Zell Bryan Miller (born February 24, 1932) is an American politician from the U.S. state of Georgia. A conservative Democrat, he served as Governor of Georgia from 1991 to 1999 and was a United States Senator from 2000 to 2005. In the last years of his career, he proved to be a maverick Democrat, backing Republican President George W. Bush over contender John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election and frequently criticizing problems he sees in his own party.
After not seeking reelection in 2004 he joined McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP in the firm’s national Government Affairs practice.
Early life
Miller was born in Young Harris, Georgia. There he was raised by his single-mother (Miller's father died when Miller was an infant) and continues to live in the home in which he grew up. Miller holds Bachelor's and Master's degrees in history from the University of Georgia.
During the 1950s, he served in the United States Marine Corps as a Sergeant and a Rifle Expert. His time as a Marine had a profound effect on his life, and he later wrote a book, Corps Values: Everything You Need to Know I Learned in the Marines, about the values which his experience in the Marines taught him. "In the twelve weeks of hell and transformation that were Marine Corps boot camp, I learned the values of achieving a successful life that have guided and sustained me on the course which, although sometimes checkered and detoured, I have followed ever since," he would write.
Family
Zell Miller is married to Shirley Carver Miller. They have two sons, four grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.
Political career
Miller was the Mayor of Young Harris from 1959 to 1960, and was elected to two terms as State Senator in Georgia before serving in several positions in state government and in the Georgia Democratic Party .
Miller also taught political science and history as a professor at Young Harris College, the University of Georgia, and Emory University.
Miller first came to prominence as Chief of Staff for Georgia's segregationist governor Lester Maddox. He was elected lieutenant governor of Georgia in 1974, serving four terms from 1975 to 1991, through the terms of Governors George Busbee and Joe Frank Harris. In 1980, Miller unsuccessfully challenged Herman Talmadge in the Democratic primary for his seat in the U.S. Senate.
Governor
He was elected Governor of Georgia in 1990, defeating the Republican Johnny Isakson, after defeating civil rights leader and Atlanta mayor Andrew Young in the primary. James Carville was Miller's campaign manager. Miller's biggest election battle came in 1994. In 1992 he became the first Georgia Governor to openly proclaim a desire to remove the Confederate flag-based starred cross from the Flag of Georgia. He sponsored legislation to change the flag at the 1993 session of the Georgia General Assembly, but the legislature, perhaps influenced by polls showing consistent majority support for retaining the flag, did not enact any changes. Miller then dropped the issue, but in the election that followed, Miller's Republican rival used the flag issue against the Governor, arguing it proved he was out-of-tune with Georgia's values and history. Many have since argued that the '94 election, which Miller narrowly won, was a key turning-point in Miller's career, and gave him a great desire to prove himself as a cultural conservative. In the late 1990s he shifted from being pro-choice to pro-life.
Senate
Miller's successor as governor of Georgia, Roy Barnes, appointed Miller to the Senate seat following the death of Republican senator Paul Coverdell in July 2000, and Miller won a special election to keep the seat in November 2000. As Coverdell was last elected in 1998, Miller had a four-year term in the Senate before his retirement from politics in January 2005, following the conclusion of the 108th United States Congress.
While the Democratic Party's historic control of Georgian politics diminished greatly during his tenure as lieutenant governor and governor, Miller remained popular and easily won his elections, demonstrating his ability to please members of both major parties in Georgia. Although Miller was a Democrat, he has been widely viewed as very conservative and opposed to the party since he became a U.S. Senator in 2000. In 2004, he cosponsored a proposed Constitutional amendment that, if ratified, would have prohibited government, at any level, from recognizing any homosexual domestic partnerships. On Thu. Mar. 11th that year, he introduced legislation that if law would have created a board of "shapers of opinions", as he called it in his introductory speech, to advise broadcastors on content the government deemed acceptable or unacceptable, and that if law would have made automatic reappropriations of some of the revenue generated from fines, laid on broadcastors as punishment for "indecency", to pay for federal services directed through religious establishments. Later that year, he proposed a Constitutional amendment to repeal the 17th Amendment (this would revoke the right of the people to elect U.S. senators and transfer it back to the state legislatures).
During his term in the U.S. Senate, Miller received attention for his controversial and occasionally inflammatory comments, often made in long, rambling, often reckless speeches given on the Senate floor. On Tue. Feb. 12th 2004, he told the Senate that media censorship, uniting church and state, and a constitutional ban on homosexual marriage, were all "of utmost importance" because if not immediately enacted, he said, God would annihilate the United States of America and it's people; "Time is running out in this Senate and on this earth," he said. On Wed. Apr. 14th that year, blasted the both the members of the 9/11 Commission and ex-counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke for confirming to the public that Pres. Bush's administration had prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks; they're statements were, Zell told the Senate, encouragement to anti-American terrorists. On Thu. May 13th that year, he said the outrage over the torture at Abu Ghraib (a prison in Iraq that the U.S. Army was using to house suspects after the U.S. overthrough the Iraqi government) was a "national act of contrition" (although he said, in the same speech, that he did not condone the torture).
During 2001 and 2002, when liberal Republican senators from New England like James Jeffords and Lincoln Chafee threatened to (and in Jeffords' case, did) leave their party over ideological disputes, rumors abounded that Miller would become a Republican in order to return control of the Senate to that party. These rumors were, however, repeatedly denied.
In 2003, Miller announced that he would not seek reelection after completing his term in the Senate. He also announced that he would support President George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential election rather than any of the nine candidates then competing for his own party's nomination, but again denied that he would become a Republican. He did not change this position after fellow Senator John Kerry became the Democratic nominee, and Miller, who had been a keynote speaker at the 1992 Democratic National Convention, was subsequently announced to be the keynote speaker at the 2004 Republican National Convention.
