Presidential candidate who hated politics
At 89, ex-U.S. representative is still making waves in N.M.
Pete McCloskey, an important figure in many of the nation’s busiest news cycles of the last halfcentury, is still very much a part of the present in New Mexico politics.
Readers trying to place McCloskey might rewind All the President’s Men, a 41-year-old movie that still causes palms to sweat and hearts to pound, even though nobody fired a gun or threw a punch. The movie carries a brief scene with footage from the 1972 Republican National Convention in Miami Beach. An announcer reports that President Richard Nixon clinched renomination with 1,347 votes. McCloskey, a rebel with a cause, received one vote, denying Nixon a clean sweep.
McCloskey at that time was a California congressman who ran for president on the platform of ending the war in Vietnam. He came at Nixon from the left, but nobody could credibly attack McCloskey for saying Vietnam was a bad war, and that the United States should bring home her soldiers before any more of them died or were maimed.
That’s because Paul N. “Pete” McCloskey was a war hero in Korea. He was
“I never wanted to go into politics. It was a dirty business,” said Pete McCloskey ,a former U.S. representative and co-chairman of the first Earth Day in 1970.
wounded in May 1951 while leading a Marine platoon through a hail of bullets to take a strategic hill. He received the Navy Cross, second-highest medal for valor in combat, a Silver Star and two Purple Hearts.
After coming home from Korea, McCloskey completed law school at Stanford. He had a booming practice in the Bay Area, but by the mid-1960s he was inclined to return to active duty with the Marine Corps. He had all but decided to leave behind his family and business for the bombs and bullets of Vietnam when one moment changed his view.
He visited a buddy who had lost a leg in Vietnam. The disabled veteran described Vietnam as a futile undertaking. “We can’t win this war,” McCloskey’s friend told him. “We can’t win their minds and hearts while we’re burning down their villages.”
McCloskey then veered into a new career, one he had always looked down on.
“I never wanted to go into politics. It was a dirty business,” he said one recent day.
Most who considered themselves experts never expected McCloskey to win his maiden race for Congress in California’s Bay Area, much less make a mark in politics.
He ran for a vacant seat in 1967. The field was crowded, but one name stood out. Members of the national press corps quickly crowned former child actress Shirley Temple Black as the favorite.
McCloskey routed her by 17,000 votes in the primary and went on to win the seat. Nixon took the White House in 1968, defeating Democrat Hubert Humphrey.
In Congress, McCloskey became the leading Republican voice on environmental issues. He was co-chairman of the first Earth Day in 1970 and he coauthored the Endangered Species Act. After Nixon ordered more bombings in Southeast Asia, McCloskey challenged him for the presidency in 1972.
McCloskey’s run for the White House was a long shot, but this time he received serious treatment from the Washington press corps. “It would be a serious mistake to underestimate any man who has led a successful bayonet charge in a war and has sunk the Good Ship Lollipop in politics,” wrote Saul Friedman of the Detroit Free Press.
Active Republicans were a tougher crowd. McCloskey’s friendliest audience might have been in New Mexico, the state that gave him his only vote at the 1972 convention. Katherine “Peach” Mayer, who was one of Santa Fe’s leading Republicans and an opponent of the Vietnam War, helped McCloskey make the primary ballot in New Mexico. He took enough votes to automatically obtain support from one of New Mexico’s 14 delegates to the national convention.
Then-Congressman Manuel Lujan cast that vote for McCloskey, touching off a wave of resentment from Nixon’s camp. McCloskey recently wrote a short book paying tribute to Lujan, titling it An Honest Public Servant.
McCloskey remained Nixon’s nemesis, calling in 1973 for the president’s impeachment because of the Watergate scandal.
Now, at 89, McCloskey spends about half the year in the Santa Fe area with his wife, Helen. He plans to switch his voter registration from California to New Mexico because, he says, his voice will matter more in a small state.
The McCloskeys backed a bill this legislative session to outlaw coyote-killing contests in New Mexico. The measure cleared the state Senate but died in the House of Representatives.
Pete McCloskey, now a Democrat, has another project in mind, this one involving Steve Pearce, the Republican congressman who represents Southern New Mexico. “Marines against Pearce — that’s what I’m going to organize,” McCloskey said. Pearce, himself a decorated military veteran and the highest-ranking state politician to embrace Donald Trump, may run for governor next year.
Looking back across an epochal life, McCloskey has a regret. “If I could do it again, I’d want to be an investigative reporter,” he said.
He chose well. Politics can be a dirty business, but McCloskey has spent 50 years cleaning it up.