Remembering Ex-Rep. Alex McMillan, Citizen Politician On His Own Terms

Reporters who covered former Rep. Alex McMillan, R.-N.C. often wondered why, at age 62 and in a safe Republican district, he retired in 1994 — the same year that Republicans captured the House of Representatives.

McMillan could easily have become chairman of the House Budget Committee and seriously pursued his dream of cutting federal spending and finally ending the deficit.

“Had Alex beaten [then-Ohio Rep. John] Kasich to be budget chairman, I think he may have stayed,” Frank Hill, McMillan’s longtime top aide, told Newsmax, “But he said he would never serve more than six terms. So he left on his own terms after five terms.”

Although John Alexander McMillan, III died in April at age 91 following a long illness, it took a while for news of his death to reach those reporters who had covered him in Washington and colleagues who served with him in Congress. Having left office more than three decades ago, Alex (“It’s pronounced “eh-lik!” he used to say) threw himself into community work in the Charlotte area and then settled in Charleston, South Carolina.

“On his own terms” is a phrase with which many of those who knew McMillan characterized him. Like Ronald Reagan, he was a citizen-politician who did not seek office until an age when most of his contemporaries contemplated retirement. He also had a definite purpose for going to Congress at age 52 at a salary far below that of his stint as a corporate CEO: to get America “out of the red” and operating on a balanced budget, as he had done with private businesses.

“Alex not only looked like a distinguished Member of Congress, but he fulfilled his responsibilities in a full-throated and distinguished manner,” recalled Bill Schuette, former Michigan attorney general and McMillan’s GOP classmate in the House in who came in with Ronald Reagan’s re-election in 1984, “He was a conservative and committed and when he spoke, people listened.”

Indeed they did. The Tarheel State lawmaker spoke in a resonant, pleasant-sounding drawl, spicing his remarks with quotes from Jefferson, Churchill, and Alcibiades, the Athenian general who was a consequential figure in the Peloponnesian War.

McMillen’s distinct way of speaking, in which he carefully pronounced each syllable, became so familiar among his Charlotte-area constituents that a local disc jockey recorded a song in which rock-and-roll music was interspliced with a voice eerily like that of the congressman repeatedly saying “Rappin’ McMillan” McMillan loved it.

A graduate of public schools in Charlotte and Woodberry Forest School in Virginia, McMillen earned an AB in history from the University of North Carolina and an MBA from the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia. History and business would captivate him for his entire life.

Following a stint as a U.S. Army officer, the young McMillen threw himself into private enterprise. He worked as an investment banker and rose to become chief financial officer of the Ruddick Corporation. He then was CEO of the Harris-Teeter supermarket chain from 1977-83 and simultaneously served a term on the Mecklenburg County Board of Commissioners.

McMillan could have easily had a comfortable life by remaining head of a half-billion dollar corporation, but he chose to give it up and run for the 9th U.S. House District that Republican Rep. Jim Martin relinquished to run for governor. In a district that had been in GOP hands without interruption since 1952, McMillan seemed a cinch to succeed Martin.

But the race was not what it was cracked up to be. In part because many voters confused him with their congressman for the last twelve years, a prominent attorney and Democrat D.G.Martin who led McMillen by 30 percentage points in one poll. Sensing a pickup, national Democrats poured big money into the 9th District race.

McMillan contrasted his conservatism with Martin’s non-conservative stands, and often ended speeches by declaring “D.G. Martin is not Jim Martin!” He attached himself to Jim Martin, Sen. Jesse Helms, and President Reagan — all of whom were popular in the district and state. In the nation’s closest House race, McMillan eked out a win by 321 votes.

The North Carolinian was on the Small Business and Banking Committees for his first two terms and then Energy and Commerce and Budget in his last two. Where most of his GOP contemporaries embraced the No New Taxes pledge crafted by Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform, McMillan refused to sign it or any pledge about how he would vote. That would limit what a congressman could do, he believed, and it limited the ability to make a deal with Democrats who then comprised the majority in the House.

“Cutting Spending First” was McMillan’s credo, and he was a force in the sculpting of the 1993 budget plan that included zero tax hikes and massive spending cuts with a price tag of $500 billion. But GOP-Whip Newt Gingrich, House GOP Conference Chairman Dick Armey, GOP Whip Tom DeLay and others who would take power when Republicans took the majority the following year did not want to champion the measure that cut spending without cutting taxes.

McMillen spent his years after Congress serving on multiple boards of financial institutions as well as those of the Civil War Preservation Trust, the Union Theological Seminary, and his alma mater Woodberry Forest. It was there he learned “A Boy’s Prayer,” which called for one to fight for “the hard right against the easy wrong.” Alex McMillen frequently quoted that verse and he lived his life accordingly.