1956 election Following his return to Idaho, he became active in
Democratic Party politics, and he became the chairman of the Young Democrats of Idaho. In 1952, he ran for a seat in the then-Republican dominated
Idaho state legislature, but lost the election. In 1956, Church ran for the
Class-3 Senate seat held by
Herman Welker, who had alienated many Republicans for his opposition to President
Dwight D. Eisenhower's programs and his alleged affiliation with
McCarthyism. Church entered the primary race, which was described as "the most colorful primary in the history of the state". He faced a number of opponents, including
Ricks College professor Claude Burtenshaw, bureaucrat Alvin McCormack, and former senator
Glen H. Taylor. When the primary came, Church won the Democratic nomination, with only 37.75% of the vote, narrowly edging out Taylor by 200 votes. Though Church won the nomination, Taylor refused to concede, and claimed a number of voting irregularities in the canvassing of the primary. During the general election campaign, Church and his campaign hit the road. Church shook around 75,000 hands over the entire course of the campaign. Church also conducted an astute campaign, by contrasting his
fitness with that of Welker. His slogan, "Idaho Will Be Proud of Frank Church", was a major asset to his campaign. Church also campaigned on an
internationalist plank, in favor of a publicly owned
Hells Canyon Dam and was conservative on money matters. This was in stark contrast to Welker's campaign, which focused heavily on
anti-Communism, a decision that proved to be a weak political foundation. The Welker campaign also ran on his record, as well as the "Herman letter", in which President Eisenhower endorsed Welker's candidacy. Glen Taylor also ran in the general election as a
write-in candidate, labeling Church as a candidate of the "corporate interests". Church won the race, defeating both Welker and Taylor, with a plurality of 46,315 votes. This was despite a number of factors that might have inhibited Church's campaign, including the Republican's fundraising advantage and Eisenhower's large victory in the presidential election.
First term (1957–1963) Upon entering the Senate in January 1957, Church voted against a procedural motion on the
Civil Rights Act of 1957 against the wishes of Democratic
Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson. This angered Johnson, who punished Church by all but ignoring him for the next six months. However, Church managed to find his way into Johnson's good graces by voting for an amendment to the Civil Rights Act of 1957 that would grant the right to a trial by jury to anyone charged with violating the act. Church also added a provision to that amendment requiring that juries in such cases be desegregated. Johnson was so grateful he made the young Idahoan a veritable protégé, rewarding him with plum assignments, such as a seat on the prestigious
Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a position which allowed Church to follow in the footsteps of his idol,
William Borah. Recently declassified documents show that the young veteran also challenged his mentor, behind closed doors, after the 1964
Gulf of Tonkin incident, making this prescient warning: "In a democracy you cannot expect the people, whose sons are being killed and who will be killed, to exercise their judgment if the truth is concealed from them." He sat on the
McClellan Committee (1957–60), which probed organized crime within trade unions. Church was reelected in 1962, defeating former state representative
Jack Hawley. To date, he is the only Idaho Democrat to be popularly elected for more than one term in the Senate.
Attempted recall and election of 1968 In 1967, a recall campaign was waged against Church by Ron Rankin, a Republican county commissioner in the northern Idaho county
Kootenai who co-founded the Victory in Vietnam Committee to coordinate the recall. Rankin unsuccessfully sued Idaho's
secretary of state to accept recall petitions. The
U.S. District Court for Idaho ruled that the state's recall laws did not apply to U.S. senators and that such a recall would violate the U.S. Constitution.
State attorney general Allan Shepard, a future chief justice of the
state supreme court, agreed with the court's decision. In the
1968 Senate election, Church won with over 60 percent of the vote against Republican challenger and U.S. Representative
George V. Hansen, in contrast with the concurrent
presidential election where Republican candidate
Richard Nixon got nearly 57 percent of the popular vote in Idaho.
James Risen attributes Church's victory to the 1967 recall effort backfiring: "Most Idaho voters were angered by the recall effort, and it generated sympathy for Church throughout the state."
Third term (1969–1975): Vietnam War and Church Committee Church was a key figure in
American foreign policy during the 1970s, and served as chairman of the
Senate Committee on Foreign Relations from 1979 to 1981. Following the instinct that led him to ask questions early on (see above), Church was one of the first senators to publicly oppose the
Vietnam War in the 1960s, although he had supported the conflict earlier. He was the co-author of two legislative efforts to curtail the war: the Cooper–Church Amendment of 1970, and the Case–Church Amendment of 1973. In September 1970, Church announced on television and in speeches across the country that "the
doves had won." Author David F. Schmitz states that Church based his assertion on the fact that two key propositions of the
anti-war movement, "A negotiated peace and the withdrawal of American troops," were now official policy. The only debate that remained would be over when to withdraw, not whether to withdraw, and over the meaning of the war. Church concluded: Church argued that the opponents of the Vietnam War needed to prevent the corruption of the nation and its institutions. To Church, the anti-war opposition was the "highest concept of patriotism—which is not the patriotism of conformity—but the patriotism of Senator
Carl Schurz, a dissenter from an earlier period, who proclaimed: 'Our country right or wrong. When right, to be kept right: when wrong, to be put right." Church gained national prominence during his service in the Senate through his chairmanship of the U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities from 1975 through 1976, more commonly known as the Church Committee, which conducted extensive hearings investigating extra-legal
FBI and
CIA intelligence-gathering and covert operations. The committee investigated CIA drug smuggling activities in the
Golden Triangle and secret U.S.-backed wars in
Third World countries. Together with Senator
Sam Ervin's committee inquiries, the Church Committee hearings laid the groundwork for the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978.
