The congressman from the 3rd District is Walter Jones, a Republican first elected in 1994 and one of his party’s leading iconoclasts. An evangelical Christian and devout social conservative, he has become the GOP’s most fervently antiwar member. He grew up in eastern North Carolina, attended North Carolina State and Atlantic Christian College, and served in the National Guard. His father, Walter Jones Sr., was a Democratic representative from the old 1st District. The senior Jones served for a quarter-century and chaired the Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee. The younger Jones, then a Democrat, was elected in 1982 to the state House, where he often broke with party leaders. Read More
The congressman from the 3rd District is Walter Jones, a Republican first elected in 1994 and one of his party’s leading iconoclasts. An evangelical Christian and devout social conservative, he has become the GOP’s most fervently antiwar member. He grew up in eastern North Carolina, attended North Carolina State and Atlantic Christian College, and served in the National Guard. His father, Walter Jones Sr., was a Democratic representative from the old 1st District. The senior Jones served for a quarter-century and chaired the Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee. The younger Jones, then a Democrat, was elected in 1982 to the state House, where he often broke with party leaders.
In 1992, he ran in the new black-majority 1st District after his father retired. He led the primary with 38% but lost the runoff to Democrat Eva Clayton, an African-American who got 55% to Jones’ 45%. In April 1993, Jones switched to the Republican Party and soon announced he was running in the 3rd District. This pitted him against four-term Rep. Martin Lancaster, a Democrat who had worked hard on local projects. But Lancaster voted for President Bill Clinton’s budget and tax bills and his crime legislation, while failing to persuade Clinton to drop the cigarette tax from health care legislation. Jones ran an ad showing Lancaster jogging with Clinton, with the voiceover message: “How’d Martin Lancaster get so out of touch? Well, look who he’s running around with in Washington.” Jones won 53%-47%.
In the House, Jones’ voting record began consistently conservative and hawkish, but over the years moderated. He had a remarkable conversion on the issue of the war in Iraq. Jones voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq in 2002, as did all but six House Republicans. He even led the 2003 effort, widely spoofed by late-night comics, to rename the House cafeteria’s french fries as “freedom fries” after France declined to support the invasion. But not long afterward, he was profoundly affected by a local marine’s funeral, setting the stage for an unlikely conversion from conservative war supporter to passionate critic.
As House Republicans began proposing to cut spending in early 2011, Jones and Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., called for pulling troops out of Afghanistan. “Why do we need to sacrifice more American lives?” they wrote in a Washington Post op-ed. “Instead, why aren’t we using all our resources to go after the terrorists that murdered so many of our civilians on Sept. 11, 2001?” Around the same time, Jones was part of a group of House and Senate members led by liberal Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., to announce a plan to reap nearly $1 trillion in defense savings over the next 10 years to bring down the deficit. And he got the Pentagon to investigate substandard mental health treatment for marines returning from Iraq and Afghanistan to Camp Lejeune.
Earlier, Jones supported Democratic proposals for a timetable for withdrawing troops from Iraq and he opposed President George W. Bush’s troop surge plan. But he drew the line at a Democratic plan to attach conditions to future war funding, saying that attempts to “starve” the war to bring it to a close were wrong. Jones also began writing letters to the families of every soldier killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. By March 2011, he had sent almost 10,000 letters, calling them his “mea culpa to my Lord” for voting for the war. He also found time to begin writing a book, My Daddy’s Not Dead Yet, whose title came from a little boy who feared his Marine father would be killed in Iraq.
Jones was one of only two House Republicans to vote against expanding the scope of the Bush administration’s secret surveillance program, and he also supported the closing of the prison at Guantanamo Bay. His independence from his party cost him the top Republican post on the Readiness Subcommittee on Armed Services in 2007. After his punishment at the hands of GOP leaders, Democrats approached Jones about switching parties, but he declined, saying his opposition to abortion rights would make him ill at ease in the party. “I’m a Pat Buchanan American,” he told National Journal in 2009. “I want to stop trying to take care of the world and fix this country.”
In that regard, Jones increasingly takes stands apart from his party on non-defense issues. When his party assumed the majority in 2011, he was the only Republican to vote against a fiscal 2011 bill making billions of dollars in spending cuts. In December 2010, he was one of just three Republicans to support a Democratic bill extending the Bush-era tax cuts for low- and middle-income Americans but not the wealthy. He also was the lone GOP co-sponsor of a bill that year limiting the value of Chinese goods the U.S. government could buy in response to that country’s manipulation of its currency, a move that the business community staunchly opposed. After the Supreme Court’s controversial Citizens United decision on campaign finance, he co-sponsored an Obama White House-backed bill aimed at restricting companies’ ability to air campaign ads. He later opposed the bill because of the exemptions granted to National Rifle Association and other groups.
At home, Jones has generated controversy by intervening in conflicts outside his district. He called for the state school superintendent to remove from an elementary school in Wilmington a book about two gay princes who get married and opposed full recognition to the Lumbee Indians for fear that they would build a big casino on Interstate 95. Jones, who posted the Ten Commandments in his Capitol Hill office, supported politically active churches with his proposal to permit them to endorse candidates without losing their tax-exempt status. The bill generated lots of traffic on the Internet, but the House defeated it 178-239 in 2002.
His outspoken criticism of the Iraq war brought him a serious primary challenge in 2008 from Onslow County Commissioner Joe McLaughlin, a financial planner and former Army Ranger officer. McLaughlin called Jones “a poster boy for the Left” and said he was “standing shoulder to shoulder with Nancy Pelosi.” But Jones seemed to benefit from Iraq fatigue among the public, even among military families. McLaughlin was significantly outspent, and Jones won 59%-41%. He won easily in the fall and has not had a serious challenge since.
