As featured in November/December 1997
J.C. Watts
Oklahoma Conservative Leads Push Away From Government Aid
By Vincent F.A. Golphin
Talk politics with Congressman J.C. Watts less than 15 minutes and you’re likely to hear the tale: “My father, who is 73 years old today, has a sixth grade education,” he’ll say in a voice that betrays a little of the twang in his Oklahoma accent. “He spent two days in the seventh grade. He said something to me once that is so true. When he was 57 years old, he said, ‘You know, Junior, I think I want to go to college.’ I said, ‘Daddy, why do you want to go to college? You’re 57 years old, you’ve been a heart bypass patient. Momma’s a diabetic — she has since passed on — you’ve got these cows, these rental properties, you’re pastoring a church. Why do you want to go to college?’ He said, ‘I’d like to see what makes you guys fools when you get out. You guys lose your ability to use common sense.’”
It’s a story he repeats like a mantra — an idea repeated again and again until the speaker or the listener comes to believe it. He said it four times during a September 15 visit to Rochester, New York. He said it at an early morning press conference, during a mid-morning private interview, in a midday banquet speech, and at a late evening rally for Monroe County Republicans. It broadcasts his call for a national awakening to common sense and morality.
Watts, whose first and middle name is Julius Caesar, is a standout in Washington power politics. One of the stars of the Class of 1994, his is the lone black face in what was called the Republican Revolution. He is the voice of reform, often ultra-conservative, favoring big business and family values. Unlike former Connecticut Congressman Gary Franks — once the only black Republican in the House of Representatives — Watts holds a high profile. For example, Republican leaders chose him to deliver the official Republican Party response to President Clinton’s 1996 State of the Union Address. Watts was the first African American in either party to do so.
The Republican leadership often pushes him out front as an answer, or foil, to the calls of more liberal political activists, such as the Rev. Jesse Jackson, for black rights. With an outstanding background as an athlete, a college degree, great instincts as a politician, and a career on the rise, white Republicans are quick to cite the son of an Oklahoma farmer as an example for his race. In a sense, Watts, an ex-University of Oklahoma Sooner superstar quarterback, is a poster boy for the kind of United States that conservative politicians and pundits, such as Rush Limbaugh, hope to see in the 21st century.
Many African Americans, on the other hand, wonder whether the well-built, dark brown-skinned, articulate politician is a prophet or a profiteer. Bluntly put, is he really concerned about furthering the development of the American Dream, so that it is open to everyone in the nation, or is he in it for himself?
Watts and the mostly white, conservative, Republican political observers who know him, say his preachments are more than idle rhetoric. The Southern Baptist minister from Norman, Oklahoma, they say, is in it for the good of all people.
“Common sense would say that it makes no sense to me why we penalize welfare moms for saving money,” he said. “Common sense would say to me that you can’t spend more money than you’re taking in. Common sense says that we should do things in Medicare to encourage people.
“I would think let’s have $200 for anybody 55 years or older who at the end of the year, has kept their cholesterol below 200. I would say it makes more sense — or it’s common sense — to say let’s reward and encourage people to be healthy, so we can save money rather than encourage them to be unhealthy. Then, let’s say you’re 65 years old, and we have to give you two, double-bypass heart surgeries, and it’s going to cost us $30,000 per surgery. So, doesn’t it make more sense to encourage healthy habits on the front end than to neglect our health and have to spend thousands of dollars on the back end?”
Ideas such as those are part of the American Community Renewal Act (HR 1301) Watts introduced in the House on March 12. Watts says the legislation will bring spiritual, moral, and economic reform to communities by encouraging private sector investment and individual savings, offering school choice, and allowing citizens the option to use faith-based programs. Michigan Senator Edward Spencer Abraham sponsored the bill (S 432) in the Senate.
In both houses the legislation remains in committee. However, the concept has garnered Watts the Junior Chamber of Commerce’s 1996 Ten Outstanding Young Americans Award, the Jefferson Award for promoting economic prosperity and free enterprise, and the Christian Coalition’s Friend of the Family Award.
