James B. Edwards

The Honorable James Edwards
File:James B. Edwards.jpg
3rd United States Secretary of Energy
In office January 23, 1981 – November 5, 1982
President	Ronald Reagan
Preceded by	Charles Duncan
Succeeded by	Donald Hodel
110th Governor of South Carolina
In office January 21, 1975 – January 10, 1979
Lieutenant	Brantley Harvey
Preceded by	John West
Succeeded by	Richard Riley
Personal details
Born	James Burrows Edwards (1927-06-24)June 24, 1927 Hawthorne, Florida, U.S.
Died	Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, U.S.
Political party	Republican
Spouse(s)	Ann Darlington (1951–2014)
Alma mater	College of Charleston University of Louisville University of Pennsylvania
Military service
Allegiance	United States
Service/branch	United States Maritime Service United States Navy
Battles/wars	World War II

James Burrows Edwards (June 24, 1927 – December 26, 2014) was a politician and administrator from South Carolina. He was the first Republican to be elected the Governor of South Carolina since Reconstruction.

Early life and career

Edwards was born in Hawthorne, Florida, and was an officer in the U.S. Maritime Service during World War II. He continued his service in the U.S. Naval Reserve after the war. Edwards received a bachelor's degree in 1950 at the College of Charleston where he was a brother of Pi Kappa Phi fraternity. He received a D.M.D. in 1955 from the University of Louisville, and did some post-graduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Returning to Charleston, Edwards established a dentistry practice in 1960 that specialized in oral surgery. Consequently, he held a variety of positions associated with dentistry in the community.

Political career

In 1970, Edwards became chairman of the Republican Party of South Carolina's 1st congressional district. In that capacity as a supporter of the Republican gubernatorial nominee, U.S. Representative Albert Watson of South Carolina's 2nd congressional district, Edwards claimed that Watson's Democratic opponent, John C. West, worked covertly in 1969 against the nomination of South Carolina's Clement Haynsworth to the United States Supreme Court. The Nixon nominee failed in the U.S. Senate, 55 to 45, on grounds of alleged bias against organized labor and a lack of supports for civil rights. Edwards predicted that West as governor would install "an ultra-liberal, minority-dominated state government," citing West's political ties to Hubert H. Humphrey and Roy Wilkins, longtime executive director of the NAACP.

Edwards first ran as a candidate in 1971, when he entered a special election to fill the vacancy in the Charleston-centered 1st congressional district caused by the death of longtime Democrat L. Mendel Rivers. Edwards narrowly lost to one of Rivers' staffers, Mendel Jackson Davis.

Edwards gained enough name recognition from his strong showing in the special election that he was elected to the South Carolina Senate as a Republican from white-majority Charleston County. Two years later, he entered the governor's race as a long-shot candidate. Edwards upset General William Westmoreland in the Republican primary, and he defeated Democratic Congressman William Jennings Bryan Dorn of South Carolina's 3rd congressional district in the general election. Dorn had become the Democratic nominee after the winner of the runoff election was disqualified on residency grounds.

Edwards was elected as the first Republican governor of the state since Daniel Henry Chamberlain in 1876. 1974 was otherwise a dismal year for Republicans nationally because of the Watergate scandal (and lingering opposition to the Vietnam War. These may have contributed to the primary defeat of Westmoreland, commander of U.S. forces during the late 1960s).

Two of Governor Edwards' aides were Carroll A. Campbell, Jr., who was elected in 1986 as the second Republican governor in 20th-century South Carolina, and Bill Workman, son of Republican pioneer W. D. Workman, Jr., and later the mayor of Greenville. Workman served as Edwards' alternate to the Appalachian Regional Commission. He became involved with planning and economic development issues, which were key to his later political activities.

Later career

At that time South Carolina Governors were not allowed to serve two terms in succession, so Edwards was unable to seek re-election in 1978. In 1981, U.S. President Ronald W. Reagan appointed Edwards to be the Secretary of Energy. He resigned two years later to serve as the President of the Medical University of South Carolina, a post that he held for seventeen years. In 1997, Edwards was inducted into the South Carolina Hall of Fame. In 2008, Edwards endorsed former Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts for his party's presidential nomination.

As governor and thereafter, Edwards developed a close friendship with his Democratic predecessor, John C. West, whom he had earlier accused of undermining the Haynsworth nomination.

In 1994, the state legislature renamed a portion of the Mark Clark Expressway that crosses the Wando River the James B. Edwards Bridge. In 2010, the new MUSC dental building and the dental school was renamed in his honor as the James B. Edwards College of Dental Medicine.

Death

Edwards died at his home in Mount Pleasant on December 26, 2014 at the age of 87 from complications from a stroke.

External links

• SCIway Biography of James Burrows Edwards
• NGA Biography of James Burrows Edwards
• SC Hall of Fame

Party political offices
Preceded by Albert Watson	Republican nominee for Governor of South Carolina 1974	Succeeded by Edward Young
Political offices
Preceded by John West	Governor of South Carolina 1975–1979	Succeeded by Richard Riley
Preceded by Charles Duncan	United States Secretary of Energy 1981–1982	Succeeded by Donald Hodel