Lee Atwater
Harvey LeRoy "Lee" Atwater (February 27, 1951 – March 29, 1991) was an American political consultant and strategist for the Republican Party. He was an adviser to Republican U.S. presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush and chairman of the Republican National Committee. Atwater aroused controversy through his aggressive campaign tactics, especially the Southern strategy.
Lee Atwater
Early life[edit]
Atwater was born in Atlanta, Georgia, the son of Alma "Toddy" (Page), a school teacher, and Harvey Dillard Atwater, an insurance adjustor.[1] He had two siblings, Ann and Joe,[2] and grew up in Aiken, South Carolina. When Lee was five, his three-year-old brother, Joe, died of third-degree burns when he pulled a deep fryer full of hot oil onto himself.[3]
As a teenager in Columbia, South Carolina, Atwater played guitar in a rock band, The Upsetters Revue. Even at the height of his political power, he would often play concerts in clubs and church basements, solo or with B.B. King, in the Washington, D.C., area. He released an album called Red Hot & Blue on Curb Records, featuring Carla Thomas, Isaac Hayes, Sam Moore, Chuck Jackson, and King.[4] In the Los Angeles Times of April 5, 1990, Robert Hilburn wrote about the album: "The most entertaining thing about this ensemble salute to spicy Memphis-style 1950s and 1960s R&B is the way it lets you surprise your friends. Play a selection such as 'Knock on Wood' or 'Bad Boy' for someone without identifying the singer, then watch their eyes bulge when you reveal that it's the controversial national chairman of the Republican Party, Lee Atwater."[5] During the 1960s, Atwater briefly played backup guitar for Percy Sledge.[4]
Atwater attended A.C. Flora High School.[6] In 1973, Atwater graduated from Newberry College, a small private Lutheran institution in Newberry, South Carolina, where he was a member of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity.[7] At Newberry, Atwater served as the governor of the South Carolina Student Legislature. He earned a Master of Arts degree in communications from the University of South Carolina in 1977.[2]
Death[edit]
Atwater died on Friday, March 29, 1991, from a brain tumor. He was 40 years old.
Funeral services were held at the Trinity Cathedral Church in Atwater's final place of residence, Columbia, South Carolina. A memorial service was held at the Washington National Cathedral on April 4, 1991.[38]
Legacy[edit]
Sidney Blumenthal has speculated that, had Atwater lived, he would have run a stronger re-election campaign for Bush than the president's unsuccessful 1992 effort against Bill Clinton and Ross Perot.[39]
Atwater's political career is the subject of the 2008 feature-length documentary film Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story.[18]
Atwater appears in the second season of the 2019 alternate history web television series For All Mankind, in which he is played by Dustin Seavey.
The one-man play, Atwater: Fixin' to Die by Robert Myers premiered in 1992 with Dylan Baker at New York's West Bank Theatre, directed by Ethan McSweeney and has been performed in various venues more than a dozen times since.