Watts, who is in the middle of his second term, receives many subtle honors that show how others see him as a true leader in the Conservative Movement. For example, he was recently invited to Iowa to speak, which places him in the company of Republican superstars such as former Vice President Dan Quayle and retired Gen. Colin Powell. All are being road-tested as possible Republican 2000 presidential candidates.
Asked to acknowledge the root of his superstar status, Watts smiled and said, “I’ve surely gotten my share of attention over the last 3 years that I’ve been in Washington. I think one of the reasons is that there are many Americans out there — red, yellow, brown, black, and white, men and women, liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat. They’re just looking for a down-to-earth, common sense voice.” Watts aspires to be that voice.
“What I am an advocate of is allowing new ideas to compete with old ideas,” he said. “I think we’ve got some pretty viable and factual statistics on the table, that would show we have not done a very good job in many of these areas in the last 30 years, that we’re all concerned about homelessness, and helping the poor, and so forth.”
As for his conservatism: “I hardly ever use the word conservative in my presentations. I leave that up to the talking heads on Sunday Morning,” he said.
Watts does not distance himself from the African-American mainstream like black Republican conservatives such as Ward Connerly, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, or economist and commentator Walter Williams. He said his views are similar to many African Americans. Moreover, they mirror most average Americans of all races.
“Conservative means many things to many people,” Watts said. “If you and I had 30 minutes to talk about our backgrounds, I guarantee you whether you grew up in our neighborhoods — whether you grew up in a home with a mother and a father or a home with just a mother in it — there’s very little difference in the values and the principles that we were raised under. I am saying we must get back to those values.
“I am not naive enough to believe that we cannot get back to those values that your mother and my mother and father had, that said if you live under our roof, you’re going to work, no excuses. You’re going to go to school, and not only are you going to go to school, but you’re going to act civilized when you get there. You understood sacrifice and commitment, and you respected adults.
“It was a cardinal sin for me, and probably you, to disrespect the town drunk. You just didn’t do that in our poor neighborhoods,” he continued.
“Those values, I think, have been lost in the shuffle. I think we’ve given ourselves in society an easier way out rather than saying just do it. I don’t say that believing you’re not going to have pitfalls, or that you’re not going to have hurdles you have to climb.
“Dennis Kimbro in his book, Think and Grow Rich: A Black Choice, talks about Ron Brown, when he became chairman of the DNC (Democratic National Committee). He (Brown) said, ‘My objective concerning my life is to make it extremely difficult for people to use the word but. I will give you this job, but... I would give you the contract, but... I would let you manage this facility, but...’”
At 40, Watts can point to the same goal in his own life. The 1976 graduate of Eufala High School in his hometown, Eufala, Oklahoma, went to the University of Oklahoma in Norman. He led the college’s football team to 1980 and 1981 Big Eight championships and Orange Bowl victories. Also, in both bowl games, he was named Most Valuable Player. In 1992, Watts was inducted into the Orange Bowl Hall of Honor.
Armed with a bachelor’s degree in journalism, the 1981 college graduate tried his luck in the pros. From 1981 to 1986, Watts started for Ottawa and Toronto teams in the Canadian Football League. In the Grey Cup, Canada’s Super Bowl, he was Most Valuable Player in his rookie year.
Watts traces his religious views back to his parents. Throughout his college and professional football careers, he channeled those interests into groups such as the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. He is still a member of the group’s board in Oklahoma.
Between stints as an athlete and congressional representative for Oklahoma’s fourth district, Watts was a youth minister. He frequently travels across the nation as a guest speaker and remains associate pastor of the Sunnylane Southern Baptist Church in Del City, Oklahoma, where he worked with young people from 1987 to 1994.
