Utah Rep. Rob Bishop isn't the only House Republican who pre-announced his retirement: In April, North Carolina Rep. Walter Jones' campaign said this, too, would be his last election, which Jones won without opposition. (Incidentally, that made him just one of three Republicans not to face a Democratic opponent this year, the fewest since just one went unopposed in the post-Watergate election of 1974.) North Carolina’s 3rd District, which includes the Outer Banks, backed Donald Trump 61-37.
While Jones himself didn't announce his retirement at the time (rather, a consultant said he wants to "go home and spend some time with the wife and the children and the dog"), he addressed his departure in an interview last month, saying he'd grown "sick and tired" of the "influence of money" on politics. It's fair to say, though, that his Republican colleagues won't miss him. During his time in Congress, Jones put together one of the most eclectic records imaginable and regularly was a thorn in his party’s ass. You don’t even need to take our word for it: In early 2015, Jones himself bragged, “I like to be a thorn in people’s asses.”
Perhaps appropriately, Jones began his long and unusual political career as a Democrat. Jones’ father, Walter Jones Sr., was a Democratic congressman who served from 1966 until he decided to retire in 1992. The younger Jones, who had served as a Democratic state representative for a decade, ran to succeed his father in 1992 and competed in the primary for the dramatically redrawn 1st District, which was now majority black. Jones lost the runoff to Eva Clayton, who would be the first African-American to represent North Carolina in the 20th Century, 55-45; the elder Jones would die in office a few months later.
Jones switched parties in time for the 1994 election and challenged 3rd District Democratic Rep. Martin Lancaster, who represented some of the same territory that Jones’ father had once held. Jones made sure to tie the four-term incumbent to President Bill Clinton, who was unpopular here, and he ran a commercial that showed the two Democrats jogging together. Jones unseated Lancaster 53-47, and he never faced a close general election again.
Jones spent most of his first decade in Congress as a reliable Republican vote who didn’t draw much attention. However, he first made national news in 2003 when he was one of two Republican congressmen who, angry at France’s opposition to the Bush administration’s plans to invade Iraq, directed the House cafeterias to redub French fries “freedom fries” and French toast as “freedom toast.”
However, Jones eventually came to regret all of this, and within a few years, he was one of the few Republicans in Congress to oppose the Iraq War. The congressman first realized he had made a mistake by voting to take the country to war after he attended the funeral of a local Marine killed in Iraq during the first month of the conflict. He soon began sending letters to the families of soldiers killed in Iraq or Afghanistan in what he called his “mea culpa to my Lord.” By December of 2017, he had sent over 12,000 of these messages.
Jones attracted a primary challenge in 2008 over his opposition to the Iraq War, but he took 59 percent of the vote and got to rest easy for a few years. However, Jones never stopped being an iconoclast. He notably was one of the few Republicans who voted for the Dodd-Frank banking reform law, and he voted against John Boehner during the 2013 and 2015 speakership elections.
Some establishment-oriented Republicans tried to take him out in the 2014 primary and they spent big on former George W. Bush aide Taylor Griffin. Jones won, but by just 51-45. The close shave didn’t change Jones’ behavior, and Griffin sought a rematch two years later. However, fewer primary voters were in the mood to punish Jones this time, and he won with 65 percent of the vote.
Jones continued to test how much he could vote against his party’s leadership during the first two years of the Trump administration. He notably voted against the House version of Trumpcare and the GOP leadership’s tax bill, and he was the only Republican in the chamber to vote against repealing major parts of the Dodd-Frank Act.
This time Jones faced a primary challenge from Craven County Commissioner Scott Dacey, who ran ads arguing that the district needed a strong Trump ally, and retired Marine Phil Law. Jones, whose campaign said during this battle that he would not seek re-election in 2020, beat Law 43-29. While Jones didn’t come close to losing, his last campaign did demonstrate that a majority of the GOP electorate was ready for change, so it’s probably just as well that he’s calling finally it quits.
