“He may well be more what the Founding Fathers had in mind,” as the ideal congressman.
The Almanac of American Politics
“I think there is a position here for people who want to help their friends and the residents around where they live and who’ve been in business, met a payroll and understand human needs.” SFGate
Amo Houghton Jr. was elected to Congress two years ago on the promise that he would apply his considerable talents and experience to the problems facing America. He has delivered.
From editorial in Jameston, N.Y., newspaper after Houghton’s first term
You might be surprised that the person described in the quotes above is the only Fortune 500 company CEO to be elected to Congress. Amo Houghton Jr. worked his way up in a company founded in 1851 by his great great grandfather, serving as chairman and chief executive officer of Corning Glass Works from 1964 to 1983. He later served nine terms in Congress beginning in 1986, elected from the Corning, NY area as a Republican. Houghton died at age 93 in 2020.
I became interested in Amo Houghton Jr. after a phone interview a few years ago with the Rev. Doug Tanner, the founding executive of the Faith and Politics Institute. The institute evolved from meetings in the congressional office of Southern Illinois Rep. Glenn Poshard. I worked with Poshard on his biography. Through my research in that experience, I enjoyed conversations with people like Tanner.
The institute was at a turning point in the 1990s, Tanner told me, and was looking for people who could help lead in a positive direction. Georgia Democrat John Lewis was on board. The bipartisan institute needed a Republican leader. Houghton was asked, and answered. Houghton and Lewis, though from strikingly different backgrounds, were friends who shared mutual respect.
Lewis’ parents were sharecroppers in segregated rural Alabama. Houghton was raised in a family that led Corning and played a lead role in New York and beyond. Houghton attended private high school in New Hampshire, later graduated from Harvard.
Despite their different backgrounds, the two found much in common, including holding to principles instilled in them through their upbringing and reinforced through life experiences. They were credible, caring people, individuals you can count on.
A section of the book The Houghtons of Corning, Five Generations of Brilliance by Thomas Dimitroff focuses on Amo Houghton Jr., the corporate leader, and later Houghton the member of Congress. It’s a story that carries an important perspective.
Houghton once wrote about the lack of bipartisanship in Congress that a business could not last long operating that way.
“I am not what you might call the partisan type,” Houghton was quoted as saying. “I work every day within the structure of the two-party system – I’m a big fan of the Speaker. I understand competition, the checks and balances. Overt, universal, day-by-day partisanship, to me, is a total waste of time – a large boulder in the road to getting something done … I am a former businessman. No business could survive long playing this way. It resembles a hockey game where there is no hockey, only fistfights.”
Intellectually poor in today’s world would describe this line of thinking as a RINO.
Demitroff writes that one of Amo’s strong political beliefs is that the political extremes are unacceptable. “The United States is best off when it is in the center and feels good about itself. Whether you go back to de Tocqueville or to Winston Churchill the United States is a bumbling, affirmative, moving, generous, ebullient grouping of people. But it is not extreme. It’s in the center. Most people are in the center.”
Houghton was described as humble, practical with a focus on problem solving. He made people feel comfortable around him; he didn’t seek recognition but commanded respect. That’s what we look for in our lives and our organizations, smart, decent, thoughtful, caring people, people you can count on.
Houghton’s Democratic opponent in his first campaign tried to paint him as a surrogate for big business interests and a sure vote for the Republican caucus in the 100th Congress. A subsequent analysis shared this: “Houghton is none of that. He has proven himself to be an independent lawmaker who votes on issues according to his analysis of them, his belief in what is the best and most realistic course for America. He acts independently of the partisan considerations of his political party. He listens to people in the district. He delivers on services to his constituents.”
Houghton maintained that a top priority must be reduction of the national debt and the trade deficit. Programs should be enacted for specific periods and monitored for efficiency.
Regarding leadership, he was quoted by the Elmira Star-Gazette as saying “it involves recruiting the best people possible and then leading the cast to success.”
His moderate views and willingness to reach across the aisle made him respected, powerful and productive. He carried a global philosophy predicated by his business background that was natural for an internationalist.
“Back home in his district he was revered for his responsiveness, honesty and genial demeanor,” wrote Demitroff. “His leadership was vital to the success of numerous projects, including the creation of interstate highway 86 and the Corning bypass and improvements to Watkins Glen International. Houghton also supported farmers, rural hospitals, keeping the Veterans Administration facilities open and nearly all job creation endeavors. Amo was a man of means driven to serve. Even in retirement, he intends to devote much of his time to the three things he cares most about: his family, his church and his community.”
After a flood devastated the Corning area in June 1972, Houghton was one who led the response, reassuring people Corning would rebuild. In a speech on September 20, 1972 at the annual Corning service dinner, he was quoted as saying this:
“In this day and age of cynics and critics of the establishment, of industry, of the eroding rural strength of this country, I say to the doubters: Come and see Corning. Come and see what the human strength of the members of one company can do alongside their neighbors – in saving their homes and their possessions. It’s an extraordinary story – and one that I’m deeply proud of.”
What one would hope for is a world where we recognize that good, solution-oriented ideas aren’t exclusive to any one ideology. Rather, differences make us better.
Former President Clinton publicly recognized the value in the Amo Houghton’s of the world, saying this: ”Amo is an old-fashioned Republican, a decent, humane moderate man faithful to the principals of Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, committed to civil rights and the environment and always willing to put evidence over ideology, to look for bipartisan solutions and to reach across the aisle when the time came to get things done. We need more people like him in public office.”
