Earl Butz, 98; boosted farm output, ousted over remark
NEW YORK - Earl Butz, an influential secretary of agriculture who was forced to resign after telling an obscenity- laced racist joke in 1976, died Saturday at his son's home in Washington D.C. He was 98 and the oldest living former Cabinet member.
Dr. Butz had been in failing health for the past couple of weeks, said Randy Woodson, dean of Purdue University's College of Agriculture. He had flown to Washington from his home in a retirement community in Indiana on Jan. 30 to visit his son's family, Woodson said.
Dr. Butz was named to head the Department of Agriculture in 1971 by President Nixon. He remained in the Cabinet under President Ford after Nixon resigned in 1974 amid the Watergate scandal. In a shift in policy, Dr. Butz encouraged farm production and promoted exports of surpluses. He exhorted farmers to "plant fence row to fence row" to meet global demand, helping to drive down surging food costs and open the market overseas for American produce.
It was a crude joke that turned Dr. Butz into a household word and punch line on Johnny Carson's "Tonight" show. Dr. Butz was flying from the 1976 Republican convention in Kansas City, Mo., to California when he told his infamous story to a group that included singer Pat Boone and John Dean, the former White House counsel and Watergate figure who was working as a reporter for Rolling Stone magazine.
Asked by Boone, a Republican, why the party of Abraham Lincoln had so much trouble attracting black voters, Dr. Butz said "the only things the coloreds are looking for in life are," to paraphrase him, loose shoes, good sex, and a warm toilet.
The ensuing political firestorm created a dilemma for Ford. Dr. Butz's popularity in Midwestern farm states was a crucial asset to the president, who was in the middle of a tight election campaign against his Democratic challenger, former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter.
Ford called Dr. Butz into his office on Oct. 1 and gave him a "severe reprimand," according to White House Press Secretary Ron Nessen. Later that day, Dr. Butz apologized on television for "an unfortunate choice of language," though he insisted he had only repeated a comment made decades earlier by a ward politician.
Soon Carter and a chorus of Republicans, including Ford's running mate, Robert Dole, joined the fray. Carter said he wouldn't "permit that kind of blatant racism" in his administration.
On Oct. 3, Dr. Butz appeared in the White House and resigned. He denied he was a racist, saying his resignation "is the price I pay for a gross indiscretion in a private conversation."
Accepting the resignation, Ford said, was "one of the saddest decisions of my presidency." A month later, Ford lost the election.
Dr. Butz was known as a champion for the US farmer, promoting improvements in income and minimizing federal encroachment, as well as opening the door to exports, primarily through the sale of grain to the Soviet Union.
"He delivered real hope and opportunities for farmers to see their business prosper," said former Agriculture Secretary John Block, who served under President Reagan. "He sold grain to the Soviet Union and said they would pay cash on the barrel head and they did. The rising tide lifted all boats. It boosted all prices. Agriculture had been struggling."
Agricultural exports will total about $90 billion this year, said Block, senior policy adviser with Olsson Frank & Weeda, a Washington-based law firm specializing in agriculture.
"He opened that door," Block said. "He made agriculture aware of our future in exports."
Encouraging cheap production of food was considered one of his most important accomplishments, Dr. Butz said in "King Corn," a 2007 documentary that examined the effects of grain subsidies on the agriculture industry.
Before the 1970s, "we paid farmers not to produce, one of the stupidest things we ever did," Dr. Butz said. "When I became secretary, we stopped that system.
"That's the basis of our affluence now, the fact that we spend less on food," he said. "It's America's best-kept secret."
Dr. Butz's critics charge that his policies have led to the current environment of overproduction, which has harmed the development of agriculture in the developing world and contributed to rising levels of obesity.
Earl L. Butz was born on July 3, 1909, in Albion, Ind. He attended Purdue University on a 4-H scholarship, graduating in 1932 with a degree in agriculture. Dr. Butz worked for a year on his family's farm in Albion before returning to Purdue and then becoming a research fellow with the Federal Land Bank in Kentucky. He received a Ph.D. in agricultural economics from Purdue in 1937.
Dr. Butz joined the Purdue faculty, becoming head of the agricultural economics department in 1946. President Eisenhower appointed him assistant secretary of agriculture in 1954. He also was chairman of the US delegation to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations.
He returned to Purdue in 1957 as dean of its school of agriculture and in 1968 became dean of continuing education and vice president of the Purdue Research Foundation. He was at Purdue when he joined the Nixon Cabinet in 1971.
Dr. Butz first gained notoriety for his lack of verbal discretion in 1974, when he said the pope shouldn't oppose birth-control programs because "he no playa da game, he no make-a da rules."
Five years after his resignation, Dr. Butz served 25 days of a 30-day prison term for tax evasion. He pleaded guilty to a charge of understating his 1978 income by $148,114.
Dr. Butz's wife Mary, whom he married in 1937, died in 1995. He leaves his sons Thomas and William. 