Key Nixon Resignation Figure Dies
Former U.S. House Minority Leader John J. Rhodes Jr., a key congressional player who urged President Nixon to resign during the turbulent days of Watergate, died Sunday of cancer. He was 86.
Rhodes died at his home in Mesa, according to his former press secretary Jay Smith.
"He was honest, he was straight up and he was true to his word," Smith said from his home in Virginia.
Rhodes, who served 30 years as an Arizona congressman and retired in 1982, joined Sens. Barry Goldwater and Hugh Scott in visiting Nixon on Aug. 7, 1974, to tell him that impeachment was inevitable if he did not resign. The meeting followed the release of the so-called "smoking gun" tape recording of June 23, 1972, that showed Nixon's involvement in the Watergate cover-up.
Rhodes told reporters afterward that impeachment "is really a foregone conclusion."
On Aug. 9, Nixon resigned.
Rhodes ended months of neutrality on the president's future by saying he would vote for impeachment because no one — not even the president — should be above the law.
Voter backlash over Watergate cost the GOP 48 House seats in 1974, and ended any hope Rhodes had of becoming speaker of a Republican-dominated chamber.
When Rhodes was elected to his first term in the House in 1952, he became the first Republican sent to Washington since Arizona became a state in 1912.
He served nine years as minority leader, chaired the 1976 and 1980 GOP National Conventions and chaired the convention's platform committee in 1972.
Rhodes rose to the job of minority leader when it was left vacant by Gerald Ford's ascension to vice president. Ford replaced Spiro Agnew, who resigned the office and pleaded no contest to tax evasion charges.
Rhodes spent his last term in Congress as a rank and file member. "I can't imagine anything nicer than being an elder statesman for a while," he said.
Born Sept. 18, 1916, in Council Grove, Kan., Rhodes graduated from Kansas State College and Harvard Law School before serving in the Army Air Corps in World War II.
He married Mary Elizabeth Harvey in 1942 and the couple moved to Arizona, where Rhodes opened a private law practice. The couple had four children, including son John J. Rhodes III, who also served four terms in Congress.