Walter Dee Huddleston obit

Walter 'Dee' Huddleston, who lost Senate seat to Mitch McConnell, dies

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Walter “Dee” Huddleston, whose improbable political career took him to Washington for two terms

in the United States Senate, died Tuesday in Warsaw, Kentucky. He was 92 years old.

Low-key, pragmatic and apparently without the intense political ambition that fueled the careers of many of his peers, Huddleston, a Democrat, tended to shun the spotlight but was considered an effective operator behind the scenes on Capitol Hill.

It was his loss to then-Jefferson County Judge-Executive Mitch McConnell in 1984 that began McConnell's ascendancy to become the most powerful person in Congress and gave Republicans a foothold in Kentucky.

Huddleston died in his sleep early Tuesday at his son's home, where he had been living for the last 14 months, his son Stephen Huddleston said.

"He was very intelligent, very even-tempered and reasoned," Stephen Huddleston said. "He always handled himself in a way that brought honor to himself and others around him."

Dee Huddleston's two decades in politics began in 1965 with his election to the Kentucky Senate from Elizabethtown. By 1970 he was Democratic floor leader and running then-Lt. Gov. Wendell Ford’s campaign for governor.

With Ford’s election in 1971, Huddleston announced a run for a U.S. Senate seat that had been in the hands of Republican John Sherman Cooper for 16 years. Cooper — the only Republican to be raised to political sainthood by Kentucky’s heavily Democratic electorate — had chosen not to seek re-election.

The GOP nomination fell to Louie Nunn, who had preceded Ford as governor and whose generally progressive term had been marred — in the eyes of many Kentuckians — by his success in getting the 1968 General Assembly to raise the sales tax two cents to solve a serious budget problem. With President Richard Nixon seeking re-election against Sen. George McGovern, a Republican sweep seemed certain. Indeed, Nixon carried Kentucky by what was then a record margin — 305,000 votes.

But Huddleston, who kept his distance from the hapless McGovern even as he hung the sales-tax issue around Nunn’s neck, managed to hold enough Democratic votes to win by 35,000.

The next Republican presidential landslide — though not as big — swept Huddleston from office. In 1984, President Ronald Reagan carried Kentucky over Democrat Walter Mondale by 282,000 votes. That helped give Mitch McConnell the lift he needed to nip Huddleston by 5,269 votes in the biggest upset of that year’s national elections.

In a statement Tuesday, McConnell said Huddleston "earned the respect of his colleagues and Kentuckians throughout the Commonwealth" thanks to his "serious approach to the issues and a constant support for our agriculture."

"When we each had the opportunity to share our visions for Kentucky's future in 1984, I experienced Dee's tenacity, competitiveness, and skill firsthand," McConnell said. "He was a tough competitor, and I always respected him for his service to our home state."

In this photo from Dec. 7, 1971, Dee Huddleston, center, was embarrassed after introducing Gov. Wendell Ford as "William." But Ford, on left, and outgoing Gov. Louie Nunn, right, laughed.Buy Photo

Standing by his votes

Huddleston liked to say that when he went to Washington in 1973, he was intent on establishing himself as a senator who could defend Kentucky’s interests, especially tobacco and coal. Once having done that, he said, he would branch out into national policy issues.

He served on the Senate’s appropriations and agriculture committees, and in 1976, with the role of the CIA in question, Huddleston was one of 15 senators named to the newly created intelligence committee to keep an eye on the agency.

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Although it cost him politically, especially in Western Kentucky, Huddleston also supported the controversial Panama Canal treaties under which the United States ceded control of the Canal Zone to Panama. In 1978, when he easily defeated Republican state Rep. Louie Guenthner for a second term, his support of the treaties caused him more problems than any other issue, he said.

But he stood by his votes.

“I think it’s the decent thing for the United States to do,” he said in 1978. “It’s one of those things you just have to do if you think it’s right.”

As a member of the agriculture committee, he was a prime defender of the tobacco price support program when it was under attack in 1982, implementing the change under which tobacco farmers, rather than the government, paid for the cost of the program. That deflated efforts to repeal the program.

Using his position on the appropriations committee, Huddleston initiated federal financing of the Cumberland Gap Tunnel in southeastern Kentucky. He was also a firm supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment. He opposed abortion and supported a Reagan-backed constitutional amendment supporting voluntary school prayer.

Raoul Cunningham, president of Kentucky’s NAACP chapter and a former aide to Huddleston during his Senate campaign and tenure, said Huddleston worked doggedly on civil rights issues, such as busing and integration.

Huddleston was an original co-sponsor on the bill establishing Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Cunningham said, and the senator also had Cunningham organize a Capitol Hill reception and White House visit for Muhammad Ali after the boxer won his second heavyweight championship in 1974.

