Howard “Bo” Callaway passed away this weekend. He was Republican in a time when most people in Georgia politics had to be solidly Democrat if they hoped to hold office, to be respected in their communities, or for that matter to not have to dodge rotten tomatoes.
To most old-school Republicans, Bo stood as the symbol of Georgia’s modern GOP. The hierarchy goes like this: Bo was robbed of the governorship and will always be the true first Republican governor since Reconstruction; Mack Mattingly became the first person to win a statewide race since the 1800s and became the Georgia GOP’s first U.S. Senator; Paul Coverdell will always be the man who helped solidify the legitimacy of the GOP as a statewide power, by means of his election and reelection to his Senate post; and Newt Gingrich will always be the man who brought it all home by becoming Speaker of the House of Representatives.
The other leading lights of the modern Republican Party fall into one of two categories. They are either a long-suffering GOP stalwart made good, such as Senator Johnny Isakson. He ran as a Republican in the very year of Richard Nixon’s resignation, he suffered the slings and arrows of his time, and then he went on to become a world-class leader.
Or they are one-time Democrats who transitioned seamlessly to the Republicans at least partly because they probably should have been one to start with. The best examples are Georgia’s two duly elected Republican governors, Sonny Perdue and Nathan Deal. Converts yes, but converted men who were fully embraced as if baptized Republicans at birth.
But Bo remains in that lofty position as the man who started it all. And a finer man his party could never have chosen. He was the real deal; a man who always chose to see the positive in people, and who never failed to promote those in whom he believed.
Callaway was honest to a fault. He was unwilling to make last-minute deals to capture the 1966 governor’s race against Lester Maddox. He was never willing to compromise his integrity and his beliefs in politics and in business.
Bo was an imposing figure – a big man, yet always trim and fit. His face seemed chiseled in the movie star sort of way. And the intensity with which he listened to those who approached him conveyed a self- confidence that allowed him to impress folks even as he so characteristically remained both humble and solicitous.
It’s odd – and a reminder that age is gaining on me – to consider that my days with Bo go back decades; that Mack remains my first real boss, whom I still talk with every week; that Newt and I have survived more battles than we can to recall; and most of all, that it has been so many years since we lost Paul Coverdell.
With the rapid march of time has come a new and more powerful legion of Georgia Republicans. They are unlike the ragtag army of starry-eyed dreamers known as the previous generation’s Georgia’s Republican Party.
The contemporary GOP would always do well to remember what Bo Callaway stood for. Bo didn’t believe in scheming, plotting or backdoor dealing. He was loathe to rely on aides or gatekeepers. He believed in conducting business out in the open. He was never hesitant to stand up for a friend or someone he believed in, regardless of whether it made him popular. He didn’t pander, nor did he shift his positions to meet changes in what he perceived to be popular among the public.
And he was courageous. Both in business and politics, Bo put himself in the front lines. He was willing to dream big, and to follow through with bigger-than-life actions. He never played the margins.
I know that Mack feels that were it not for Bo running in 1996, and not for the array of GOP Congressional candidates throughout the state that same year, the infrastructure might never had existed for his magnificent victory in 1980.
Newt easily acknowledges that Bo’s unwavering support of his early efforts as a candidate for Congress, and his leadership of GOPAC, directly contributed to Gingrich’s ultimate accession to the speakership. So many who helped build the modern GOP relied on the support of Bo Callaway.
But time moves on and what makes sense for the 1960s, or even the 1990s, doesn’t always fit the world of today. Bo Callaway’s death reminds us again of our own mortality and how swiftly time passes.
I think Speaker David Ralston, a Republican’s Republican, summed it up best in an interview when he alluded to those chic (for the time) bumper stickers of 1966 that adorned everything from stop signs, to all manner of vehicles, to then-student David Ralston’s Blue Horse loose-leaf notebook. The stickers boldly said, “Go Bo.” The words were modern, cutting-edge, simple and powerful, and they left an impression. They were, in essence, Bo Callaway.
“Go Bo!” May God bless your soul and may we never forget what you gave to so many of us.