Daniel Ellsberg quoted Church as speaking of the
NSA as follows: "I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return." More specifically on August 17, 1975, Senator Frank Church stated on NBC's "Meet the Press" without mentioning the name of the NSA about this agency:
NSA monitoring of Church's communications In a secret operation code-named "
Project Minaret," the
National Security Agency (NSA) monitored the communications of leading Americans, including Senators Church and
Howard Baker, Rev. Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr., and others, including prominent U.S. journalists and athletes, who criticized the U.S. war in Vietnam. A review by NSA of the NSA's Minaret program concluded that Minaret was "disreputable if not outright illegal." and President
Reagan signed the act on March 14, less than four weeks before Frank Church's death on April 7. Frank Church was considered a progressive (remarkable considering that he represented one of the most conservative states in the nation), though he was a strong opponent of gun control and was pro-life. In 1979, he was the first in Congress to disclose and protest the presence of Soviet combat troops in Cuba. According to the
Christian Science Monitor, this stance somewhat disarmed his opponent's charge in the 1980 campaign that Church's performance on the Foreign Relations Committee had helped to weaken the US militarily. In 1974, Church joined Senator
Frank Moss, D-Utah, to sponsor the first legislation to provide federal funding for
hospice care programs. The bill did not have widespread support and was not brought to a vote. Congress finally included a hospice benefit in
Medicare in 1982. In late 1975 and early 1976, a sub-committee of the
U.S. Senate led by Church concluded that members of the
Lockheed board had
paid members of friendly governments to guarantee contracts for military aircraft in a series of illegal
bribes and contributions made by Lockheed officials from the late 1950s to the 1970s. In 1976, it was publicly revealed that Lockheed had paid $22 million in bribes to foreign officials in the process of negotiating the sale of aircraft including the F-104 Starfighter, the so-called "Deal of the Century." Church also sponsored, along with
Pennsylvania Republican John Heinz, the "conscience clause," which prohibited the government from requiring church-affiliated hospitals to perform abortions.
Late political career and
President)
Joe Biden, Senator Frank Church and
President of Egypt Anwar Sadat after signing Egyptian–Israeli Peace Treaty, 1979 In 1976, Church belatedly sought the
Democratic nomination for president and announced his candidacy on March 18 from rustic
Idaho City, his father's birthplace. Although he won primaries in Nebraska, Idaho, Oregon, and Montana, he withdrew in favor of the eventual nominee, former
Georgia governor
Jimmy Carter. Church remains the only Idahoan to win a major-party presidential primary election following the reforms of the
McGovern–Fraser Commission. Prior to the primary elections of 1972, William Borah had won several contests in the
1936 Republican primaries. By June, Carter had the nomination sufficiently locked up and could take time to interview potential vice-presidential candidates. The pundits predicted that Church would be tapped to provide balance as an experienced senator with strong liberal credentials. Church promoted himself, persuading friends to intervene with Carter on his behalf. If a quick choice had been required as in past conventions, Carter later recalled, he would probably have chosen Church. But the longer period for deliberation gave Carter time to worry about his compatibility with the publicity-seeking Church, who had a tendency to be long-winded. Instead, Carter invited Senators
Edmund Muskie,
John Glenn, and
Walter Mondale to visit his home in
Plains, Georgia, for personal interviews, while Church,
Henry M. Jackson, and
Adlai Stevenson III would be interviewed at the convention in New York. Of all the potential candidates, Carter found Mondale the most compatible. As a result, Carter selected Mondale as his running mate. In the late 1970s, Church was a leading congressional supporter of the
Torrijos-Carter Treaties, which proposed to return the
Panama Canal to
Panama. The scheme proved to be widely unpopular in Idaho, and led to the formation of the
"Anybody But Church" (ABC) committee, created by the
National Conservative Political Action Committee (NCPAC), based in Washington, D.C. ABC and NCPAC had no formal connection with the 1980 Senate campaign of conservative Republican
congressman Steve Symms, which permitted them, under former Federal election law, to spend as much as they could raise to defeat Church. Church lost his bid for a fifth term to Symms by less than one percent of the vote. His defeat was blamed on the activities of the
Anybody But Church Committee and the national media's early announcement in Idaho of Republican presidential candidate
Ronald Reagan's overwhelming win. These predictions were broadcast before polls closed statewide, specifically in the
Pacific Time Zone in the north. Many believed that this caused many Democrats in the more politically moderate
Idaho Panhandle to not vote at all. , Church is the last Democrat to represent Idaho in the U.S. Senate.
Electoral history Following his 24 years in the Senate, Church practiced
international law with the
Washington, D.C., firm of Whitman and Ransom, specializing in
Asian issues. ==Death==