After her husband died unexpectedly on the campaign trail, Charlotte T. Reid agreed to run in his place and was elected to the House in 1962. A fiscal conservative and proponent of small government, she opposed President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs, stating, “My guiding principles on all questions are economy, decentralization of federal power, and freedom of the individual.” Reid resigned her seat in 1971 to accept President Richard Nixon’s appointment to the Federal Communications Commission.
