Bill Brock, a Tennessee Republican who served in both houses of Congress, helped rebuild the GOP after the Watergate scandal in the 1970s, then held Cabinet-level positions in the administration of President Ronald Reagan, died March 25 at a hospital in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He was 90.
Mr. Brock was an executive with his family’s candy company in Chattanooga, Tenn., before he was elected to the House of Representatives in 1962. He was the first Republican to represent his district in Congress in more than 40 years.
During his eight years in the House, he had a conservative voting record that he later renounced, in part. Among other positions, he opposed the creation of Medicare, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965.
“I was wrong on that vote,” he later said of his opposition to the Civil Rights Act, “which I cast because I thought the federal government bureaucracy was not the best mechanism to ensure equality.”
He said he had been guided by his experiences in Chattanooga, where his prominent family helped lead early efforts to expand educational opportunities and integrate lunch counters and other public accommodations. He recalled that a cross had been burned in his father’s front yard by the Ku Klux Klan.
Nevertheless, Mr. Brock continued to adopt conservative views during his years in Congress. In a speech on April 4, 1968, he condemned a proposed civil rights march in Washington, planned by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., as “a primitive, intimidating kind of pressure lobbying” by “ruthless political agitators.”
That night, King was assassinated in Memphis.
“It was an awful speech, and I was wrong,” Mr. Brock told The Washington Post in 1994. “The loss of Dr. King woke a lot of us up.”
In 1970, Mr. Brock defeated country music star Tex Ritter in Tennessee’s Republican Senate primary, then faced incumbent Democrat Albert Gore Sr. Mr. Brock’s campaign highlighted Gore’s support for civil rights and his opposition to the Vietnam War. Mr. Brock received 51 percent of the vote to deny Gore — whose son later served in the Senate and as vice president — a fourth term in office.
In the Senate, Mr. Brock worked on budgetary matters and sponsored legislation that helped expand women’s access to credit in banks and other lending institutions. He joined other conservatives, including Republicans and Southern Democrats, in voting against an effort to curb the use of the Senate filibuster in 1971.
When Mr. Brock ran for reelection in 1976 against Democrat Jim Sasser, he had to fend off allegations of accepting illegal contributions, although he was never charged. He was also ridiculed for paying only about $2,000 in income taxes, prompting opponents to wear campaign buttons reading, “I paid more taxes than Bill Brock.”
Sasser won the election with 52 percent of the vote.
With the Republican Party reeling in the wake of the Watergate scandal, Mr. Brock was tapped as chairman of the GOP’s national committee in 1977, in a compromise between supporters of former president Gerald Ford and the conservative insurgency led by Reagan.
Seeking to broaden the party’s appeal, Mr. Brock reached out to Black voters, labor unions and other traditionally Democratic constituencies. He invited the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson to speak to the Republican National Committee. Some of Mr. Brock’s hard-line views began to soften, and he insisted that Republicans “have to stop talking just to each other.”
Mr. Brock revitalized the party structure, introducing computerized donor lists and other advances that strengthened GOP fundraising efforts. He put greater emphasis on electing Republicans to state and local offices.
He didn’t always have a cozy relationship with Reagan, who was building a movement that would lead to his election as president in 1980. He angered Reagan in 1977 by refusing to authorize a nationwide campaign to oppose agreements signed by President Jimmy Carter that would relinquish U.S. control of the Panama Canal.
Although he was never part of Reagan’s inner circle, Mr. Brock went to work at the White House in 1981 in the Cabinet-level position of U.S. trade representative. He outmaneuvered sharp-
elbowed Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr., who had reportedly tried to make imports and trade part of his portfolio at the State Department.
Robert S. Strauss, the onetime Democratic national chairman, praised Mr. Brock as “one of the most talented, gifted and able people in the [Reagan] administration.”
In 1985, Mr. Brock was named labor secretary, succeeding Raymond J. Donovan, who had cut the department’s budget and alienated labor leaders. One of Mr. Brock’s first calls was to Lane Kirkland, the head of the AFL-CIO labor organization, who hadn’t spoken to a labor secretary in four years.
Mr. Brock left his Cabinet post in 1987 to manage the presidential campaign of his onetime Senate colleague Bob Dole (R-Kan.), who lost the 1988 GOP nomination to George H.W. Bush.
William Emerson Brock III was born Nov. 23, 1930, in Chattanooga. His grandfather, who founded the Brock Candy Co., served in the Senate from 1929 to 1931. Mr. Brock’s father was an executive with the family business.
Mr. Brock was a 1953 graduate of Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va., and served in the Navy for three years.
In 1989, he opened a consulting firm and reportedly made millions by advising foreign governments on trade matters. He settled in Annapolis and in 1994 reentered politics as the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate in Maryland. By then, he supported abortion rights and some limits on the sale of guns.
“I would argue that I’m still conservative, but I’m conservative in a different kind of way,” he said at the time. He lost overwhelmingly to the Democratic incumbent, Paul S. Sarbanes.
Mr. Brock also received a windfall in 1994, when the Brock Candy Co. was bought by another confectioner, Brach’s. He had a second home in South Florida.
His wife of 28 years, the former Laura Handly, died in 1985. Survivors include his wife of 34 years, the former Sandra Schubert; four children from his first marriage; two stepchildren; two brothers; 17 grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
Mr. Brock said he was inspired to run for office in part by his experiences in the 1950s teaching adults — mostly African American — to read. In 1994, he recalled to The Post a moment when an 80-year-old man welled up with tears as he realized he could read words he had only heard spoken before.
“He said, ‘This is the first time I’ve been able to read the Bible,’ ” Mr. Brock said. “That’s what turns you on in public service.”
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