Mack Mattingly

Mattingly was born in Anderson, Indiana, on January 7, 1931. He served four years in the United States Air Force and was stationed at Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, Georgia, in the early 1950s. In 1957, he earned a bachelor of science degree in marketing from Indiana University. Afterward, he worked for twenty years for IBM Corporation in Georgia and later operated his own business, M's Inc., which sold office supplies and equipment in Brunswick, Georgia.

Mattingly first became active in the Georgia Republican Party when he served as chairman of 8th District Goldwater for President in 1964. He would become an unsuccessful candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives against W. S. Stuckey, Jr. in 1966. By 1968 he became a member of the Georgia Republican Party State Executive Committee and served as party vice-chair from 1968 until 1975. In 1975, he became chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, a position he held until 1977.

In 1980, Mattingly unseated longtime Democratic Senator Herman Talmadge, twelve years after Talmadge had defeated E. Earl Patton of Atlanta, the first of the three Republicans who ran against him. Mattingly served in the Senate from January 1981 until January 1987, with membership on the United States Senate Committee on Appropriations, chairing first the United States Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Legislative Branch and later the United States Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Military Construction and Veterans Affairs. Mattingly also served at various times on the Senate Banking Committee, the Governmental Affairs Committee, the Joint Economic Committee and the Ethics Committee. He is perhaps best remembered as a proponent of the line-item veto, a position that earned him recognition by President Ronald Reagan during his 1985 State of the Union Address.

Mattingly served a single term in the Senate, and observers noted that he did not accomplish any lasting or landmark legislation during that time.

In November 1986, Mattingly was defeated in his bid for re-election by former Congressman Wyche Fowler of Atlanta. In 1987, Reagan appointed Mattingly assistant secretary-general for defense support for NATO in Brussels, Belgium. In 1988, Mattingly received the Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service. In 1992, President George H. W. Bush appointed Mattingly ambassador to Seychelles. He served in this position until 1993.

Mattingly ran against Democrat Zell Miller in the 2000 special election to replace the deceased Senator Paul Coverdell, but Miller succeeded in holding the seat to which he had been appointed.

Mattingly married Carolyn Longcamp in 1957, and fathered two daughters, Jane and Anne. Carolyn Mattingly died in 1997. In 1998, he married Leslie Davisson. He currently lives on St. Simons Island, Georgia. He continues to be active in Republican politics, and he serves on a number of corporate boards. He endorsed Senator John McCain of Arizona for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination.