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Spiro Theodore Agnew (November 9, 1918 – September 17, 1996), born Spiros Anagnostopoulos in Towson, Maryland, was the 39th Vice President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1973 under President Richard M. Nixon. His was the highest-ranking United States political office ever reached by a Greek-American citizen. He is most famous for his resignation in 1973 following evidence of tax evasion. Agnew was also the 55th governor of the state of Maryland from 1967 to 1969.
Early life Spiro Agnew was born to Theodore Spiros Anagnostopoulos and Margaret Akers. His father emigrated from Gargalianoi, Greece to the United States in 1897 and owned a restaurant. He would become a Baltimore Democratic ward leader and well known in the local Greek community. Agnew attended public schools in Baltimore before enrolling in Johns Hopkins University in 1937. He studied chemistry at Johns Hopkins University for three years before joining the U.S. Army and serving in Europe during World War II. He was awarded the Bronze Star for his service in France and Germany. Prior to leaving for Europe, Agnew began working at an insurance company where he met and, on May 27, 1942, married another company employee, Elinor Judefind, known as Judy. They would eventually have four children: Pamela, James Rand, Susan, and Kimberly. Upon his return from the war, Agnew transferred to the evening program at the University of Baltimore School of Law. He studied law at night while working as a grocer and as an insurance salesman. Agnew received a law degree in 1947 and moved to the suburbs to begin practicing law. He passed the bar in 1949. Early political career Agnew, raised as a Democrat, switched parties and became a Republican. During the 1950s, he aided U.S. Congressman James Devereux in four successive winning election bids, before entering politics himself in 1957 upon his appointment to the Baltimore County Board of Appeals by Democratic Baltimore County Executive Michael J. Birmingham . In 1960, he made his first elective run for office as a candidate for Judge of the Circuit Court, finishing last in a five-person contest. The following year, the new Democratic Baltimore County Executive Christian H. Kahl dropped him from the Zoning Board, with Agnew loudly protesting, thereby gaining name recognition. In 1962, Agnew ran for election as County Executive of Baltimore County, seeking office in a predominantly Democratic county that had seen no Republican elected to that position in the twentieth century, with only one (Roger B. Hayden) earning victory after he left. Running as a reformer and Republican outsider, he took advantage of a bitter split in the Democratic Party and was elected. Agnew backed and signed an ordinance outlawing discrimination in some public accommodations, among the first laws of this kind in the United States. Governor of Maryland After choosing not to seek a second term as County Executive, Agnew ran for the position of Governor of Maryland in 1966. In this overwhelmingly Democratic state, he was elected after the Democratic nominee, George P. Mahoney, a Baltimore paving contractor and perennial candidate running on an anti-integration platform, narrowly won the Democratic gubernatorial primary out of a crowded slate of eight candidates. Many Democrats opposed to segregation then crossed party lines to give Agnew the governorship by 82,000 votes. As governor, Agnew worked with the Democratic legislature to pass tax and judicial reforms, as well as tough anti-pollution laws. Projecting an image of racial moderation, Agnew signed the state's first open-housing laws and succeeded in getting the repeal of an anti-miscegenation law. However, during the riots that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., Agnew angered many African-American leaders by lecturing them about their constituents in stating, "I call on you to publicly repudiate all black racists. This, so far, you have been unwilling to do." Vice Presidency Agnew's moderate image, immigrant background and success in a traditionally Democratic state made him an attractive running mate for Nixon in 1968. Agnew's nomination was supported by many conservatives within the Republican Party and by Nixon. But a small band of delegates started shouting "Spiro Who?" and tried to place George Romney's name in nomination. Nixon's wishes prevailed and Agnew went from his first election as County Executive to Vice President in six years—one of the fastest rises in U.S. political history. Agnew was known for his tough criticisms of political opponents, especially journalists and anti-Vietnam War activists. He was known for attacking his opponents with unusual, often alliterative epithets, some of which were coined by White House speechwriters William Safire and Pat Buchanan, including: Resignation On October 10, 1973, Agnew became the second Vice President to resign the office. Unlike John C. Calhoun, who resigned to take a seat in the Senate, Agnew resigned and then pleaded nolo contendere (no contest) to criminal charges of tax evasion and money laundering, part of a negotiated resolution to a scheme wherein he allegedly accepted $29,500 in bribes during his tenure as governor of Maryland. Agnew was fined $10,000 and put on three years' probation. The $10,000 fine only covered the taxes and interest due on what was "unreported income" from 1967, even though there was evidence that the payments continued while he was vice president. That sweetheart plea bargain was later mocked as the "greatest deal since the Lord spared Isaac on the mountaintop" by former Maryland Attorney General Stephen Sachs. George Washington University's Professor John Banzoff students, who were collectively known as Banzoff's Bandits, found four residents of the state of Maryland willing to put their names on a case and sought to have Agnew repay the state $268,482 - the amount he was known to have taken in bribes. After two appeals by Agnew, he finally resigned himself to the matter and a check for $268,482 was turned over the the Maryland state Treasurer William James in early 1983. He was later disbarred by the State of Maryland. His resignation triggered the first use of the 25th Amendment, as the vacancy prompted the appointment and confirmation of Gerald Ford as his successor. It remains one of only two times that the amendment has been employed to fill a Vice Presidential vacancy. (The other time was when Ford, after becoming President, chose Nelson Rockefeller to succeed him as Vice President.) Agnew had hoped to be the Republican Party's presidential nominee in the 1976 election, before the Watergate scandal broke out. Privately, Agnew blamed Nixon for releasing the accusations of bribes and tax evasion in order to divert attention from the growing Watergate scandal that was engulfing Nixon's administration. As fate would have it, Nixon was forced from office but Agnew's earlier resignation and criminal charges ruined his hopes of becoming President. The two men never spoke to each other again. As a gesture of reconciliation, Nixon's daughters requested that Agnew attend Nixon's funeral in 1994, and Agnew complied. Later life After leaving politics, Agnew became an international trade executive with homes in Rancho Mirage, California; Bowie, Maryland; and Ocean City, Maryland. In 1976, he briefly re-entered the public spotlight and engendered controversy with anti-Zionist statements that called for the United States to withdraw its support for the state of Israel, as well as what Gerald Ford publicly criticized as "unsavory" "remarks about Jews" ***. In 1980, Agnew published a memoir in which he implied that Nixon and Alexander Haig had planned to assassinate him if he refused to resign the Vice-Presidency, and that Haig told him “to go quietly … or else.” Agnew also wrote a novel, The Canfield Decision, about a vice president who was "destroyed by his own ambition." Agnew died suddenly on September 17, 1996, at the age of 77 at Atlantic General Hospital, in Berlin, Maryland in Worcester County (near his Ocean City home) only a few hours after being hospitalized and diagnosed with an advanced, yet to that point undetected, form of leukemia. He is buried at Dulaney Valley Memorial Gardens, a cemetery in Timonium, Maryland in Baltimore County. Trivia and pop culture | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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