Robert Rice Reynolds

Robert Rice Reynolds (June 18, 1884 – February 13, 1963) was a Democratic U.S. senator from North Carolina between 1932 and 1945. Almost from the outset of his Senate career, "Our Bob," as he was known among supporters back home, acquired distinction as a passionate isolationist and increasingly as an apologist for Nazi aggression in Europe. Even after America's entry into World War II, according to a contemporary study of subversive elements in America, he "publicly endorsed the propaganda efforts of Gerald L. K. Smith," whose scurrilous publication The Cross and the Flag "violently assailed the United States war effort and America's allies." Reynolds and Smith, one of the nation's most influential fascists, likewise collaborated on The Defender, an anti-Semitic newspaper partly owned by Reynolds. Reynolds on occasion turned over his Senate office facilities to subversive propagandists and allowed them to use his franking privilege to mail their literature postage-free.

Robert Rice Reynolds was born on June 18, 1884 in Asheville, North Carolina at his family's estate, the Reynolds House. He was the son of William Taswell Reynolds (1850–1892) and Mamie Spears (1862–1939). He was descended from a family of Revolutionary War heroes and pioneers, politicians, and property owners, including his maternal great-grandfather, Colonel Daniel Smith, a Revolutionary War hero of the Battle of Kings Mountain. His siblings included George Spears Reynolds (1881–1924) and Jane Reynolds Wood (1888–1927).

Reynolds attended public and private schools, including Weaver College, a preparatory school, before entering the University of North Carolina. While at UNC, he played football, ran track, and was the editor of the sports section of The Daily Tar Heel. He left UNC without a degree, but was still accepted at the University of North Carolina School of Law. He did not officially enroll, but attended lectures and eventually was admitted to the Bar in North Carolina in 1908.

Early career

After passing the bar exam, Reynolds began practicing in Asheville with his brother. He was elected prosecuting attorney, serving from 1910 to 1914, and during World War I, registered for military service. He was never drafted but briefly served in the National Guard. In 1924, he ran for Lieutenant Governor of North Carolina, losing to J. Elmer Long in the Democratic primary.

In 1926, Reynolds first ran for the United States Senate, but was unsuccessful. He ran again in 1932 and defeated former Governor and interim Senator Cameron Morrison in the Democratic primary runoff by nearly two to one after running a particularly nasty, populist campaign, in which he accused Morrison of being a Communist sympathizer. During one campaign speech, he proclaimed, "Cam likes fish eggs, and Red Russian fish eggs at that. Don't you want a Senator who likes North Carolina hen eggs?"

United States Senate

In his first term, Reynolds was in favor of Roosevelt’s New Deal as he believed it provided much-needed jobs for his constituents. He endorsed the Civilian Conservation Corps, as he believed it provided jobs for North Carolinians, thus allowing the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park to be built. Reynolds favored taxing the wealthy and imposing regulations on the economy. In addition, he supported Social Security, the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Works Progress Administration, Tennessee Valley Authority, and the Agricultural Adjustment Act, which raised tobacco prices. Reynolds initially supported FDR’s Supreme Court-packing plan, but later joined other Democrats in sending the bill back to the Judiciary Committee, effectively killing the bill.

Reynolds was an advocate of "Fortress America" and supported a strong national defense, expansion of the Navy, and an increase in the size of the Army and Air Force. He vociferously opposed Roosevelt’s efforts to revise the Neutrality Acts and Reynolds and Sen. John Overton of Louisiana, were the only senators from the South to vote against repeal of the arms embargo. Therefore, during his 1938 reelection campaign, then President Franklin Roosevelt recruited Franklin W. Hancock, Jr. to oppose Reynolds in the Democratic primary, but Reynolds won handily.

In 1941, Reynolds became chairman of the Senate Committee on Military Affairs. A confidential 1943 analysis of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by Isaiah Berlin for the British Foreign Office stated that Reynolds

"is exceptional among Southerners, in that he is a bitter Isolationist of a disreputable kind. His Anglophobia is proverbial and his journal The Vindicator is a low-grade Fascist sheet. He is distrusted by the majority of his colleagues and his assumption of the chairmanship of the Military Affairs Committee (by seniority) was universally regarded as disastrous outside his own circle of chauvinist demagogues. His State produces cotton and tobacco and he, therefore, votes for reciprocal trade pacts."

By 1944, the Democratic Party had had enough of Reynolds and chose former governor Clyde R. Hoey to seek Reynolds's seat in the primary. As a result, Reynolds did not seek reelection. Hoey won the primary and went on to win the general election in a landslide victory over a Republican opponent. Reynolds did seek to return to the Senate in 1950, but was hopelessly discredited by this time and won only 10% in the Democratic primary, behind Frank Porter Graham and Willis Smith.

Post-Senate career

After leaving public life, Reynolds practiced law and real estate until his death, in Asheville. He wrote the book Gypsy Trails, Around the World in an Automobile; Asheville, NC: Advocate Publishing Company (presumed date 1923).

Reynolds married five times throughout his life and had four children. His first marriage was in 1910 to Frances Jackson (1889–1913). Before her death from Typhoid fever in 1913, they had two children together:

• Frances Jackson Reynolds (1910–1955)
• Robert Rice Reynolds, Jr. (1913–1950)

In 1914, he married seventeen-year-old Mary Bland (b. 1897). Less than a year after their marriage, he left his new wife and their child. Before their divorce in 1917, and her three subsequent marriages, they had one daughter together:

• Mary Bland Reynolds, who died of Hodgkin's disease.

In 1921, he married for the third time to Denise D'Arcy, a French woman he met in New York. Reynolds met D'Arcy while he was traveling around the country in his truck and accidentally struck her as she crossed the street. Within five days, he had announced that they had fallen in love and were going to get married. The marriage dissolved after one year and D'Arcy obtained a legal separation from Reynolds in 1922 and moved back to France. The divorce was ultimately finalized in 1929.

On February 27, 1931, he married for the fourth time to Eva Brady (1898–1934), a former Ziegfeld Follies dancer from Chicago, who came to Asheville looking for a cure for tuberculosis. Eva died on December 13, 1934.

On October 9, 1941, 57-year-old Reynolds married for the fifth and final time to 19-year-old Evalyn Washington McLean (1921–1946), daughter of Edward B. McLean, the former publisher and owner of the Washington Post, and Evalyn Walsh McLean, owner of the Hope Diamond. Together, they had one daughter:

• Mamie Spears Reynolds (1942–2014), an owner and driver for the Reynolds Racing Team of Asheville, the first woman to qualify for the Daytona 500, and co-owner of the ABA Kentucky Colonels professional basketball team. In 1963, she married Luigi Chinetti, and Italian racecar driver, and divorced two years later.

On September 20, 1946, his wife, Evalyn, died of an accidental overdose of sleeping pills, which some believe is a result of the Hope Diamond curse.

Reynolds died of cancer on February 13, 1963 at his home, the McLean's Friendship estate, in Asheville.