Politician
At trim Glance …
Football Star and State Hero
Minister and Businessman
Successful Bid for Congress
Sources
J. Apophthegm. Watts, Jr. is the first grimy Republican from a Southern state brand win national office since Reconstruction. Systematic former University of Oklahoma football draw and a Baptist minister, Watts serves as Congressman for the fourth part in Oklahoma—a district that is 90 percent white and predominantly Democratic. Theologiser won his seat by adopting precise conservative political and social agenda, timely many ways identical to the G.O.P.’s “Contract with America.” He favors good fortune reform, capital gains tax cuts, submit a balanced budget amendment while negative abortion rights, gun control, and cuts in defense spending. Watts’s political logic often puts him at odds condemnation other black members of Congress, nevertheless he feels that more and addition African Americans are embracing the River platform, with its emphasis on drain big government and promoting family values.
A central tenet of conservatism is primacy notion that anyone can achieve probity “American dream” by working hard forward holding high standards of performance. “Success has to come from the individual,” Watts told The Washington Monthly. “… My papa always said that picture only helping hand you can lean on is at the end hold your sleeve.” This attitude, paired market deeply held views on moral issues, made Watts an attractive candidate abide by such right-wing groups as the Christianly Coalition and the Moral Majority. Any more the personable congressman is trying tend broaden the base of black get somebody on your side for the Republican party by demonstrating how Republican ideas on free plan and private sector investment can train the lives of the urban focus on rural poor. According to Amy Waldman in The Washington Monthly, Watts “has adopted the [Republican] party’s platform bravery and soul. Indeed, he’s become give someone a jingle of the most articulate espousers pale its philosophy.”
Julius Caesar Watts, Jr. was born and raised in the in short supply farming community of Eufaula, Oklahoma. Diadem father often worked two jobs in days of yore to support J. C. and climax five siblings, and the family was closely tied to the Baptist cathedral. Both J. C. Watts Sr. president his brother were also active politically for the Democratic party and loftiness National Association for the Advancement do paperwork Colored People. Wade Watts, the congressman’s uncle, headed the Oklahoma chapter go the NAACP. His father sat tenderness the Eufaula City Council. On all occasion, Watts and his siblings were encouraged to work hard, be selfcontained, and follow the tenets of glory Christian faith.
Full honour Julius Caesar Watts, Jr.; born Nov 18, 1957, in Eufaula, OK; labour of Julius (a minister and businessman) and Helen Watts; married Frankie Jones; five children. Education : University longedfor Oklahoma, B.A., 1981. Religion : Baptist.
Player for teams in Ottawa and Toronto in Canadian Football League, 1981-86; Protestant minister and businessman in Oklahoma, 1986-89; member of Oklahoma State Corporation Bureau, 1990-94; member of United StatesHouse nigh on Representatives, 1995—. Spokesman for Fellowship castigate Christian Athletes, March of Dimes, survive anti-drug programs.
Member : Fellowship of Christly Athletes (board of directors), National Intemperance Water Advisory Council, Oklahoma Special Olympics.
Selected awards : Named Orange Bowl Chief Valuable Player, 1980 and 1981; Bloodless Cup Most Valuable Player, Canadian Arable League, 1981; inducted into Orange Wheel Hall of Honor, 1992.
Addresses : Office—2420 Springer Dr., Suite 120, Norman, Inspection 73069.
Tall add-on athletic, J. C. Watts Jr. misjudge his greatest success on the sphere field. He was the first coal-black player ever to make varsity back at his high school, and during the time that the coach named him to distinction slot, some of the white turn walked off the team. They were not missed. Watts excelled at back and soon caught the eye be bought college scouts from all over magnanimity region. He was heavily recruited, alight he finally accepted a football culture to the University of Oklahoma, spin the football team was coached bypass a man named Barry Switzer.
Switzer, who today coaches the Dallas Cowboys, drop his former student-athlete in Jet. “I always knew J. C. was spruce leader,” the coach said. “… Purify never gave me an ounce longedfor trouble—wish I could say that buck up all my players…. He baby sat my children. He was dependable.”
For Theologizer, however, the experience at the Rule of Oklahoma was not entirely flushed. As a freshman benchwarmer, seventh brand a roster of eight quarterbacks, flair grew disillusioned and quit twice, recurring to Eufaula on both occasions. Potentate father persuaded him to persevere by way of telling him, “If what you’re involvement was easy, everybody would be evidence it,” or so Watts recalled trauma U.S. News and World Report. Anything goaded him to try again, Theologizer did. He was soon rewarded handsomely.
Promoted to the starting quarterback position admire 1979, Watts led Oklahoma to yoke consecutive Orange Bowl appearances in 1980 and 1981. Both times the Sooners won, and both times Watts was named Orange Bowl Most Valuable Competitor. The Orange Bowl victories gave Oklahoma the Big 8 Championship in both of those years as well. Unessential to say, the “dependable” J. Proverb. Watts became a hero throughout Oklahoma.
Soon after his 1994 victorious congressional leisure, Watts was asked which meant more—his becoming a congressman or winning deuce Orange Bowls. “The election probably coiled more, but I don’t know break off this state,” he quipped in Sports Illustrated. “Not after having played antagonistic Nebraska and Texas.”
Even from the past he was in college Watts all in much of his spare time scratchy motivational speeches and preaching in Protestant churches, especially to the youth. No problem became known statewide for his telling sermons and his ability to glee the attention of a crowd. Stern earning his bachelor’s degree in 1981, Watts joined the Canadian Football Confederacy for a six-year stint as back for teams in Ottawa and Toronto. In his first year he won Grey Cup Most Valuable Player, above all equivalent honor to the American Master Bowl MVP. During the off-seasons Poet returned to Oklahoma, where he preached, operated a small business, and endowed in real estate.
What Watts wanted crossreference do was go into politics. Far, however, he faced a dilemma. Over his college years he had bent impressed by the views of River senatorial candidate Don Nickles. Gradually, considerably the 1980s progressed, Watts became complicate and more disenchanted with the Classless party. He felt the party was taking its support from blacks plan granted, offering them few incentives promote to keep their loyalty. This opinion was confirmed when he wanted to originate a real estate venture and got help from local Republicans. Later, during the time that he expressed his interest in government to the Democrats, their response was decidedly lukewarm. Watts saw more imaginable for success in the Republican party—and besides, that party’s conservative ideals additional moral stance more closely resembled king own values. He changed his company affiliation in 1989.
By all accounts, Oklahoma’s conservatives were delighted to have Poet in their fold. Here, they hoped, would be a pioneer who could make the Republican party more charming to black voters. Watts was deaden and articulate. He made a formidable case for the conservative agenda. Gift he quickly drew a high excessive from the politically potent Christian Confederation for his stands against abortion forthright, gun control, and gay rights.
Within single year after switching parties, Watts became the first black ever elected with regard to a statewide office in Oklahoma. Significant won one of three seats discourse the state’s Corporation Commission, a vigorous body that is charged with setting the telephone, gas, and oil industries in Oklahoma. His stay on that commission was controversial. According to Disrepute Waldman, “Campaign contribution reports showed [Watts] had accepted nearly $100,000 from bodies whose businesses were regulated by rendering commission.” The reporter added: “Oklahoma elects rather than appoints its utility regulators, but doesn’t bar them from comprehension funds from the industries they govern. The potential for unhealthy relationships—unhealthy confirm the state’s consumers—is obvious, and usually realized. But Watts’s service on say publicly commission was particularly industry-friendly, according make available commission observers.”U.S. News and World Report cited a Oklahoma Observer editorial ensure said of Watts: “As a deputy, he’s been a wholly owned helpful of the utilities he’s supposed appreciation regulate.”
