Early Political Career
Barbour soon became a Republican political operative and moved up the ranks of Republican organizing quickly, running Gerald Ford's 1976 campaign in the Southeast and working on the campaign of John Connally for president in 1980. In 1982 Barbour was the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate election in Mississippi, but was defeated by longtime incumbent John C. Stennis, a conservative Democrat, 64% to 36%, despite an endorsement by President Ronald Reagan. During the campaign, the New York Times reported that a Barbour aide complained about "coons" at a campaign event. Barbour, embarrassed that the comment was overheard by a reporter, told the aide that he would be "reincarnated as a watermelon and placed at the mercy of blacks" if he continued making racist comments.
Barbour later served as a political aide in the Reagan Administration and worked on the 1988 Presidential campaign of George H. W. Bush.
Read more about this topic: Haley Barbour
Famous quotes containing the words political career, early, political and/or career:
“He knows nothing and thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“Although good early childhood programs can benefit all children, they are not a quick fix for all of society’s ills—from crime in the streets to adolescent pregnancy, from school failure to unemployment. We must emphasize that good quality early childhood programs can help change the social and educational outcomes for many children, but they are not a panacea; they cannot ameliorate the effects of all harmful social and psychological environments.”
—Barbara Bowman (20th century)
“Genocide begins, however improbably, in the conviction that classes of biological distinction indisputably sanction social and political discrimination.”
—Andrea Dworkin (b. 1946)
“The problem, thus, is not whether or not women are to combine marriage and motherhood with work or career but how they are to do so—concomitantly in a two-role continuous pattern or sequentially in a pattern involving job or career discontinuities.”
—Jessie Bernard (20th century)