“J.C. will always tell you that his family taught him values and ideas, and encouraged him to move forward,” said Jeff Hollingsworth, executive director of the American Conservative Union. “In other words, they taught him the traditional American dream — you can be what you want to be.”
Political observers say Watts’ views on the dream might be tested in the coming year. House Republicans are gearing up for a national attack on affirmative action.
House Speaker Newt Gingrich has met with Watts and Ward Connerly, who successfully rallied support for California’s Proposition 209, which outlaws race or gender considerations in state-run programs for recruitment, employment, and college admission. The U.S. Supreme Court recently refused to hear a challenge to the controversial measure. Connerly, an African-American millionaire businessman, wants to help conservative Republicans shape a national ban on race-based set-asides and quotas. Watts said he counsels caution.
“I have been consistent from day one on the affirmative action issue,” he said. “I have talked to the Speaker about this. The Speaker has stood with me on this issue.
“I am one who would say we should not award the contract, the job, or the scholarship based on race or gender, but on the flip-side of that coin, I’m not willing to conclude that it’s a level playing field in all respects.”
Watts said he hopes the day will come when people of various races will feel they’ve been dealt with fairly when a member of another race gets a contract, job, or scholarship. He concedes that day is farther off than he would like to see. “I’m not naive enough to think they’re ever going to sign off completely on that type of system,” he said. Currently, he added, Americans are in a “no-win situation.”
“If a black manager promotes a black guy, he’s going to be accused of affirmative action,” Watts said. “If he promotes the white guy, he’s going to be accused of being an Uncle Tom. We’ve got to come up with some type of solution that will help our management, employees, and the recipients of scholarships.”
At times, however, Watts sounds more like the conservative Connerly. “I never understood why we have to color scholarships,” the Oklahoma congressman said. “I think any kid that stays in school, makes the grades, does what’s expected of him or her, regardless of their skin color or economic background — if they want to continue their education — I think they should be able to do that.
“In this color thing, whether or not we’re going to be able to get there, I can’t say. But I can say while I’ve got a voice in the process, that I need to be advocating a system of equity. It’s always going to be in the eyes of the beholder whether or not it was fair.”
Watts seems to be on the fence. “I think America today is struggling for a definition of what is fair,” he said. “When you put it in the realm of race or gender, I think many would say that is blatantly unfair. I’m not willing to assume it’s a level playing field out there. We need to have tougher penalties for discrimination. One of the reasons I think we have a lot of the problems we have is that we have no teeth in our discrimination laws in this country.”
Watts is quick to acknowledge that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was trimmed of its enforcement power during the 1980s. “To this day, we’re backlogged at EEOC,” he said. “I fought last year in the 104th Congress and offered an amendment with Eleanor Holmes Norton (the District of Columbia’s non-voting delegate to Congress) to get $7 million more dollars at EEOC to try and take care of this backlog of discrimination cases.”
He shifted the conversation to the majority of African Americans whom he said do not benefit from affirmative action. “Ninety-eight percent of the black community is excluded in the preferences and set-asides,” he said. “You have more white females who benefit from affirmative action, 10 to 1. You have other ethnic minorities who benefit, 7 to 1, over the black community. When you look at the facts behind this thing, affirmative action is not an issue that affects the masses of black people.”
The Oklahoma congressman prefers to focus on the community renewal legislation more than heated national debates over issues such as affirmative action. The Southern Baptist minister from the Midwest nurtures the vision of moral and social reform as much as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., a National Baptist minister from the Deep South. However, the similarity between the men ends there.
Hollingsworth points out that King and his lieutenants saw the government as the broker for moral reform. Watts looks to the people.
Some political experts say Watts wants to lead the Republicans back to a black-friendly tradition as the party of Abraham Lincoln. Others insist he is a drum major for a conservative backlash, which threatens to offset civil rights gains of the past three decades. Watts says he is a common sense man who believes in the average person’s wisdom and the American ideal.
J.C. Watts Jr. visits a Rochester, NY-based “service enriched” housing program worthy of replication
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