -based import-export business and was at one time a resident ofAlexandria, Virginia .Later life and death
Beard retired to Charleston County,
South Carolina , where he later ran for a seat on the countyschool board in 2006. Shortly after filing for the race, he was diagnosed with abrain tumor . Late in his campaign, he underwentsurgery andchemotherapy treatments but stayed in the race, which he subsequently lost.Beard died from the brain tumor after a little more than a week in
hospice care.External links
*CongBio|B000280
* [http://www.charleston.net/news/2007/jun/17/former_congressman_beard_dies_at_age/ Former Congressman Beard dies at age 67]
*E. Thomas Wood andKen Whitehouse , [http://www.nashvillepost.com/news/2007/6/20/remembering_robin_beard Remembering Robin Beard] . "NashvillePost.com ", June 20, 2007
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