AGNEW, Spiro Theodore

(b. 9 November 1918 in Baltimore, Maryland; d. 17 September 1996 in Berlin, Maryland), governor of Maryland and vice president of the United States who became known for his bombastic and divisive speeches attacking the media and liberal protesters.

The son of homemaker Margaret Akers Pollard and her second husband, Greek immigrant and restaurateur Theodore Spiro Agnew (formerly Anagnostopoulous), Agnew grew up with his older half brother W. Roy Pollard in Baltimore. After graduating from Forest Park High School in 1937, he began chemistry studies at Johns Hopkins University. In 1940, having lost interest in chemistry, Agnew left the university without a degree and enrolled in night classes at the University of Baltimore Law School. During the day he worked as a legal aide, an assistant personnel manager, and an insurance investigator. Agnew married Elinor Isabel ("Judy") Judefind on 27 May 1942; they had four children.

In September 1941 Agnew was drafted into the U.S. Army and served as a second lieutenant with the 10th Armored Division in France and Germany. He received the Bronze Star, and upon his discharge as captain in 1945, he completed his LL.B. in 1947 at Baltimore and then earned an LL.D. in 1949 from the University of Maryland. Admitted to the bar in 1949, Agnew practiced briefly with a Baltimore law firm before striking out on his own. His fledgling law office quickly failed, and Agnew joined Lumbermen's Mutual Insurance Company.

Agnew had registered his political party affiliation as a Democrat, following in the footsteps of his ward leader father, but the opportunities for Democrats in Maryland were few. Switching to the Republican Party, he joined the Baltimore County zoning appeals board in 1957 and became chairman one year later. After Agnew mounted a failed campaign for a judgeship in 1960, the Democrats decided to remove him from the Democrat-dominated zoning board in 1961. The publicity generated by this crude ejection cast Agnew as an honest man wronged by machine politics and helped propel him into the post of Baltimore County executive. Sworn in on 1 December 1962, Agnew had campaigned as a civil libertarian who opposed discrimination for moral, not political, reasons.

Notoriously thin-skinned and insensitive to the inflammatory impact of his words, Agnew soon made enemies. In the spring and summer of 1963, civil rights activists demonstrated to persuade a Baltimore-area amusement park to desegregate. Agnew created a civil rights commission to settle racial disputes, but worried the activists would undermine his efforts to reach a settlement with the park. Seemingly oblivious to the patience long exhibited by African Americans in the face of discrimination, Agnew publicly stated, "It is my earnest hope that there will be no outbursts of demonstrations, no intemperate haste … no rash actions to jeopardize the advances possible if we exercise statesmanship and strength." The civil rights activists continued marching.

Running for governor of Maryland in 1966, Agnew had the immense good luck to have a rabid segregationist as an opponent. "This state must not be controlled by a devil that sits holding a two-pronged pitchfork of bigotry and hatred," Agnew declared before coasting to an easy victory. Once in office he initiated tax reform, increased aid to antipoverty programs, established the strictest state law against water pollution in the country, repealed the state law against racial intermarriage, supported open housing, and pushed for the liberalization of abortion laws.

An ardent proponent of legal proceduralism, Agnew took a strong stand for law and order, categorizing peaceful demonstrations as "militant pushing." In 1968 he ordered the arrest of 227 trespassing Bowie State University students who were holding a sit-in to protest the dilapidated buildings at the predominantly African-American campus. "I refuse to knuckle under to the demands of students no matter how justified they are," Agnew explained. When Baltimore erupted in flames after the 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Agnew arranged a meeting with 100 moderate black leaders who had tried to restore calm by walking the streets during the rioting. Agnew opened the meeting by insulting the leaders: "I did not request your presence to bid for peace with the public dollar." Demanding that African Americans repudiate radicals like Stokely Carmichael, Agnew then gave a speech described as "punitive" and "condescending" by one angry attendee, who walked out along with seventy others.

A centrist who did not have enough star power to out-shine Richard M. Nixon, Agnew became the Republican choice for vice president in 1968 and was sworn into office on 20 January 1969. Assigned to the National Security Council and chairing the National Aeronautics and Space Council among his many duties, Agnew quickly developed a reputation for candor and inflammatory statements. He often said what Nixon felt but could not publicly express. Agnew attacked student protesters as "spoiled brats who never have had a good spanking" and "who take their tactics from Gandhi and their money from Daddy." He informed the poor and young, "We will listen to your complaints. You may give us your symptoms [but] we will make the diagnosis and … will implement the cure." Blaming the conduct of anti-Vietnam protesters on an "overly permissive society," Agnew added, "I wanted to do a lot of silly things when I was that age too, but my parents wouldn't let me." On 13 November 1969 the vice president vehemently denounced television newscasters as a hostile "unelected elite" who subjected Nixon's speeches to instant analysis. He raised the possibility of greater government regulation of this "virtual monopoly," a suggestion that many in television took as a threat to freedom of speech.

One of the most popular Republicans in the nation, Agnew's comments struck a chord with many Americans. Returned to office with Nixon in 1972, he learned soon after that he was the target of a grand jury investigation for accepting bribes from construction firms seeking state contracts and for taking kickbacks after he had become vice president. Agnew pleaded no contest to tax evasion, receiving probation and a fine. He resigned from office on 10 October 1973, was disbarred in Maryland in 1974, and spent his remaining years firmly out of the public eye. Un-diagnosed acute leukemia claimed his life at a Berlin, Maryland, hospital. He is buried in Dulaney Valley Memorial Gardens in Timonium, Maryland, north of Baltimore.

Agnew's legacy is not a positive one. By fostering divisiveness, he contributed to the disillusionment with the political process that marked the end of the 1960s. His betrayal of the public through bribe taking, after he had loudly proclaimed the values of law and order, added mightily to the cynicism with which Americans have subsequently viewed politicians.

Agnew's papers are at the University of Maryland Archives and Manuscripts Department in College Park. In Go Quietly … Or Else (1980), he wrote of his days as vice president and the scandal that brought him down. Joseph Albright paints a highly critical portrait of the vice president in What Makes Spiro Run (1972). More balanced examinations of Agnew can be found in Theo Lippman, Spiro Agnew's America, and Jules Witcover, White Knight: The Rise of Spiro Agnew (both 1972). Agnew's controversial relationship with the press is addressed in John R. Coyne, Jr., The Impudent Snobs: Agnew vs. the Intellectual Establishment (1972), and the best account of Agnew's fall from grace is in Richard M. Cohen and Jules Witcover, A Heartbeat Away: The Investigation and Resignation of Vice President Spiro T. Agnew (1974). Obituaries are in the New York Times and Washington Post (both 19 Sept. 1996).

Caryn E. Neumann