After a 1972 mudslide in Cumberland, Kentucky, destroyed the homes of African-American families in the Sanctified Hill community, Huddleston’s staff worked with Kentucky Republican Sen. Marlow Cook’s office and federal officials to move the residents to a newly built community in Cumberland called Pride Terrace, Cunningham said.

“When Huddleston was in office, you did not have the great divisiveness that exists today,” Cunningham said. “You could not have asked for a better boss to work for.”

Bob McQueen, who was Huddleston's executive assistant and Senate campaign manager, said his former boss was an "easy person to work for and greatly admired." He would play tennis with the late Cook after a day of debate, McQueen said.

"He was very representative of Kentucky and devoid of the ego you see in politics so very often," McQueen said.

While he faced a serious primary challenge early in his 1984 bid for re-election, Huddleston managed to avoid the snares and personal rivalries in the Senate as well as in state Democratic politics.

“Mostly I tend to my own business. I have no animosity toward anyone,” he said of his relations with Kentucky Democrats in a 1978 interview. “I’ve never taken a punitive position against anyone.”

U.S. Rep John Yarmuth, of Louisville, said in a statement Tuesday that he to got know Huddleston and his staff while working as a staffer for Cook.

"We stayed in touch over the years, and even compared political notes after I became a Democrat," Yarmuth said. "Dee had an unmatched personality and a heart of gold."

Running against Mitch McConnell

The challenge to Huddleston in 1984 came from former Gov. John Y. Brown Jr., who contended that he would be more effective than Huddleston. But Brown never caught fire in the way he did in his 1979 campaign for governor and, citing poor health, he withdrew a few weeks before the primary, leaving McConnell as Huddleston’s only obstacle to a third term.

Huddleston said after the election that facing down Brown’s challenge ended up hurting him because it made his campaign overconfident.

McConnell had his eye on Huddleston’s Senate seat for years and began to prepare for the campaign as soon as he was re-elected as Jefferson County judge-executive in 1981. Nonetheless, McConnell trailed badly in the campaign’s final months.

But with the help of Republican consultant Roger Ailes, who later founded Fox News, McConnell found a soft spot in Huddleston's armor — his voting and attendance records.

Ailes pushed for using a series of clever television advertisements, which portrayed baying bloodhounds on the track of an absent Huddleston who had missed Senate votes while away giving paid speeches.

Those ads helped McConnell cut deeply into Huddleston's lead.

Running ads featuring Reagan’s endorsement of him on the weekend before the vote, McConnell pulled out a narrow 5,269-vote victory. Huddleston never ran another race.

After his defeat, Huddleston returned to Elizabethtown but maintained his ties to Washington for more than a decade as a lobbyist for a number of interests, including railroads, cigarette manufacturers and agricultural interests, as well as two major Louisville-based firms, Humana and Capitol Holding.

Huddleston's early life

Walter Darlington Huddleston was born April 15, 1926, in Cumberland County, one of nine children of William F. and Lottie B. Huddleston. His father was a Methodist preacherand his four brothers became lawyers.

But after service in Europe in World War II, Huddleston got a degree in radio arts from the University of Kentucky and went to work at a Bowling Green station. A few years later, he moved to an Elizabethtown station and eventually became part owner of that station and another in Lebanon.

Stephen Huddleston said his father told him he was the first person to broadcast a UK basketball game over the radio. His father approached legendary UK basketball coach Adolph Rupp with the idea of broadcasting games and Rupp agreed.

"He had personal relationships and friendships with all of the legendary sports figures in Kentucky," Stephen Huddleston said.

His involvement in broadcasting led to his career in politics. Candidates for statewide office frequently came to him looking for support, thus stimulating his interest in politics. In 1965, after the redistricting of the General Assembly, Elizabethtown was the base for a new Senate district, and he ran for the vacant seat and won.

Ford, whom Huddleston had known from their time in the Jaycees, won election to the state Senate from Owensboro in the same election. Two years later, Ford was elected lieutenant governor, setting in motion the train of events that would put them both in the U.S. Senate.

Concern about current politics

Huddleston kept up with current political events in the last few years but otherwise "liked to enjoy sports and his newspapers and his books," his son said, adding that his father played golf for as long as he was able.

As for the current political climate in Washington, D.C., Huddleston was not pleased with the partisan atmosphere that has taken over in recent years, Stephen Huddleston said.

"He mentioned from time to time the deterioration of the quality of legislation and the undermining of the process,” Stephen Huddleston said. “I don’t think he was overly impressed with the character of people holding higher office.”

A funeral date has not been set, but Stephen Huddleston said services will take place in Elizabethtown.

Huddleston was preceded in death by his wife of 55 years, Jean (née Pierce). He is survived by his sons, Stephen and Philip, and two granddaugthers, Katherine Berkley and Caroline McMinn.