Representative John Jacob Wood

John Jacob Rhodes Jr. (September 18, 1916 – August 24, 2003) was an American lawyer and politician. A member of the Republican Party, Rhodes served as a U.S. Representative from Arizona for thirty consecutive years, from January 3, 1953, to January 3, 1983, and was House Minority Leader from 1973 to 1981, during which time he pressed a conservative agenda. Over the course of his career he became one of Arizona’s most influential political figures, playing a central role in both the development of the state’s water infrastructure and the congressional response to the Watergate scandal.

Rhodes was born in Council Grove, Kansas, and attended public schools there. At age eleven he met President Calvin Coolidge, an encounter that reportedly made a lasting impression; after shaking hands with the president, he was said to have refused to wash his hand for a week. He enrolled at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas, where he joined the Beta Theta Pi fraternity and participated in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC). He graduated in 1938, receiving both his bachelor’s degree and a commission in the U.S. Army Reserve. Rhodes then attended Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, earning his law degree in 1941.

Upon graduation from Harvard, Rhodes was called to active duty with the United States Army Air Corps, later redesignated the United States Army Air Forces, during World War II. He served at Williams Field, near Mesa, Arizona, from 1941 to 1946. His wartime service introduced him to Arizona, and after the war he chose to settle there with his wife, Elizabeth (“Betty”) Harvey, whom he had married in 1942. Establishing himself in legal practice, he also continued his military-related service as staff judge advocate of the Arizona Air National Guard from 1947 to 1952. In state public service, he served as vice chairman of the Arizona Board of Public Welfare from 1951 to 1952, gaining experience in administration and social policy in the early years of Arizona’s postwar growth.

Rhodes first sought elective office in 1950, running unsuccessfully as the Republican candidate for Attorney General of Arizona at a time when the state was more than seventy-five percent Democratic. His friend Barry Goldwater correctly predicted that Rhodes would lose that race, but the campaign helped establish his name in state politics. In 1952, Rhodes ran for Arizona’s 1st congressional district, then encompassing all of Phoenix and surrounding Maricopa County. Despite limited campaign funds and the challenge of facing eleven-term Democratic incumbent John Murdock, he prevailed by eight percentage points in the general election and entered the Eighty-third Congress in January 1953. He was the first Republican ever elected to represent Arizona in the U.S. House of Representatives. Over the years, he became very popular in his district, which had previously never been represented by a Republican, fending off a close contest in 1954 and then generally winning reelection with comfortable margins. After a mid-decade redistricting in 1966, his district was redrawn to include the fast-growing and strongly conservative East Valley, including his home in Mesa, making it even safer politically.

During his three decades in the House, Rhodes served in the 83rd through the 97th Congresses and held a series of important committee and leadership assignments. Early in his tenure he served on the Committees on Education and Labor and on Interior and Insular Affairs (1953–1959), reflecting his interest in domestic policy and western resource issues. From 1959 to 1973 he was a member of the powerful Appropriations Committee, where he became the ranking minority member of the Public Works and Defense Subcommittees. He later served on the Budget Committee (1974–1975) and the Rules Committee (1981–1983). Within the House Republican Conference, he rose steadily, serving as chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee from 1965 to 1973. Outside the House, he was a member of the Arizona delegation to several Republican National Conventions, acted as Barry Goldwater’s personal representative on the Platform Committee in 1964, chaired the Platform Committee in 1972, and served as Permanent Chairman of the Republican National Conventions in 1976 and 1980.

