Kenneth B. Keating

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Kenneth Barnard Keating


In office
January 3, 1959 – January 3, 1965
President Richard M. Nixon
Preceded by Irving Ives
Succeeded by Robert F. Kennedy

U.S. Ambassador to India
In office
May 1, 1969 – July 26, 1972
Preceded by Chester Bowles
Succeeded by Daniel Patrick Moynihan

U.S. Ambassador to Israel
In office
August 28, 1973 – May 5, 1975
President Richard Nixon
Gerald Ford
Preceded by Walworth Barbour
Succeeded by Malcolm Toon

United States Representative for
New York 's 40th Congressional District
(since disbanded)
In office
January 3, 1947 – January 3, 1959
Preceded by George F. Rogers
Succeeded by Jessica M. Weis

Born May 18, 1900
Lima, Livingston County
New York
Died May 5, 1975 (aged 74)
New York City
Resting place Arlington National Cemetery (Virginia)
Political party Republican
Spouse(s) Louise DePuy (married 1928–1968, her death)

Mary Leet Pitcairn Davis (1920–2009; married 1974–1975, his death)

Children Judith Keating Howe

Parents:
Thomas Mosgrove and Louise Barnard Keating

Alma mater University of Rochester
Harvard Law School
Occupation Attorney

Military Service
Allegiance United States
Service/branch United States Army
Years of service 1918 (Reserve Officers' Training Corps)

1942–1946 (Army and Army Reserve)

Rank Brigadier General
Battles/wars World War I
World War II
Awards Legion of Merit with Oak Leaf Cluster
Order of the British Empire]]

Kenneth Barnard Keating (May 18, 1900 – May 5, 1975) was a Moderate Republican U.S. Senator for his native New York for a single term from 1959 to 1965. Elected in 1958, along with gubernatorial nominee Nelson Rockefeller, another Moderate Republican. Keating succeeded Moderate Republican U.S. senator Irving Ives, who did not seek reelection to a third term To win the seat, Keating defeated the Democrat Frank Hogan, then the New York County District Attorney.[1]

He was unseated on November 3, 1964, by the Democratic senatorial nominee, former United States Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, a younger brother of the slain John F. Kennedy who ran over 700,000 votes ahead of Keating.[2] In part, Keating was a casualty of the nomination of Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, who lost New York by a wide margin to U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson. Keating pointedly did not endorse Goldwater, who ran on a conservative platform but indicated that he did not vote in the presidential part of the ballot. Some liberal anti-Kennedy Democrats organized behind Keating.[3]

Background

Keating was born in Lima in Livingston County in western New York, the son of a grocer and a schoolteacher. In 1915, Keating graduated from Syracuse University, then the Genesee Wesleyan Seminary. In 1919, he graduated from the University of Rochester, and in 1923 from Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He taught school for a year prior to receiving his law degree. He resided in Rochester in upstate New York. He established his law practice in Rochester and became active in Republican politics. He was a delegate to each Republican National Convention from 1940 to 1964, except in 1944, when he was in the United States Army during World War II.[3]

During World War I, Keating, as a teenager, served with the Reserve Officers' Training Corps at the University of Rochester. He joined the Army when the United States entered World War II. He was commissioned as a Major and served in India as head of the American office that managed the Lend-Lease program for the China-Burma-India Theater. He was promoted to colonel before the end of the war, remained in the Reserves, and was promoted to brigadier general in 1948, a rank he filled until his retirement fifteen years later.

Political life

After his Senate term, he served stints as U.S. Ambassador to India, where he had served in the war, and then Israel. Before his Senate term, he was from 1947 to 1959 the United States Representative for New York's since disbanded Rochester-based 40th congressional district. He was elected to the House in 1946 at the same time as Richard M. Nixon in California and John F. Kennedy in Massachusetts.[1][4]

U.S. House of Representatives

During his House tenure, the moderate Keating took a more restrained approach regarding Cold War anti-Communism and the fight against organized crime. He was one of forty-nine establishment-leaning House Republicans who voted against the resolution which re-enacted the Select Committee to Investigate Tax-Exempt Foundations and Comparable Organizations during the 83rd Congress.[5] The resolution passed, and the subsequently enacted committee was named after it's chair, B. Carroll Reece, and thus known as the Reece Committee. Its final report concluded that major foundations subverted American society towards left-wing ideologies.

