U. S. Representative
In 1974, McDonald ran for Congress against incumbent
John W. Davis in the
Democratic primary. McDonald opposed mandatory federal school integration programs, and criticized Davis for being one of two Georgia congressmen to vote in favor of
school busing. He also attacked Davis for receiving
political donations from out-of-state groups which he said favored busing. McDonald won the
primary election in an upset and was elected in November 1974 to the
94th United States Congress, serving
Georgia's 7th congressional district, which included most of Atlanta's northwestern suburbs (including
Marietta), where opposition to school busing was especially high. However, during the
general election, J. Quincy Collins Jr., an Air Force
prisoner of war during the
Vietnam War, running as a Republican, nearly defeated him, despite the poor performance of Republicans nationally that year due to the aftereffects of the
Watergate scandal. McDonald, who considered himself a traditional Democrat "cut from the cloth of
Jefferson and
Jackson", was known for his conservative views, even by
Southern Democratic standards of the time. In fact, one scoring method published in the
American Journal of Political Science named him the second most conservative member of either chamber of Congress between 1937 and 2002 (behind only
Ron Paul, who was his closest confidant in Congress). He also scored "perfect or near perfect ratings" on the congressional scorecards of the
National Right to Life Committee,
Gun Owners of America, and the
American Security Council. McDonald admired
Senator Joseph McCarthy and was a member of the
Joseph McCarthy Foundation. He hired former staffers of the
House Committee on Un-American Activities to work in his own congressional office to continue their research on left-wing groups, which was shared with law enforcement. He displayed a portrait of
Francisco Franco, the Spanish dictator, in his office. and favored phasing control of the
Great Society programs over to the states. He also favored cuts to
foreign aid, which he said "you could take a chainsaw to". He advocated the use of the non-approved drug
laetrile to treat patients in advanced stages of cancer despite medical opinion that such use was
quackery. He was ordered to pay thousands of dollars in a laetrile malpractice lawsuit in 1976. saying the
FBI had evidence that King "was associated with and being manipulated by communists and secret communist agents". A firearms enthusiast and game hunter, McDonald reportedly had "about 200" guns at his official district residence. In 1979, with
John Rees and
Major General John K. Singlaub, McDonald founded the
Western Goals Foundation. According to
The Spokesman-Review, it was intended to "blunt subversion, terrorism, and communism" by filling the gap "created by the disbanding of the
House Un-American Activities Committee and what [McDonald] considered to be the crippling of the FBI during the 1970s". McDonald became the chairman of the John Birch Society in 1983, succeeding
Robert Welch. McDonald opposed the
Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area in his own district because he did not believe the federal government could constitutionally own national parks. McDonald rarely spoke on the House floor, preferring to insert material into the
Congressional Record.
Legislation introduced During his time in Congress, McDonald introduced over 150 bills, including legislation to: • Repeal the
Gun Control Act of 1968. • Remove the limitation upon the amount of outside income a
Social Security recipient may earn. • Award honorary U.S. citizenship to Russian dissident
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. • Invite Solzhenitsyn to address a joint meeting of Congress. • Prohibit Federal funds from being used to finance the purchase of American agricultural commodities by any Communist country. • Create a select committee in the House of Representatives to conduct an investigation of human rights abuses in Southeast Asia by Communist forces. • Repeal the
FCC regulations against editorializing and support of political candidates by noncommercial educational broadcasting stations. • Create a House Committee on Internal Security. • Impeach UN Ambassador
Andrew Young. • Limit eligibility for appointment and admission to any United States service academy to men. • Direct the
Comptroller General of the United States to audit the gold held by the United States annually. • Increase the national speed limit to from the then-prevailing national speed limit of . • Abolish the
Federal Election Commission. • Pull the U.S. out of the
United Nations. • Place statues of African American leaders
Booker T. Washington and
George Washington Carver in the U.S. Capitol. ==Death==