Rhodes was elected by acclamation as House Minority Leader on December 7, 1973, succeeding Gerald R. Ford after Ford became Vice President. As minority leader from 1973 to 1981, he pressed a conservative agenda but was known for a strong yet low-key leadership style. His tenure coincided with the constitutional crisis of Watergate. Initially a supporter of President Richard Nixon, Rhodes maintained his backing until the release of the so‑called “smoking gun” tape in August 1974. Declaring that “coverup of criminal activity and misuse of federal agencies cannot be condoned or tolerated,” he announced that he would vote to impeach Nixon when the articles came before the full House. In short order, all ten Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee stated they would also support impeachment on the House floor. On August 7, 1974, Rhodes joined Senator Barry Goldwater and Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott in a pivotal meeting with President Nixon at the White House, where they informed him that he no longer had sufficient support in Congress to avoid impeachment and removal from office. Nixon announced his resignation the following day. According to his obituary in The Washington Post, the decision of the House leader of Nixon’s own party to break with the president and support impeachment was the “coup de grace” for Nixon.

Throughout his congressional career, Rhodes took particular interest in western water and infrastructure issues. His most significant legislative accomplishment was his role as the driving force behind congressional authorization of the Central Arizona Project (CAP), which brought Colorado River water to central and southern Arizona and reshaped the state’s long-term development. In recognition of his work, the CAP Hayden–Rhodes Aqueduct was later named in his honor. On civil rights and social policy, his voting record reflected both support for key measures and occasional reservations about specific provisions. He voted in favor of the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960, the 24th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He voted against the initial House resolution for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on February 10, 1964, but supported the Senate amendment to the bill on July 2, 1964. He voted in favor of the House resolution for the Civil Rights Act of 1968 on August 16, 1967, but opposed the Senate amendment to that bill on April 10, 1968. Rhodes also supported the Family Assistance Plan and the Equal Rights Amendment. Despite his long-standing influence, some House Republicans grew dissatisfied with his understated leadership style, and in 1979 he announced that he would not seek reelection as minority leader. Minority Whip Robert H. Michel succeeded him in 1981, while Rhodes remained in the House for one additional term, a decision he later described as a mistake.

In addition to his legislative work, Rhodes contributed to public debate on congressional reform and his own experiences in government. In 1976 he published The Futile System: How to Unchain Congress and Make the System Work Again, arguing that meaningful reform could not be expected from the majority party and that the “outs — the powerless minority — have the only real motivation to take a critical look at the system and determine a better way to run things.” In 1995 he authored a memoir, I Was There, recounting his role in major events such as the Watergate crisis and the evolution of the modern Republican Party. Rhodes retired from Congress in 1982 at age 66, explaining that he remained popular in his district but believed that “if [he were] ever going to do something else, [he] should get started doing it.” His retirement opened the way for a competitive Republican primary in his district, ultimately won by John McCain, who was elected to the House in 1982 and to the Senate four years later.

After leaving Congress, Rhodes divided his time between Arizona and the Washington, D.C., area. He maintained an apartment in Bethesda, Maryland, commuting there from his home in Mesa, Arizona, and practiced law in the Washington office of the Richmond, Virginia-based firm Hunton & Williams. He traveled extensively around the world and remained active in civic and policy organizations. He served on the boards of the Taft Institute for Government and the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, and he was a board member and later president of the United States Association of Former Members of Congress. On August 14, 2003, Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert awarded Rhodes one of the first Congressional Distinguished Service Medals. Rhodes, one of only a small number of recipients, remarked to Hastert that the speakership was the only job he had ever really wanted.

Rhodes’s personal life was closely tied to Arizona, where he and his wife raised their family. He and Elizabeth (“Betty”) Harvey Rhodes were married in 1942 and remained married for sixty-one years. They had four children: John Jacob (“Jay”) III, Thomas, Elizabeth, and James Scott (“Scott”), as well as twelve grandchildren and several great-grandchildren. Rhodes died at his home in Mesa on August 24, 2003, from complications related to cancer, surrounded by his family. Over 100 newspapers carried his obituary, and President George W. Bush issued a statement from the White House marking his passing. In Arizona, his legacy is commemorated by institutions bearing his name, including Rhodes Junior High School in Mesa and the CAP Hayden–Rhodes Aqueduct, reflecting both his long service in Congress and his central role in securing the state’s water future.