William E. Miller

This article is about the member of Congress. For the federal judge, see William Ernest Miller. For the Iowa judge, see William E. Miller (Iowa).

William Miller
44th Chair of the Republican National Committee
In office June 2, 1961 – June 15, 1964
Preceded by	Thruston Morton
Succeeded by	Dean Burch
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York
In office January 3, 1951 – January 3, 1965
Preceded by	William L. Pfeiffer
Succeeded by	Henry P. Smith III
Constituency	42nd district (1951–53) 40th district (1953–65)
Personal details
Born	William Edward Miller (1914-03-22)March 22, 1914 Lockport, New York, U.S.
Died	June 24, 1983(1983-06-24) (aged 69) Buffalo, New York, U.S.
Resting place	Arlington National Cemetery
Political party	Republican
Spouse(s)	Stephanie Wagner (m. 1943)
Children	4, including Stephanie
Education	University of Notre Dame (BA) Union University, New York (LLB)
Occupation	Attorney
Military service
Allegiance	United States
Branch/service	United States Army
Years of service	1942-1946
Rank	First Lieutenant
Unit	Judge Advocate General's Corps
Battles/wars	World War II Nuremberg trials

William Edward Miller (March 22, 1914 – June 24, 1983) was a New York politician. He was the Republican Party nominee for Vice President of the United States in the 1964 election. He was the first Catholic vice presidential nominee of the Republican Party (later joined by Paul Ryan in 2012).

Life and career

Miller was born in Lockport, New York, the son of Elizabeth (Hinch), who owned a small millinery shop, and Edward J. Miller, a factory floor sweeper. His paternal grandparents were German immigrants, and his mother was of Irish descent. Miller attended the University of Notre Dame (B.A., 1935) and Albany Law School of Union University, New York (LL.B., 1938). He was admitted to the bar in 1938, and practiced in Lockport. In 1942, Miller was appointed a commissioner for the U.S. District Court in Buffalo.

Military service

Miller served in the United States Army during World War II. He enlisted on July 1, 1942 and received training in the Military Intelligence branch. After serving with an Intelligence unit in Richmond, Virginia, in May 1945, Miller received his commission as a first lieutenant and was assigned to the War Criminals Branch of the War Department staff. In August 1945, he was assigned as assistant prosecutor of Nazi war criminals during the Nuremberg trials. Miller was discharged in March 1946, and returned to Lockport.

Political career

District attorney

Miller served as an assistant district attorney of Niagara County, New York from 1946 to 1948. Governor Thomas E. Dewey appointed Miller district attorney in January 1948, and Miller won election to a full term in November.

Congressman

In 1950, Miller ran successfully for the United States House of Representatives; he was reelected six times, and served from 1951 to 1965. Miller rose through seniority to become the second-ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, and received credit for two major pieces of legislation. The first was a compromise on the development of Niagara Falls hydroelectric power, and the second was a law authorizing construction of a new Lake Erie‐Lake Ontario canal east of the Niagara River.

Miller became influential with respect to the internal workings of the House. In 1959, he took part in the Republican caucus' action to replace Minority Leader (and former Speaker) Joseph W. Martin Jr. with Charles Halleck. Republicans had lost House seats in the 1958 election, and decided to replace the moderate Martin with the more conservative Halleck.

In 1960, Miller won election as head of the National Republican Congressional Committee. In the November election, the party gained 22 House seats, an achievement that was notable because it occurred as Republicans were losing the presidential election.

Republican National Committee chairman

Miller's success with the 1960 House elections led to his selection as head of the Republican National Committee. He served from 1961 to 1964, and advocated for the party to become more conservative, including tacitly supporting Goldwater for the 1964 presidential nomination.

As chairman, Miller oversaw the party's efforts during the 1962 Congressional elections. Though Republicans lost five seats in the Senate, they gained four in the House. In addition, Democratic candidates in several races throughout the South experienced tougher than expected races, indicating that the domination the Democrats had enjoyed regionally since the Civil War was in peril. These included the moderate-to-liberal Senator J. Lister Hill of Alabama, who defeated business Republican businessman James D. Martin by just 50.9 percent to 49.1. Martin's strong showing demonstrated his viability as a candidate, and in 1964 he was elected to the U.S. House.

In the early 1960s, leading Republicans including Senator Barry Goldwater began advocating for a plan that they called the Southern Strategy, an effort to make Republicans gains in the Solid South, which had been pro-Democratic since the American Civil War. Under the Southern Strategy, Republicans would continue an earlier effort to make inroads in the south, Operation Dixie, by ending attempts to appeal to African American voters in the northern states, and instead appeal to white conservative voters in the south. As documented by reporters and columnists including Joseph Alsop and Arthur Krock, on the surface the Southern Strategy would appeal to white voters in the south by advocating against the New Frontier programs of President John F. Kennedy and in favor of a smaller federal government and states' rights, while less publicly arguing against the Civil rights movement and in favor of continued racial segregation.

