Herb Stupp was New York State Chairman of Young Americans for Freedom and the director of Youth for Buckley, a grassroots initiative to elect James to the United States Senate.
Not too many people can have a personal hero while in college, and continue to maintain that admiration and friendship for over 50 years. Such was my relationship with Jim Buckley, one of the great statesmen of our era. He is gone at age 100 and five months, but will remain an inspiration to many, especially my family and me, forever. As Jim’s brother suggested with his “the sainted junior Senator from New York” moniker, James L. Buckley was the role model you’d want for your children and yourself.
Like future YAF superstars Ron Robinson and Ron Docksai, I met candidate Jim Buckley when I was a teenager , during Jim’s first run for U. S. Senator from New York. A registered Republican, Buckley’s first two runs were as the nominee of the N.Y. State Conservative Party.
Even as a lowly teen volunteer in 1968, I admired Jim greatly. He combined conservative principles, searing intelligence, humility and generosity in a truly unique package for a major candidate. Then, in 1970, having accepted more leadership in New York state’s Young Americans for Freedom, I was tapped to become state chairman for Youth for Buckley.
The senior campaign manager was David R. Jones, the former executive director of YAF, and the press director was Arnie Steinberg, the immediate past editor of YAF’s New Guard magazine.
This was the experience of a lifetime, and I was given too much credit for recruiting thousands of young volunteers to the Buckley campaign. Sure, I gave it my all (while being a full-time student), but it was the beaming, inviting, incorruptible Buckley persona, and his issues, that sold the candidate and the campaign to young and old alike. Busloads of student volunteers paid their own way to New York from Yale in New Haven and from Princeton, to spend a weekend campaigning for our hero.
As October polls revealed that Jim Buckley could win, our Youth for Buckley troops became even more energized, with many cutting classes to campaign door-to-door and on the streets of Manhattan, where commuters arrived daily from more than a dozen suburban counties. Then, finally, came election night 1970, and the ebullient celebration of Jim’s victory. The New York Times reported that the grand ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria was filled with a “sea of young people,” not the blue-haired ladies they were expecting.
While declaring that he was a voice of a “new politics,’ Senator-elect Buckley was typically humble in his victory speech, thanking everyone who made this once-implausible, third-party victory a reality.
A YAF-centric note here: with scores of Youth for Buckley clubs active in colleges, high schools and communities, after the campaign, we revisited these young leaders and activists, persuading many to found YAF chapters. The result was a doubling of YAF chapters in New York state, from 59 in autumn 1970 to 121 by June 1971. This benchmark remains the only time in the history of Young Americans for Freedom when any state was home to more than 100 chapters.
More importantly, Jim’s landmark campaign and many volunteers’ segue into YAF were key developments in the careers of future State Senators, Assemblymen, local electeds, candidates for Congress, journalists, educators, attorneys, business executives and appointees in various administrations.
In the U.S. Senate, James L. Buckley legislated and served as he campaigned (a rarity right there). Widely admired for his cordiality and self-effacing camaraderie among fellow Senators and staff, the junior Senator from New York held to his beliefs and principles, supporting limited government, law enforcement, national defense, anti-Communism, pro-life initiatives, and presciently, support for Taiwan, even when it became apparent that Red China would supplant the free island nation in the United Nations and as the government officially recognized by the United States.
Never elbowing colleagues away from a news conference microphone, Senator Buckley always shared credit for his accomplishments.
James Buckley is one of the very few Americans to serve in the upper echelons of all three branches of our national government. After his term in the U.S. Senate, he served as Under Secretary of State and then president of Radio Free Europe in the Reagan administration, followed by his service on the nation’s second-highest court, the U. S. District Court of Appeals for the D. C. Circuit.
Judge Buckley was widely admired for his collegiality on the appeals bench, including expressions from those who went on to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. A chief judge praised Buckley’s judicial writing as “unexcelled as a stylist and craftsman.”
Buckley authored books on reforming government, writing into his 90s.
Despite one high-impact, ethical, admirable lifetime, including World War II naval service and devotion to his wife Ann and their six children, Senator Buckley’s aversion to self-promotion may be a primary reason why, unlike other U. S. Senators from New York in my lifetime, there has been no official tribute to him, in the form of naming a park, public works building, school etc. for him.
However, Congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis (R-C, Staten Island- Brooklyn) has introduced a bill to rename the Staten Island portion of the Federal “Gateway National Recreation Area” (which was co-created by Buckley in the 1970s) as the “James L. Buckley National Seashore.” The bill is co-sponsored in the upper house by a geographically distant legislator, U. S. Senator Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska). It turns out that as a young D.C. law student, Senator Sullivan interned in Judge Buckley’s appellate offices, and admired him greatly.
Let’s hope that the Malliotakis-Sullivan bill passes to recognize, in a small way, the life and career of James L. Buckley, and plants ideas for more tribute and recognition in the future.
We have lost a great conservative, a man who never disappointed us in his public service nor in his private life.
R. I. P., James L. Buckley (1923-2023)
