Joseph Tydings

Tydings was born in Asheville, North Carolina, He was raised in Aberdeen, Maryland, and was adopted by his stepfather, Millard Tydings. His maternal grandfather was Joseph E. Davies, who served as U.S. Ambassador to Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Soviet Union, and whose second wife was the cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post. Tydings went on to graduate from the McDonogh School in 1946. Military service He served in the 6th Constabulary Regiment from 1946 to 1948 during the U.S. Army's post-World War II occupation of Germany and attained the rank of corporal. While attending college, Tydings became a brother of Alpha Phi Omega, and he graduated from the University of Maryland School of Law of the University of Maryland, Baltimore in 1953. ==Legal career==

Tydings had been admitted to the bar in 1952, before he completed his law degree, and he began to practice soon afterwards. In 1954 he was a successful Democratic candidate for the Maryland House of Delegates from Harford County, Maryland. As U.S. Attorney, Tydings brought many political corruption cases, including against Congressman Thomas Francis Johnson and state House of Delegates speaker A. Gordon Boone, both of whom were imprisoned. He also oversaw the prosecution of several people in the savings and loan business. In 1963, Tydings served as the United States representative at the Interpol Conference in Helsinki, Finland, and at the International Penal Conference in Bellagio. Lombardy, Italy. ==Election to the Senate==

In the 1964 elections, Tydings was frequently mentioned as a potential candidate for the United States Senate seat of Republican J. Glenn Beall. While initially hesitant, Tydings resigned as U.S. Attorney on November 21, 1963, to test his political support across the state. On January 14, 1964, Tydings officially declared his candidacy, stating he was challenging the "old guard" of the Maryland Democratic Party political machine. He also said he would work to bring a "new era of leadership into Maryland". Tydings faced Beall in the general election and the results gave Tydings nearly 63% of 1,081,042 votes cast. His large margin of victory was due at least in part to the landslide win by fellow Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson for President in the same election, which likely increased voter turnout. ==United States Senator==

Upon his election, Tydings began to lay out his legislative agenda for his upcoming term, which included water conservation, pollution and air purity, and public transport. He played a crucial role in the enactment of the federal law governing multidistrict litigation. He also expressed interest in serving on the United States Senate Committee on the District of Columbia. Tydings won a place on the DC committee, and was appointed chairman in 1969. Tydings voted in favor of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Civil Rights Act of 1968, and the confirmation of Thurgood Marshall to the U.S. Supreme Court. Tydings opposed President Richard Nixon's nominations of Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell to the Supreme Court, earning him the enmity of Nixon. An avid hunter himself, his efforts agitated the gun lobby and the National Rifle Association. One Maryland activist group, Citizens Against Tydings, was formed solely because of Tydings' gun registration platform. Further complicating his relations with the right were the efforts by the American Security Council Foundation, which graded him as a "zero" on national security issues and spent over $150,000 to campaign against his bid for re-election. ==1970 election==

In the Democratic primary, Tydings was challenged by perennial candidate and Dixiecrat George P. Mahoney and two others. After a divisive campaign, Tydings beat Mahoney by 53% to 37%. For the general election, Tydings' opponent was freshman Congressman John Glenn Beall Jr. from Western Maryland, the son of James Glenn Beall, whom Tydings had defeated in 1964. Beall's campaign strategy "leaned heavily on his affable, noncontroversial personality" and avoided turning the campaign negative. As a result of Tydings' unpopularity and Beall's campaign strategy, Tydings was defeated 51% to 48%. In a review of the election, The Washington Post noted one of Tydings' major problems was identifying with his constituents. Despite the 3–1 advantage of registered Democrats versus Republicans in the state, Tydings had been labeled as an "ultraliberal" by many Marylanders, and Vice President Spiro Agnew, formerly the Governor of Maryland, had called Tydings "radical" while campaigning for Beall. Tydings was also wealthy, and was seen as having an "aloof" disposition. ==Return to politics==

Tydings resumed his legal career after he lost his Senate seat, entering into practice with a Washington law firm that included Giant Food President Joseph Danzansky. After several years out of politics, he began traveling the state in 1975 to gauge his chances for winning a rematch versus Beall, who was coming up for re-election in 1976. On January 10, 1976, Tydings announced his candidacy for his former senate seat, which he argued was taken unfairly in 1970 due to an undisclosed $180,000 gift to the Beall campaign. To fend off Sarbanes, Tydings hoped his name recognition and charisma on television would compensate for Sarbanes' other advantages. He also worked to relabel himself as more fiscally conservative than Sarbanes, since both candidates were seen as liberal. Despite Tydings winning both counties, Sarbanes performed well in the rest of the state and defeated him by over 100,000 votes, 61% to 39%. Sarbanes had outspent Tydings two-to-one during the campaign. ==Post-Senate career==

Following his electoral defeat, Tydings returned to his law career at Danzansky's firm. In 1971, he gave oral argument on behalf of Bill Baird in the Supreme Court case Eisenstadt v. Baird in November 1971; in its decision the next year, the Court held that a Massachusetts state law barring the use of birth control for single persons was unconstitutional. The Eisenstadt decision has been described as among the most influential Supreme Court decisions of the 20th century. Later, Tydings worked at Anderson Kill Olick & Oshinsky from 1988 until his departure with Jerold Oshinsky in 1996 to join Dickstein Shapiro in Washington, D.C. He later served as a member of Board of Regents of the University System of Maryland from 2000 to 2005. Joseph Tydings died in Washington, D.C., from cancer, on October 8, 2018, at the age of 90. ==Personal life==

Tydings was married and divorced four times. He first married Virginia Reynolds Campbell of Lewes, Delaware, in 1955; they had four children. They divorced in 1974. In 1975, Tydings then married Terry Lynn Huntingdon of Mount Shasta, California, with whom he had one child, actress Alexandra Tydings. Tydings and Huntingdon subsequently divorced. He later married and divorced two times more. Tydings who as a boy had spent a good deal of time at the seaside home remarked about the irony...“My grandfather would be rolling over in his grave if he knew Trump was using his crest,” ... “I am sorry to say that banishing the concept of ‘integrity’ is a sad metaphor for the Trump presidency"... ==References==