Adam Clymer

Reporter with front row seat at falls of Nixon and Khruschev

Adam Clymer, journalist and pollster. Born: 27 April, 1937 in New York. Died: 10 September, 2018 in Washington, aged 81

Adam Clymer, who covered eight presidential campaigns and the downfall of both Nikita Khrushchev and Richard Nixon as a reporter and editor for The New York Times and other newspapers has died at the age of 81.

Clymer received unsought attention in 2000, when, during a presidential campaign rally, he became the target of an inslut by George W. Bush that was captured on a live microphone. It was not the first time he had been attacked.

Reporting from Russia for The Baltimore Sun during the Vietnam War, he was beaten at an anti-american demonstration, accused of assaulting a police officer and expelled from the Soviet Union as a “hooligan”.

He had earlier covered Khrushchev’s ouster as first secretary of the Communist Party in 1964 and been a Washington correspondent for The Sun before being named the newspaper’s South Asia correspondent, based in New Delhi.

Returning to Baltimore, he covered his first presidential race, in 1972, and earned multiple entries in Timothy Crouse’s now classic book The Boys on the Bus, a sometimes rollicking behind-the-scenes account of reporters on the campaign trail.

After a brief stint at The Daily News in New York, Clymer joined The Times in 1977 to cover Congress. He held a number of reporting and editing posts for the newspaper over the years, including Washington correspondent, chief congressional correspondent, Washington editor, weekend editor, polling editor and political editor – the newspaper’s first.

As a Washington and political reporter, Clymer, a tall figure with an often crusty manner, covered the Watergate scandal and the fall of Nixon for The Sun. For The Times, he wrote about Ronald Reagan’s candidacy in 1980, observing that after Reagan had been repackaged to broaden his appeal beyond his hard-right base, his race against president Jimmy Carter was “his to lose”.

In 1994, covering Congress, Clymer revealed Newt Gingrich’s ultimately successful strategy to gain a Republican majority in the House in the midterm elections and then ascend to the speaker’s chair.

And in 2000, returning to the campaign trail, he was thrust into the headlines himself while covering a lab or day rally for the Republican presidentialticket inn apervil le, illinois.

Spotting Clymer, Bush pointed him out to his running mate, Dick Cheney, and unwittingly said into a live microphone: “There’s Adam Clymer, major-league asshole from The New York Times.”

To which Cheney replied, “Oh yeah, he is, big time.”

The Times did not publish the vulgarity, but it was widely reported. Bush never apologised. His campaign spokesman said Bush had been upset by “very unfair” coverage by Clymer.

Hardly embarrassed, Clymer was gleeful that he had stirred things up. Interviewed afterward on CNN, he said that some of his articles had offended Democratic politicians, too.

“You know,” he said, “if they all love you, you might as well just be driving a Good Humor truck.”

Adam Clymer was born in New York on 27 April, 1937, the son of Kinsey and Eleanor (Lowenton) Clymer. His mother wrote children’s books while his father, a former reporter for The Baltimore Evening Sun and The Brooklyn Eagle, worked for the New York City welfare department.

Clymer attended the private, progressive Walden School in Manhattan and Harvard, where he was the president of The Crimson, the student newspaper. As a student he covered college games as a part-time correspondent for The Times before graduating magna cum laude in 1958.

After returning from a fellowship at the University of Cape Town, he covered police news for the virginia n-pilot of Norfolk, Virginia, and served in the Army. The Sun hired him in 1963. In addition to his stints for the paper in Washington, the Soviet Union and South Asia, he was also its East Asia correspondent for a time.

After years as a political and congressional reporter for The Times, Clymer was named polling editor in 1983.

In that post, either collaborating with CBS News or overseeing independent projects by The Times, Clymer broadened the scope of opinion surveys beyond politics. One poll questioned Roman Catholic priests on marriage; another asked baseball players to name the umpires they most admired.

His favourite, published on Christmas Eve 1985, found that 87 percent of children aged three to 10 said they believed in Santa Claus.

He also helped popularise the practice of fleshing out surveys by calling respondents back to expand on their answers.

“Adam was one of the first journalists to identify and use poll numbers to explain the dynamics of the gender gap in American presidential politics, beginning with Ronald Reagan’s campaign in 1980,” said Janet Elder, a former Times polling editor and later a deputy executive editor. “He was instrumental in the use of exit polls to understand why voters voted the way they did.”

Clymer’s wife, Ann Wood (Fessenden) Clymer, who taught piano and worked for a time at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, died in 2013 at 75. Clymer leaves no immediate survivors.

His and his wife’s only child, Jane emily Clymer (as she rendered her name), was killed by a drunken driver in 1985 when she was a student at the University of Vermont.

The well-traveled Clymer took a reporter’s pride in having written articles from all over the United States. Indeed, a month before he retired, he wangled an assignment in Alaska so he could end his career having had datelines from each of the 50 states.

His favourite was with an article for The Sun in 1973, in which he quoted Nixon as telling a convention of newspaper executives at a hotel in Florida, “I am not a crook .” the date line was Disney World, Florida. New York Times 2018. Distributed by NYT Syndication Service.

SAM ROBERTS