Spiro Agnew
Spiro Theodore Agnew (
November 9,
1918 –
September 17,
1996), born
Spiros Anagnostopoulos in
Towson, Maryland, was the thirty-ninth
Vice President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1973 under President
Richard M. Nixon. He is the highest-ranking
Greek-American citizen to have held political office in the
United States. He is most famous for his resignation in 1973 following evidence of
tax evasion. Agnew was also the 55
th governor of the state of
Maryland from 1967 to 1969.
Spiro Agnew was born to Theodore Spiros Anagnostopoulos and Margaret Akers. His father emigrated from
Gargalianoi,
Greece to the
United States in 1897 and owned a restaurant. He would become a
Baltimore Democratic ward leader and well known in the local Greek community, though he was
Episcopalian.
Agnew attended public schools in Baltimore before enrolling in
Johns Hopkins University in 1937. He studied
chemistry at Johns Hopkins University for three years before joining the U.S. Army and serving in Europe during World War II. He was awarded the
Bronze Star for his service in France and Germany.
Prior to leaving for Europe, Agnew began working at an insurance company where he met and, on
May 27,
1942, married another company employee, Elinor Judefind, known as Judy. They would eventually have four children: Pamela, James Rand, Susan, and Kimberly.
Upon his return from the war, Agnew transferred to the evening program at the
University of Baltimore School of Law. He studied law at night while working as a grocer and as an insurance salesman. Agnew received a law degree in 1947 and moved to the suburbs to begin practicing law. He passed the bar in 1949.
Agnew, raised as a Democrat, switched parties and became a Republican to fit in with his Republican law partners. During the 1950s, he aided U.S. Congressman
James Devereux in four successive winning election bids, before entering politics himself in 1957 upon his appointment to the Baltimore County Board of Appeals by Democratic
Baltimore County Executive Michael J. Birmingham . In
1960, he made his first elective run for office as a candidate for Judge of the
Circuit Court, finishing last in a five-person contest. The following year, the new Democratic Baltimore County Executive
Christian H. Kahl dropped him from the Zoning Board, with Agnew loudly protesting, thereby gaining name recognition.
In
1962, Agnew ran for election as
County Executive of
Baltimore County, seeking office in a predominantly
Democratic county that had seen no
Republican elected to that position in the twentieth century, with only one (
Roger B. Hayden) earning victory after he left. Running as a reformer and
Republican outsider, he took advantage of a bitter split in the Democratic Party and was elected. Agnew backed and signed an ordinance outlawing
discrimination in some public accommodations, among the first
laws of this kind in the
United States.
After choosing not to seek a second term as County Executive, Agnew ran for the position of
Governor of Maryland in 1966. In this overwhelmingly Democratic state, he was elected after the Democratic nominee, George P. Mahoney, a Baltimore paving contractor and perennial candidate running on an anti-
integration platform, narrowly won the Democratic gubernatorial primary out of a crowded slate of eight candidates. Many Democrats opposed to
segregation then crossed party lines to give Agnew the governorship by 82,000 votes.
As governor, Agnew worked with the Democratic legislature to pass tax and judicial reforms, as well as tough anti-pollution laws. Projecting an image of racial moderation, Agnew signed the state's first open-housing laws and succeeded in getting the repeal of an anti-
miscegenation law. However, during the riots that followed the assassination of
Martin Luther King, Jr., Agnew angered many
African-American leaders by lecturing them about their constituents in stating, "I call on you to publicly repudiate all black racists. This, so far, you have been unwilling to do."
Agnew's moderate image, immigrant background and success in a traditionally Democratic state made him an attractive running mate for
Nixon in 1968. Agnew's nomination was supported by many conservatives within the Republican Party and by Nixon. But a small band of delegates started shouting "Spiro Who?" and tried to place
George Romney's name in nomination. Nixon's wishes prevailed and, Agnew went from his first election as County Executive to Vice President in six years--one of the most meteoric rises in U.S. political history.
