Marvin Henry "Mickey" Edwards (born July 12, 1937) is an American politician who was a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives, serving Oklahoma's 5th congressional district from 1977 to 1993.
Edwards was a founding trustee of The Heritage Foundation and national chairman of the American Conservative Union. He taught at Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Law School and was a regular commentator for NPR's All Things Considered.
Early life and career
Edwards was born July 12, 1937, in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned a B.A. in Journalism from the University of Oklahoma in 1958 and a J.D. from Oklahoma City University School of Law in 1969, and was admitted to the Oklahoma bar in 1970. Edwards served as a reporter and editor at the Oklahoma City Times from 1958 to 1963, engaged in advertising and public relations from 1963 to 1968 and was a magazine editor from 1968 to 1973. From 1973 to 1974 he served as a legislative assistant for the Republican Steering Committee in Washington, D.C., and he was an instructor in law and journalism at Oklahoma City University in 1976.
Political career
During his collegiate days, Edwards was a member of the OU Young Republicans; years later, he recalled that it was "easily the smallest club on campus" at the time. Not long after graduating from OU, Edwards registered to vote for the first time, as a Republican. He did so in an era when the GOP barely existed in Oklahoma; at the time, the Democrats held both Senate seats, a majority of the state's congressional delegation, every statewide elected office, and a nine-to-one supermajority in the state legislature. He recalled that when he registered to vote, registration officials tried to talk him out of it, but he refused.
While working for the Times, Edwards worked to build the GOP both at the state and national level, serving as chairman of the Oklahoma City Young Republicans, then as chairman of the Oklahoma Young Republicans, then as national vice chairman of the Young Republicans. During this time, he was elected to the national board of the nascent American Conservative Union. Eventually, his party activism progressed to the point that the managing editor of the Times told him to choose between his activism and his career in journalism; he chose the former.
In 1974, Edwards ran as a Republican for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. He challenged the Democratic incumbent John Jarman, who had held the seat for 24 years. Edwards raised almost no money, and spent only $30,000 for the entire cycle. Despite this, he held Jarman to 51 percent of the vote in what was mostly a bad year for Republicans because of the Watergate Affair. However, Oklahoma City had been trending Republican for some time. Edwards's campaign slogan was "Take a bite out of Big Government" and featured Edwards biting an apple on camera.
Jarman switched parties and became a Republican in January 1975 in protest of several older conservative Democrats being stripped of their committee chairmanships. Jarman did not run for reelection in 1976. That year Edwards defeated former State Attorney General G. T. Blankenship for the Republican nomination and narrowly defeated Democratic businessman Tom Dunlap, the son of the academic E. T. Dunlap, by 3,900 votes. He was the first Republican elected to represent this district in over half a century. However, he would never experience another general election that close in a district that rapidly became one of the most Republican urban districts in the country.
During Edwards's 16 years in Congress, he served variously on the House Budget and Appropriations committees and was the ranking member of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations. He was also a member of the House Republican leadership, serving as the chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee, the party's fourth-ranking leadership position. However, in 1992, he was defeated in the Republican primary, by this time the real contest in the district. He failed even to make the runoff, finishing third behind State Representative Ernest Istook and former federal prosecutor Bill Price. Istook went on to win in November. The loss was mostly because of his involvement in the House banking scandal since he had written some 386 overdrafts totaling $54,000.