Watergate-era GOP chief for Maine compares battles> Jones recalls similar difficulties of politics, conscience

AUGUSTA — Nearly a quarter-century after he tried to marshal support for an embattled Richard Nixon, former Maine Republican Party Chairman Harold Jones expresses sympathy for today’s Democrats who have backed Bill Clinton.

“It was a tough time for Republicans,” Jones recalls, thinking back to the Watergate period. “Right now it’s a tough time for Democrats. You have to support the guy in office.”

Jones’ tenure at the state GOP helm covered 1973 and 1974. During that time, he dealt with George Bush when the future president headed the Republican National Committee and with Bill Cohen who as a young congressman broke ranks with his party to support impeachment.

Jones, a retired banker, figures Republican activists were split about 50-50 on the wisdom or propriety of Cohen’s action at the time.

He says his advice finally developed into a simple message for the freshman from Bangor: “This is your call, not ours.”

Attorney General Elliot Richardson had appointed a special prosecutor, Archibald Cox, to investigate the Watergate affair in May 1973. In July of that year, the existence of the White House taping system was revealed. Under pressure to produce the tapes, Nixon fired Cox in October.

The House of Representatives commissioned the Judiciary Committee to undertake an impeachment inquiry.

In July 1974, with Nixon’s public standing plummeting, the U.S. Supreme Court effectively ordered the president to turn over subpoenaed tapes to special prosecutor Leon Jaworski. Days later, the Judiciary Committee adopted three articles of impeachment.

On Aug. 9, 1974, Nixon resigned.

Jones says the Clinton crisis now reminds him of the months of partisan passions then.

“The party being affected feels that the other side is being too political,” says the 71-year-old former Fleet Bank senior vice president who currently serves on the state Board of Licensure in Medicine.

A member of the Republican National Committee by virtue of his state party chairmanship, Jones remembers meeting with Nixon in Washington as turmoil engulfed the administration.

“We went to the White House, and the president would speak to us and entertain us,” Jones says.

Shortly before Nixon’s departure from office, Jones was part of a bipartisan delegation that met the president at a stopover in Limestone upon his return from a trip overseas.

To the end, Jones said, Nixon enthusiastically talked politics.

After the president stepped down, however, Republicans paid dearly in the November 1974 elections.

“Obviously, we got wiped out.”

Breaking a GOP stranglehold, Democrats claimed control of the Maine House of Representatives — a reversal that has held ever since.

Assessing the present impeachment controversy, Jones suggests there are Democrats capable of acting in an independent fashion that he says was demonstrated during Watergate by Cohen and former Sen. Howard Baker of Tennessee.

He mentions Sens. Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut and Robert Kerrey of Nebraska as men who could “vote what they think is right, not just for the party.”

As for Clinton himself, Jones says the president might be well advised to resign if the Senate schedules a trial. He says the Nixon resignation could be instructive, asserting that Nixon’s pardon by successor Gerald Ford was politically explosive but the right thing to do.

“It’s too bad that people have to go through this in both cases,” Jones says. “But the people are pretty resilient.

“I was sorry for Republicans who worked so hard for Nixon, and now I’m sorry for Democrats who worked so hard for Clinton.”