Agnew was known for his tough criticisms of political opponents, especially journalists and anti-
Vietnam War activists. He was known for attacking his opponents with unusual, often alliterative epithets, some of which were coined by White House speechwriters
William Safire and
Patrick Buchanan, including:
* "nattering
nabobs of negativism," (written by Safire)
* "pusillanimous pussyfoots",
* "hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history",
* "the liberal intellectuals...masochistic compulsion to destroy their country's strength",
* "effete corps of impudent snobs", and
* "
radiclib," a
portmanteau of "radical liberal".In short, Agnew was Nixon's hatchet man when defending the administration on the Vietnam War. Agnew was chosen to make several powerful speeches in which he spoke out against anti-war protestors and media portrayal of the Vietnam War, labeling them "Franco Un-American". Agnew toned down his rhetoric and dropped most of the alliterations after the 1972 election with a view to running for president himself in 1976.
|
Spiro Agnew congratulates launch control after launch of Apollo 17 in 1972. |
On
October 10,
1973, Agnew became the second Vice President to resign the office. Unlike
John C. Calhoun, who resigned to take a seat in the
Senate, Agnew resigned and then pleaded
nolo contendere (no contest) to criminal charges of
tax evasion and
money laundering, part of a negotiated resolution to a scheme wherein he allegedly accepted $29,500 in bribes during his tenure as governor of Maryland. Agnew was fined $10,000 and put on three years' probation. He was later
disbarred by the State of Maryland. His resignation triggered the first use of the
25th Amendment, as the vacancy prompted the appointment and confirmation of
Gerald Ford as his successor. It remains one of only two times that the amendment has been employed to fill a Vice Presidential vacancy. (The other time was when Ford chose
Nelson Rockefeller to succeed himself as Vice President.)
Agnew had hoped to be the Republican Party's presidential nominee in the 1976 election, before the
Watergate scandal broke out. Privately, Agnew blamed Nixon for releasing the accusations of bribes and tax evasion in order to divert attention from the growing Watergate scandal that was engulfing Nixon's administration. As fate would have it, Nixon was forced from office but Agnew's earlier resignation and criminal charges ruined his hopes of becoming President. The two men never spoke to each other again. As a gesture of reconciliation, Nixon's daughters requested that Agnew attend Nixon's funeral in 1994, and Agnew complied.
After leaving politics, Agnew became an international trade executive with homes in
Rancho Mirage, California,
Crofton, Maryland and
Ocean City, Maryland. He briefly re-entered the public spotlight and engendered some controversy with some blatantly
anti-Semitic statements and a call for the United States to withdraw its support for the state of Israel.
In
1980 Agnew published a
memoir in which he implied that Nixon and
Alexander Haig had planned to assassinate him if he refused to resign the Vice-Presidency, and that Haig told him "to go quietly … or else.
[Agnew, Spiro T:: "Go quietly ... or else". Morrow, 1980. ISBN 0688036686.]" Agnew also wrote a novel,
The Canfield Decision[Agnew, Spiro T:: "The Canfield Decision". Putnam Pub Group, 1976. ISBN 9997554876.], about a vice president who was "destroyed by his own ambition."
Agnew died suddenly on
September 17,
1996 at the age of 77 at Atlantic General Hospital, in
Berlin, Maryland in Worcester County (near his Ocean City home) only a few hours after being hospitalized and diagnosed with an advanced, yet to that point undetected, form of
leukemia. He is buried at
Dulaney Valley Memorial Gardens, a
cemetery in
Timonium, Maryland in
Baltimore County.
* Agnew's anti-discrimination ordinance led to the demise of Baltimore's
Buddy Dean Show in 1964 when Dean refused to allow black and white teens to dance together. This event was the factual basis for
John Waters'
Hairspray movie and the subsequent
Broadway musical.
* As the noted American humorist
Dick Cavett has observed, the letters spelling "Spiro Agnew" can be rearranged to read "grow a penis." [
1]
*Agnew was granted a
coat of arms by the short-lived
American College of Heraldry and Arms in 1968.
*Agnew is named in the
Gil-Scott Heron song
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.*Agnew's headless body, acting as a Frankestein-like creature (complete with evil growl and Boris Karloff-style arm-swipe), is the sidekick and transporter of Earth President Richard Nixon's disembodied head, in one episode of the cartoon
Futurama.
*There is the
Ballad of Spiro Agnew.
*
Spiro Agnew biography on U.S. Senate website*
University of Maryland's repository for Spiro Agnew*
The Archives of Maryland collection of speeches, messages and other public papers during Agnews governorship 1967-69
