‘YOU WON’T REMEMBER WATERGATE’

Fifty years ago this week, the country, the state’s 3rd congressional district and the city did not take the route some said they should or even would. As a result of those routes not taken, history was altered.

As 1974 opened, the winds of Watergate swirled around the White House and the administration of President Richard Nixon. The word “impeachment” — then whispered only in reverence — had been mentioned for Nixon involving the crime and suspected cover-up of the 1972 break-in of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C., but was no fait accompli.

Two men came to Chattanooga that first full week of the new year — one a U.S. senator and one a future U.S. senator — to tell local contingents the scandal might just blow over.

First up was U.S. Sen. Howard Baker, R-Tennessee, who told attendees at the 97th annual meeting of the Greater Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce at the Chattanooga Choo Choo that the greatness of America “is still before us,” and as long as Americans have faith in fulfilling that greatness “you won’t even remember Watergate.”

The state’s senior senator already was vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Campaign Practices (Watergate Committee), and already had uttered his famous question about Nixon’s depth of knowledge on the scandal: “What did the president know, and when did he know it?”

Baker said the country’s spirit had not been broken over Watergate. America had faced up to the challenge of examining the incident, he said, adding that he believed the U.S. still was “ordained to be the world’s leader.” As for the president, he expected he would “finish his term” but if “the facts warrant [impeachment], I would vote for it.”

He said he was not “pessimistic” about the GOP’s chance in the fall elections, but that the party would have been “dead if it hadn’t” confronted the scandal and been part of the investigation.

Several days later, attorney Fred Thompson, then minority counsel for the Watergate Committee (under Baker) — told members gathered for a Tennessee Bar Association meeting that unless more evidence was presented, the committee may be done with its hearings.

The hearings, the future Tennessee senator said, were “not a trial,” but he defended those involved by saying they were not seeking “personal glory.”

Despite Baker’s and Thompson’s words, hearings over the scandal did continue throughout the winter, spring and summer, and U.S. House members were preparing impeachment charges against Nixon when the president announced his resignation on Aug. 8, 1974.

Meanwhile, to acknowledge the Watergate scandal hadn’t reached its nadir in Tennessee, 3rd District Democrats were floundering in an attempt to find a candidate to run against U.S. Rep. LaMar Baker, R-Chattanooga, who was seeking his third term. The district hadn’t elected a Democrat to the post since 1960, and no top opponents were on the horizon.

Into the fore stepped the Rev. J. Basil Mull, a Knoxville Baptist minister and the host of an often lampooned gospel music program carried locally.

Mull, in a private session including two vanquished former party nominees, one who’d already declared for the office, and other top Democratic officials, according to newspaper archives, supposedly told those gathered he could win all but Hamilton and Bradley counties and would pick up support there.

In an interview before the meeting, he said he was looking for a home in Chattanooga and, if elected, would move into the district.

“I’ve got widespread support,” he said. “I don’t want to say right now for the record, but I think there will be a lot of people surprised.”

Mull did not run. Popular Chattanooga television news anchor Mort Lloyd stepped into the race for the Democratic nomination in June, easily won it but then was killed three weeks after the August election in a plane crash near Manchester, Tennessee. His widow, Marilyn, ran in his place, easily defeated Baker in the Republicans’ post-Watergate trouncing in November and served 20 years as a conservative Democrat before choosing not to run in 1994.

On the same day as Mull’s doings hit the newspaper was the report of a $3.6 million, seven-story office condominium that was to be built overlooking the Tennessee River between the John Ross (Market Street) and Walnut Street bridges.

The office building and multi-level parking deck on First Street above Riverfront Parkway was to be of contemporary steel and glass design and offer more than 80,000 square feet of office space and “the latest in architectural advances and office treatments.”

Groundbreaking for “River Bluff” was scheduled for March 1, according to sales agents Caldwell and Associates Realty Inc., completion was expected in a year and a half, and the building was said to be already 37% committed for occupancy.

However, the building was never built, and the space today is occupied by the Riverset Apartments.

What in the first full week of 2024, we might wonder, will be only dust in the wind by the end of the year?