Jim Wright - Career in Congress

Career in Congress

In 1954, he was elected to Congress from Texas's 12th congressional district, based in Fort Worth but also including Weatherford. He won despite the fervid opposition of Amon G. Carter, publisher of the Fort Worth Star Telegram newspaper and later the benefactor of the Amon Carter Museum. Carter supported the incumbent Democrat Wingate Lucas. Wright would be re-elected fourteen times, gradually rising in prominence in the party and in Congress. He developed a close relationship thereafter with Amon G. Carter, Jr. Wright often said that the easiest way to "defeat an enemy is to make him your friend." In 1956, Wright refused to join most of his regional colleagues in signing the segregationist Southern Manifesto. In 1957, he voted for the Civil Rights Act, which created the Division of Civil Rights within the U.S. Justice Department and the investigatory Civil Rights Commission. Signed by U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower, the law was pushed through Congress by U.S. Senator Lyndon B. Johnson and Speaker Sam Rayburn. However, Wright refused to support the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which required desegregation of public accommodations and established the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. It was signed into law by Wright's friend, President Johnson.

In 1961, Wright finished in third place in the special election called to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated by then Vice President Lyndon Johnson. Two finalists for the Senate emerged from a field of seventy-one candidates. College professor John G. Tower, then of Wichita Falls, narrowly defeated the interim appointee William Blakley, a Dallas industrialist, in a runoff election. Tower hence became the first Republican senator from Texas since Reconstruction.

Wright continued to serve in the House and was elected House Majority Leader by one vote in December 1976, defeating Richard Bolling of Missouri and Phillip Burton of California. Wright won the majority leadership position with the support of all but two Democrats from the large Texas delegation, all party members of the Public Works Committee, and virtually all other Southern representatives members as well.

In the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, Jim Wright is known for the Wright Amendment, a contentious law he sponsored that restricts air travel from Dallas's secondary airport, Love Field. Passed in 1979, the Wright Amendment was originally designed to protect the fledgling Dallas Fort Worth International Airport. The Amendment allows non-stop flights originating from or bound to any commercial airport within 50 nautical miles (93 km) of the DFW Airport Control Tower to serve only states bordering Texas. This requires any flight going to or coming from a destination within that 50-mile (80 km) radius (Dallas Love Field and the now defunct Greater Southwest International Airport in Fort Worth were the only airports affected) to land in a contiguous (bordering) state before continuing on to its destination. This effectively limited traffic from Love Field and GSIA to small, regional airlines (and provided the springboard for the later success of Southwest Airlines, which initially flew only within Texas) who were largely unable to compete with DFW Airport as a result. While the Amendment was welcomed at first, there were increasing doubts about its necessity as DFW grew into one of the three largest airports in the world. Many saw it as a boondoggle to benefit one particular group. Others saw it as an unlawful restraint of trade imposed against the two affected airports, and no others. However, the largest opposition came increasingly from people who simply felt that the Amendment had outlived its usefulness and was also an unwarranted intrusion on the free markets of the deregulated airline industry. In 2006 Congress passed the Wright Amendment Reform Act of 2006, which repealed the Wright Amendment in stages, with the last restrictions on travel from Love Field scheduled to be lifted in 2014.

Wright strongly supported the Superconducting Super Collider project in Waxahachie in Ellis County, but the work was halted by the Bill Clinton administration in 1993.