Miller concurred with Goldwater, and backed the Southern Strategy, including holding private meetings of the RNC and other key Republican leaders in late 1962 and early 1963 so they could decide whether to implement it. Overruling the moderate and liberal wings of the party, its leadership decided to pursue the Southern Strategy for the 1964 elections and beyond.

Vice presidential candidate

After winning the Republican presidential nomination, Goldwater chose Miller to be his running mate. In Goldwater's telling, he picked Miller because "he drives Johnson nuts" with his Republican activism. But by some other accounts, Johnson "was barely aware of Miller's existence." Miller's Eastern roots and Catholic faith balanced the ticket in some ways, but ideologically he was conservative like Goldwater. His relative obscurity—"he was better known for snipes at President Kennedy than for anything else"—gave birth to the refrain "Here's a riddle, it's a killer / Who the hell is William Miller?"

In the general election, incumbent Lyndon Johnson won a landslide victory. The Goldwater/Miller ticket carried only six states - Goldwater's home state of Arizona, plus Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, and South Carolina. Despite the defeat, the ticket's inroads into the previously Solid South were seen as an indication that the Southern Strategy was viable, and Republicans continued to pursue it in subsequent campaigns.

Later life

Following the defeat of the Goldwater-Miller ticket, Miller returned to his hometown of Lockport, where he resumed his law practice. He also appeared in one of the first "Do you know me?" commercials for American Express. Mark Z. Barabak suggests that by the time he died, Miller was "better known for his advertising appearance than his years in Congress."

Death and burial

Miller died in Buffalo, New York on June 24, 1983. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Family

He and his wife, Stephanie (Wagner), had three daughters and one son. His youngest daughter, Stephanie Miller, was a stand-up comedian in the 1980s, CNBC and late night TV host in the 1990s and is now a nationally syndicated liberal radio talk show host based on the West Coast. His son, William E. Miller Jr., ran unsuccessfully as a Republican for the House of Representatives in 1992 and 1994 to represent New York's 29th district.

Electoral history

New York's 42nd district, 1950

• William E. Miller (R) – 75,377 (58.57%)
• Mary Louise Nice (D) – 53,310 (41.43%)

New York's 40th district, 1952

• William E. Miller (R) – 102,565 (59.64%)
• E. Dent Lackey (D) – 69,087 (40.17%)
• John Touralchuk (American Labor) – 329 (0.19%)

New York's 40th district, 1954

• William E. Miller (R) (inc.) – 77,016 (60.92%)
• Mariano A. Lucca (D) – 46,956 (37.14%)
• Louis Longo (Liberal) – 2,233 (1.77%)
• Nick Curtis (American Labor) – 222 (0.18%)

New York's 40th district, 1956

• William E. Miller (R) (inc.) – 117,051 (64.34%)
• A. Thorne Hills (D) – 64,872 (35.66%)

New York's 40th district, 1958

• William E. Miller (R) (inc.) – 90,066 (60.80%)
• Mariano A. Lucca (D) – 54,728 (36.94%)
• Hel J. Di Pota (Liberal) – 3,354 (2.26%)

New York's 40th district, 1960

• William E. Miller (R) (inc.) – 104,752 (53.62%)
• Mariano A. Lucca (D) – 85,005 (43.51%)
• Albert J. Taylor (Liberal) – 5,621 (2.88%)

New York's 40th district, 1962

• William E. Miller (R) (inc.) – 72,706 (52.04%)
• E. Dent Lackey (D) – 67,004 (47.96%)

1964 United States presidential election

• Lyndon B. Johnson/Hubert Humphrey (D) – 43,127,041 (61.1%) and 486 electoral votes (44 states and D.C. carried)
• Barry Goldwater/William E. Miller (R) – 27,175,754 (38.5%) and 52 electoral votes (6 states carried)

See also

• List of members of the House Un-American Activities Committee

External links

• Official Congressional Biography
• William E. Miller at Arlington Cemetery.net
• William E. Miller at Find a Grave
• William E. Miller at The Political Graveyard
• Fitzgerald, Libby Miller (2004). Bill Miller: Do You Know Me? A Daughter Remembers. Warwick House. ISBN 1-890306-73-8.

U.S. House of Representatives
Preceded by William L. Pfeiffer	Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York's 42nd congressional district 1951–1953	Succeeded by John R. Pillion
Preceded by Kenneth Keating	Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York's 40th congressional district 1953–1965	Succeeded by Henry P. Smith III
Party political offices
Preceded by Thruston Morton	Chair of the Republican National Committee 1961–1964	Succeeded by Dean Burch
Preceded by Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.	Republican nominee for Vice President of the United States 1964	Succeeded by Spiro Agnew