James L. Buckley, Conservative senator during the 70s, dies at 100

James L. Buckley, who made history in 1970 with his election to the U.S. Senate from New York as the candidate of the Conservative Party, died early today in Washington, D.C., at the age of 100.

Buckley was the first third-party candidate to win a Senate seat since Wisconsin”™s Robert M. LaFollette Jr. was elected as the Progressive Party candidate in 1940, and to date no other third-party candidate had ever broken the Democrat-Republican duopoly in the Senate. Buckley”™s election came in a three-way race against Democrat Richard L. Ottinger, a Democratic congressman from Westchester, and the incumbent Sen. Charles F. Goodell, who ran on the Republican and Liberal lines. Buckley won in an upset victory with 38.75% of the vote, with Ottinger receiving 36.27% and Goodell receiving 24.29%.

The Yale-educated Buckley served in combat with the U.S. Navy in World War II and was a lawyer and an executive in his family”™s energy business Catawba Corp. before making his first foray into politics in 1965 as the manager of his brother William F. Buckley Jr.”™s bid to become mayor of New York City. He ran as a Conservative in 1968 against New York incumbent Republican Sen. Jacob Javits.

Buckley served a single term in the Senate and lost re-election in 1976 to former U.N. Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan. He ran for the Senate again in 1980 in Connecticut but lost to Democrat Chris Dodd. When Ronald Reagan became president, he was appointed to a State Department position and later became president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in 1982. In 1985, Reagan named him to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, where he served for 15 years.