In 1966, after his overwhelming Senate victory over former Massachusetts Governor Endicott Peabody, Brooke said, “I do not intend to be a national leader of the Negro people.” Time magazine wrote that Brooke “condemned both Stokely Carmichael and Georgia’s Lester Maddox” as extremists; his historic election gave Brooke “a 50-state constituency, a power base that no other Senator can claim.” A free thinking politician. That’s a novel concept in 21st Century America.
Brooke was a skilled coalition builder at a time when Congress was less ideologically divided than it is today, He was seen as a centrist. His positions and votes were consistently more liberal than those of his increasingly conservative Republican colleagues. Brooke was a leader of the bipartisan coalition that defeated the Senate confirmation of Clement Haynsworth, President Nixon’s nominee to the Supreme Court. A few months later, he again organized sufficient Republican support to defeat Nixon’s second Supreme Court nominee Harrold Carswell. Nixon next nominated Harry A. Blackmun, who was confirmed and later wrote the Roe v. Wade opinion.