In his speech [1], delivered on September 1, 2004, Miller struck what was regarded by many commentators as the fiercest tone of all the major speakers at the convention. In it, he criticized the current state of the Democratic party. He also criticized John Kerry's Senate voting record, claiming that Kerry's votes against defense and weapon systems indicated support for weakening U.S. military strength. In one widely-quoted line, he asked, referring to Kerry, "This is the man who wants to be the Commander in Chief of our U.S. Armed Forces? U.S. forces armed with what? Spitballs?"
2004 was not the first year in which Miller gave the keynote address at a party nominating convention in Madison Square Garden. In 1992, Miller keynoted the Democratic National Convention, supporting then-Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas over then-President George H. W. Bush. In a memorable line contrasting his later endorsements, Miller said, "Not all of us can be born rich, handsome, and lucky, and that's why we have a Democratic Party."
Critics
Following the speech, Miller appeared in interviews that garnered notice for Miller's combative manner. Miller appeared on MSNBC for an interview with Chris Matthews. Matthews attacked the premise of Miller's assertion that Kerry had actually voted against such defense programs by noting that in voting on appropriations bills, senators often vote against a version of a bill without wishing to oppose every item in that bill. Matthews also asked Miller to compare his hyperbolic assertion that a Kerry military would be armed only with spitballs with rhetoric from the other side that Republicans "want to starve little kids, they want to get rid of education, they want to kill the old people" and whether such level of rhetoric was constructive. When Miller expressed irritation at this line of questioning, Matthews pressed Miller with the question "Do you believe now—do you believe, Senator, truthfully, that John Kerry wants to defend the country with spitballs?" Miller at first said that he wished the interview had been face-to-face so that he could "get a little closer up into your face" and asked him to "get out of my face." Finally, objecting to Matthews's style of questioning, Miller said, "I wish we lived in the day where you could challenge a person to a duel." Not surprisingly, this was parodied by Darrell Hammond and Will Forte on Saturday Night Live.
Miller has also been viewed as a flipflopper (one who reverses issue positions quickly) and as nonideological and unprincipled. In 1990, a few weeks before indicating his support for a state lottery, Miller told some church-goers that he opposed a lottery; he had also previously served two years on the board of his state's leading anti-lottery group. As governor he was a strong advocate of public education, but as a Senator he with the the Nat'l Education Assn. only 25% of the time (supposedly indicating a record of voting against public educations). He would oppose John Kerry for President in 2004, but at a dinner in Atlanta in 2001, Miller said:
- My job tonight is an easy one: to present to you one of this nation's authentic heroes, one of this party's best-known and greatest leaders --- and a good friend. [. . .] In his 16 years in the Senate, John Kerry [. . .] has worked to strengthen our military, reform public education, boost the economy and protect the environment.
In 2004, in Washingtonian magazine's biannual poll "Best & Worst of Congress", Congressional staffers voted Miller the most "Spineless" serving Senator.
Given his increasinly conservative ideology and increasing political distance from the Democratic Party, many Democratic leaders have publicly claimed that Miller is no longer a real Democrat. He has in fact stopped meeting with the Democratic Party senate caucus and instead sat in on the Republican one.
Miller argues in his book A National Party No More that the Democratic Party has lost its majority because they do not stand for the same ideals that they used to in the era of John F. Kennedy. He argues that the Democratic Party, as it now stands, is a far-left-wing party that is out of touch with America of today and that the Republican party now embraces the conservative Democratic ideals that he has held for so long.
Many people have wondered why Miller has not switched parties in light of his strong alignment with the Republican Party and staunch opposition to the Democratic Party. Miller says that he was born a Democrat and considers his party label "like a birthmark." Critics claim that Miller remains a Democrat because of the increased attention he gets when he attacks the Democratic Party as a fellow Democrat. Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe went so far as to accuse the senator of attacking his own party to sell books.
"If he were just another Republican with a book, he wouldn't sell any. But a Democrat out whacking Democrats sells books," McAuliffe told CNN, urging Miller to switch parties. As a result of Miller's complete abandonment of the Democratic Party, many other prominent Democrats have also stepped up their demands that Miller get out of the party. In reply, Georgia's retiring senior senator says he was "born a Democrat and will die one."
Remarks on Bush re-election
After Bush was re-elected, Miller said Democrats must change their message:
- "Fiscal responsibility is unbelievable in the face of massive new spending promises. A foreign policy based on the strength of 'allies' like France is unacceptable ... A strong national defense policy is just not believable coming from a candidate who built a career as an anti-war veteran, an anti-military candidate and an anti-action senator.... When will national Democrats sober up and admit that that dog won't hunt? Secular socialism, heavy taxes, big spending, weak defense, limitless lawsuits and heavy regulation - that pack of beagles hasn't caught a rabbit in the South or Midwest in years." [2]
Books
By Zell Miller:
- 1975: Mountains Within Me
- 1983: Great Georgians
- 1985: They Heard Georgia Singing
- 1997: Corps Values: Everything You Need to Know I Learned In the Marines
- 1999: The First Battalion of the 28th Marines on Iwo Jima: A Day-By-Day History from Personal Accounts and Official Reports, With Complete Muster Rolls, also by Robert E. Allen
- 2003: A National Party No More: The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat ISBN 0974537616
- 2003: foreword to What'll Ya Have: A History of the Varsity by Dick Parker
About Zell Miller:
- 1998: "Listen to this Voice" Selected Speeches of Governor Zell Miller
- 1999: Zell, The Governor Who Gave Georgia HOPE by Richard Hyatt
- 1999: Signed, Sealed, and Delivered: The Miller Record
External links
