Loyalty oaths

By Ernie Suggs

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Georgia gubernatorial candidate Raymond O. Boyd is likely the political opposite of the late Georgia Supreme Court Justice Charles Longstreet Weltner Jr.

Boyd is a self-described “Reagan Republican.”

Weltner, who died in 1992, was a liberal Democrat.

But they share a very public refusal to sign loyalty oaths to their parties before running for office.

Boyd made headlines earlier this week when, as he was qualifying to run for governor as a Republican, he refused to recite this 12-word oath: "I do hereby swear or affirm my allegiance to the Republican Party.”

Boyd said he was concerned that he would be pledging blind allegiance to Republicans without knowing how the party might change in the future. He is now running as an independent.

State law says that political parties may require the oath. The GOP chooses to do so, but the Democrats do not.

“Loyalty oaths presuppose that each and all parties have a definitive set of statements that everybody has to hold to,” said Clark Atlanta University political scientist William H. Boone. “That the party is a cohesive party and everyone has to stand by the rules. But American political parties have never been like that.”

As primary season heats up nationally, Georgia is not the only state dealing with loyalty oath issues.

This week, the Republican Party of Florida reminded its officials that they signed an oath to support only Republicans on the ballot and therefore are prohibited from backing Gov. Charlie Crist, who left the Republican Party to run for the Senate as an independent.

Boone said Crist’s decision to bolt the party could be a significant political landmark.

“It is interesting that oaths have come up now,” Boone said. “I suspect they are the reactions to several things. Most notably, the popularity of the tea party movement and the pressure to stand loyal to certain principles of the party.”

Oaths have been a part of the America political scene for decades.

In 1944, supporting an effort led by the NAACP, the Supreme Court struck down the Democratic White Primary, which allowed for only whites to vote in political primaries. Democrats in some states, primarily Alabama, wrote into their loyalty oaths that voters not only support the party but white supremacy as well.

Then there is the case of Weltner, the state's “highest profile” incident of a candidate refusing an oath, according to University of Georgia political scientist Charles Bullock

In 1966 Weltner was a popular two-term Democrat in the U.S. House representing Georgia's 5^th Congressional District. He was a strong advocate of civil rights and voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Bullock said it was inevitable that Weltner would have been elected to a third term.

But in 1966, the state Democratic Party asked him to sign an oath declaring his support of the full party ticket. At the top of that ticket was Lester Maddox, a staunch segregationist. Weltner refused.

Maddox was elected governor running on a campaign for states’ rights.

In refusing to take the oath, Weltner gave up his seat in Congress and never held elected office again. But years later, he was appointed to the Georgia Supreme Court, rising to chief justice just before his death.

“He always had a very clear and almost absolute sense of what is right and what is wrong," said Weltner’s daughter Betsey Weltner, the president of a communications firm in Montana. "Later he would always say, when asked, that he did not have to give it a lot of thought. The loyalty oath was wrong and he was just not going to sign it.”