U.S. Senate

Like most Republicans, he was a firm advocate of desegregation and helped to end the Southern-led filibuster of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which President Johnson signed into law; Senator Goldwater had voted against the final passage of the legislation strictly on libertarian grounds,[6] an action which isolated him from the Moderate Republicans, particularly in the Northeast.[3] Keating previously received praise from Martin Luther King, Jr. for investigating white supremacist terrorism in the South.[7]

In 1960, Keating introduced the Twenty-Third Amendment to the United States Constitution, which allows residents of the District of Columbia to vote in presidential elections. In every election since that time, the district has voted heavily Democrat. In 1962, prior to the Cuban Missile Crisis, Keating said that the former Soviet Union and Communist Cuba had constructed intercontinental ballistic missile facilities in Cuba that could target the United States. He called upon President Kennedy to address the matter.[8][9]

During the 1964 Republican National Convention, Keating staged a walkout of the majority of the New York delegation after Goldwater won the presidential nomination. In the 1964 election, Keating out-performed Goldwater but fell to Robert F. Kennedy, who had established residency in New York shortly before he announced his candidacy.[9]

Later life

After his Senate defeat in 1964, Keating resumed his law practice and was elected in 1965 to the New York Court of Appeals, when John V. Lindsay, another prominent Moderate Republican who later defected to the Democrats, was elected to the first of two terms as mayor of New York City. He served on the bench until 1969, when he resigned to become U.S. Ambassador to India.[9]

Keating resigned as ambassador in 1972 to work in the campaign to re-elect of his former House colleague and benefactor, President Richard Nixon. In 1973, Nixon appointed Keating as the Ambassador to Israel, a post that the former senator held until his death in New York City shortly before his 75th birthday. By that time Gerald Ford of Michigan, another Moderate Republican, had succeeded Nixon as President.[8]

Keating was not related to Barbara Keating (1938–2021), a Vietnam War widow and the mother of five who ran as the New York Conservative Party nominee in 1974 against still another Moderate Republican and Keating's former colleague, Jacob Javits.[10]

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 Kenneth Barnard Keating (1900-1975) - Find A Grave Memorial, Retrieved July 16, 2021.
  2. NY US Senate Race - Nov 03, 1964. Our Campaigns. Retrieved August 23, 2021.
  3. 3.0 3.1 3.2 Kenneth Keating Biography | HowOld.co, accessed July 16, 2021.
  4. NY District 38 Race - Nov 05, 1956. Our Campaigns. Retrieved August 23, 2021.
  5. H RES 217. RESOLUTION CREATING A SPECIAL COMMITTEE TO CON- DUCT A FULL AND COMPLETE INVESTIGATION AND STUDY OF EDUCA- TIONAL AND PHILANTHROPIC FOUNDATIONS AND OTHER COMPARABLE ORGANIZATIONS WHICH ARE EXEMPT FROM FED. INCOME TAXATION.. GovTrack.us. Retrieved August 23, 2021.
  6. June 19, 1964. Text of Goldwater Speech on Rights. The New York Times. Retrieved August 23, 2021.
  7. To Kenneth B. Keating. The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute. Retrieved August 23, 2021.
  8. 8.0 8.1 Alden Whitman (May 6, 1975). Keating Dies at 74; Envoy, Ex‐Senator. The New York Times.
  9. 9.0 9.1 9.2 Edward R. Korman and Abbott A. Leban (2007). Biography of Kenneth Barnard Keating. Historical Society of the New York Courts in White Plains, New York.
  10. John Gizzi, Remembering Barbara Keating: A Conservative Crusader on Two Coasts | Newsmax.com, accessed July 16, 2021.

External links

  • Profile at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
  • Papers at River Campus Libraries