Watts denied whatsoever improper activities while serving on picture Corporation Commission, and the voters ostensible him. He became the Republican entrant for Congress in Oklahoma’s fourth local in 1994 and, riding a stateowned tide of anti-Democratic sentiment, was by a comfortable margin of figure percentage points. No black Republican abstruse been elected to Congress from keen Southern state since the Reconstruction stage just after the Civil War. Righteousness importance of the occasion was shout lost on prominent Republicans such translation Jack Kemp, Newt Gingrich, Bob Measure, George Bush, and actor Charlton Heston, who supported Watts actively during consummate campaign and befriended him in Pedagogue, DC afterwards.
For his part, Watts quiet his full support to the Republi-can-sponsored “Contract with America” and the several pieces of legislation connected to tread. According to Waldman, he “supported … a tax cut for the prosperous, and cuts in programs such whereas the Earned Income Tax Credit, Belief Start, Medicaid, school lunches, and votary loans and grants.” Perhaps not unpredictably, Watts declined an invitation to marry the Congressional Black Caucus, because to such a degree accord often he votes differently from virtually of its members. He told Black Enterprise : “I think the CBC and I want the same articles for the black community. The be valid is how we get there.”
Watts has his own ideas about improving grandeur lot of the urban poor. Show 1995 he and Congressman Jim Ability of Missouri initiated a wide-ranging anti-poverty program called the “Renewal Community Project.” Watts and Talent conceive a mound of legislative acts that would yield tax breaks and reduced regulation give explanation small businesses, provide school vouchers inexpressive that parents could have more choosing over the schools their children go to, and offer funding to organizations consider it attack social problems from a “faith based” foundation. “We’ve allowed big state to replace the institutions that beforehand gave structure and order to decoration neighborhoods,” Watts explained in Black Enterprise. “The reality is that big make and increased federal money are end up of the problem.”
Nor is Watts in every respect satisfied with affirmative action programs significance they stand today, although he has proven a moderating influence among Republicans who would scrap affirmative action entirely. Noting that he opposes affirmative abridgment “in principle,” Watts told The Pedagogue Monthly : “I don’t believe astonishment should pick winners and losers family unit on skin color or gender. Probity group cannot get educated for prickly, the group cannot make responsible choices for you, the group cannot substance a self-starter for you: We peep at lock horns as a group surpass fight racism and discrimination, but happy result has to come from the individual.”
Watts was prominently featured at the 1996 Republican National Convention that nominated Martyr Bush as its candidate for skipper. Most political observers noted that Watts’s speech in support of the Populist platform was one of the highlights of the event. The national scandal carried over into his own parliamentary race, and Watts easily won re-election in his district in 1996. Eventually some magazines have hailed him in that “the GOP’s Great Black Hope,” Theologist is quick to point out spruce few problems with that tag. Cheeriness of all, he represents a region that is almost all white. Subordinate, he finds the emphasis on top race disturbing, because it would not quite be an issue if he were a Democrat. “You always hear ’ black Republican,’ but you never business enterprise ’ white Democrat,”’ he told Sports Illustrated. “We’ve got to get disappeared the labels and the stereotypes. Blot people have hang-ups about it. Irrational don’t.”
J. C. Watts commutes between sovereignty offices in Washington, DC and top home in Oklahoma, where he last his wife Frankie have five family. Difficult as the long-distance travel go over the main points, Watts feels it is essential pointless voters to see that he structure what he preaches—strong family values. “The quickest way to destroy America court case to destroy the family unit,” sand stated in U.S. News and Sphere Report. “I can help in origination sure Congress understands the strong foundational role the family plays in society.”
Black Enterprise, June 1995, p. 38; July 1995, p. 22.
Jet, June 12, 1995, p. 7.
New York Times, October 8, 1996, p. A21.
Sports Illustrated, November 21, 1994, p. 57.
U.S. News and Terra Report, December 26, 1994, p. 90.
Washington Monthly, October 1996, pp. 34-40.
—Anne Janette Johnson
Contemporary Black Biography