Sworn into Congress

Watts ran for the Fourth Congressional District of Oklahoma, a moderate to conservative area. The contest focused on several issues: defense, term limits, gun control, abortion, taxes, and Bush’s Contract with America. The issues soon took a back seat to politics. Watts wrote in What Color Is a Conservative? that he believed “the last person who would use race to win an election would be my Democrat opponent. I was never more wrong in my life.” Democrat David Perryman ran ads featuring photos of Watts in the seventies, when he sported a full-blown Afro, yet voters saw through the questionable ads. On election night 1994, Watts won 52 percent of the vote, becoming the first black Republican elected to Congress from a southern state since Reconstruction. He was also part of the first Republican majority in the House of Representatives in forty years. Watts was sworn into the 104th Congress in January 1995, staying in Washington, D.C. during the week, flying back home to his family and his district on weekends.

The black Republican was an anomaly to lobbyists and everyone else in Washington. Reporters and his fellow Congress members were stunned when he did not join the Congressional Black Caucus. The freshman Congressman did not want to be aligned with a single group. Watts joined the Congressional Banking Committee and facilitated 80 percent of the Republican “Contract with Amer-ica” being passed into law in the first one hundred days of the session. Watts’ exuberance with the pace the Republican majority was making in Washington ended, however, with the April 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building on Oklahoma City. In What Color Is a Conservative? , Watts recounts that 1996 was the year in which he found his confidence as a congressman. He voted on crucial welfare reform and called the passage of the legislation “one of the proudest moments of my congressional career.”

Watts was honored to be asked to speak at the Republican national convention. In his speech, he espoused three key actions Republicans intended to take in 1998. First, they wanted to increase the influence of “traditional and spiritual values” in solving problems in education, poverty, crime, and health care. Second, Republicans were solidly set on balancing the budget. Finally, Republicans wanted to decrease the U.S. racial divide.

Riding high with the Republican majority made Watts an even bigger political target. Because of his views to limit welfare and pare down what he called “intrusive” government, some African Americans called him an “Uncle Tom,” a sellout to his race. Instead of dismissing the jibes as partisan nonsense, Watts shot back. As he recalled in his autobiography, he told a reporter that black leaders who felt that way were just people “whose careers are based on keeping black people dependent on government handouts. What scares them the most is that black people might … start thinking for themselves.” Watts referred to these politicians as “race-hustling poverty pimps,” a phrase that came back to haunt him as a Washington Post reporter linked it to Jesse Jackson and Washington mayor Marion Barry, though Watts never referred to either of these African American politicians.

After taking control of Congress by a great majority in 1994, the Republicans came out of the 1998 election with a thinner margin. Newt Gingrich and Bob Livingston resigned, and the party was looking for new leadership. Watts won the Republican conference chairmanship, which made him the fourth most-powerful office holder in Congress. Watts considered the position an opportunity to reach out to Americans who distrusted the Republican Party, minorities among them. When the Clinton impeachment hearing took place, led by Washington Republicans, Watts called his vote to impeach “the most heart-wrenching vote I’ve had to cast…. I prayed I had chosen the right course along with my colleagues.” September 11, 2001 stalled the vicious partisan feuding for a time and shifted the course of first-year President George W. Bush and the Republican Party. The war on terrorism, which eventually led to military action in Afghanistan and Iraq, became the main focus of the administration.

“Being called ‘Congressman’ is a real honor,” Watts wrote in What Color Is a Conservative? , “but it doesn’t hold a candle to being called ‘Dad.’” With this in mind in 2002, after eight years serving the Fourth District of Oklahoma, Watts decided not to run for reelection. President George W. Bush, African American Democrats, even civil rights icon Rosa Parks urged Watts to stay, according to Time . Some pundits suggested Watts had hit a “glass ceiling” and that there was no room for Watts in the Republican leadership. Upon Watts’ departure from Congress, the Republican Party lost its sole African American congressman.

Back in the private sector, Watts returned to his business interests, started a consulting firm, J. C. Watts Cos., and wrote his autobiography. He also became a regular contributor to news, politics, and sports-based publications, including the Sporting News . In 2003, Watts was named chairman of FM Policy Focus, a group lobbying Washington to reinforce regulations on lending agencies Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac.