Elizabeth Andrews was schooled in elective politics as the
wife of a longtime and powerful Member of Congress. When
her husband, George William Andrews, died suddenly in
late 1971, friends convinced her to seek election for the
remainder of his term to further his legislative agenda.
“All I want is to do the best I can for the rest of the term,”
Elizabeth Andrews told reporters on New Year’s Day 1972.
“I simply want to complete George’s plans as best I can.”1
Leslie Elizabeth Bullock was born in Geneva, Alabama,
on February 12, 1911. Her father, Charles Gillespie Bullock,
was a businessman. Elizabeth Bullock attended school in
her hometown of Geneva. In 1932 she graduated from
Montevallo College, majoring in home economics. Bullock
subsequently taught high school home economics in
Livingston, Alabama. During the Depression, she relocated
to a school in Union Springs for better pay.2 There she met
her future husband, George Andrews, whom she married in
1936. They raised two children: Jane and George Jr.
During the 1930s, George Andrews served as district
attorney in the Alabama circuit court system. He held the
position until 1943, when he served as an officer in the
U.S. Naval Reserve and was stationed in Pearl Harbor,
Hawaii Territory. When longtime Representative Henry
Bascom Steagall of Alabama died in November 1943,
Andrews announced his candidacy for the vacant seat in the
rural, 12-county southeastern Alabama district. Elizabeth
Andrews, at home raising the couple’s young daughter,
got her first taste of elective politics. With her husband
thousands of miles away in the Pacific, she became a lead
member of his campaign team, taking to the hustings to
make speeches on his behalf. Running as a Democrat,
Andrews won the March 1944 special election for a seat
in the 78th Congress (1943–1945) while still overseas. He
was re-elected to the 14 succeeding Congresses. The couple
eventually relocated to Washington, DC, where Elizabeth
became active in the Congressional Club, made up of
spouses of Members of Congress. Eventually, she served as
vice president of the organization in 1971. George Andrews,
meanwhile, became a senior and powerful member of
the Appropriations Committee, eventually chairing its
Legislative Subcommittee. He was a fiscal conservative, a
critic of civil rights legislation, a friend of segregationist
Alabama Governor George Wallace (whose hometown was
in Andrews’s district), and a defense hawk. By his final term
in office, he was among the top 20 House Members in
terms of seniority.
On Christmas Day 1971, George Andrews died after
complications from heart surgery. “I had no idea of running
for George’s office,” Elizabeth Andrews later recalled, “until
friends encouraged me to do so.” One in particular, Lera
Thomas, a congressional widow-turned-Representative from
Texas, proved most convincing. Thomas, who served out
the remainder of her husband’s term in the 89th Congress
(1965–1967) in 1966, and Andrews had known each other
for years; their husbands had served on the Appropriations
Committee together. After George Andrews’s funeral,
Lera Thomas approached Elizabeth: “Don’t rule out going
to Capitol Hill yourself. You know more about his plans
than any other living person, and I personally know
what it will mean to the constituency.”3 Andrews was
particularly focused on securing funds for a new cancer
treatment center in Birmingham, Alabama—a project her
husband was working on at the time of his death.4 She told
Democratic state party leaders that she would consider
running for the office.5
On January 1, 1972, Andrews announced her candidacy.
Because Alabama lost a seat after the 1970 Census, George
Andrews’s district was set to be reapportioned out of
existence before the November 1972 elections. Andrews’s
death made the district’s boundaries even more vulnerable,
as districts of retiring or deceased long-term incumbents
were often divided in the case of reapportionment.
The impending change in district lines brought in new
voters, which also threatened the traditional Democratic
dominance in the district; no Republican had served
southeastern Alabama since the end of Reconstruction
in 1877. In fact, the new district, which incorporated
more central territory, including Montgomery, eventually
elected a Republican candidate in November 1972.6 A
number of Democratic contenders showed some initial
interest in the nomination, but the problems created by the
impending reapportionment dampened their enthusiasm.7
This did not bother Andrews, as she also firmly announced
her intention not to run for a term in the succeeding
Congress.8 Moreover, Andrews’s name recognition and
powerful supporters added to the long-term historical
trends that favored her candidacy.9
When the Alabama Democratic Executive Committee
convened to choose a nominee, a group of progressive
members opposed Andrews’s candidacy, pushing for
Lucius Amerson, the state’s first elected African-American
sheriff since Reconstruction. Amerson seemed to be a
symbolic choice given his race, but he also appealed to
local Democrats who wanted a strong candidate to seek
re-election in November and retain the party’s control
over the new district.10 Success in Alabama politics in the
early 1970s, however, often depended on the support of
personal connections.11 Andrews’s supporters included
the powerful Governor George Wallace, who intervened
on behalf of his late friend’s wife. Though attempting to
distance himself from his statements and actions in support
of racial segregation in preparation for a 1972 presidential
bid, Wallace endorsed Elizabeth Andrews over Amerson
and insisted that if Democrats did not nominate her, he
would back her as an Independent.12 Based largely on
the influential Wallace’s warning, the committee favored
Andrews 72 to 17. Afterward, the state GOP Executive
Committee allowed her to run unopposed in the general
election if Democrats nominated her, ostensibly to
focus on the November campaign for a full term in the
next Congress.13
On April 4, 1972, facing no opposition, Andrews easily
won election to fill out the remainder of her husband’s
term.14 The cost of her bid was so low that she was able
to return most of the donations to her campaign.15 She
became the first woman from Alabama ever elected to
Congress; two previous women had been nominated
to serve brief terms in the Senate. Andrews, however,
minimized the significance of her gender. “Womanhood
per se was never an issue,” she said. “In Alabama today, if
a woman is qualified and capable, she can obtain political
support.”16
In the 92nd Congress (1971–1973), Elizabeth Andrews
served on the Committee on Post Office and Civil Service,
occupying the same office space as George Andrews had
from 1950 to 1964. She was able to seamlessly transition
into the role of Representative after nearly three decades in
Washington. As her daughter later recalled, Andrews had
been with her husband “every step of the way. She knew his
thoughts, she knew his goals, because she was part of it.”
After nearly three decades in Washington, “she had grown
up with the legislative process.”17
From her committee post, Congresswoman Andrews
introduced several amendments to protect medical and
Social Security benefits. One of her amendments to Social
Security legislation increased recipients’ earned income
limits; another abolished proposed cuts in welfare aid
scheduled because of coincident increases in Social Security
payments.18 Andrews also urged appropriators to provide
funding for the cancer treatment center at the University
of Alabama–Birmingham.19 In a concurrent resolution that
was approved by both chambers, she encouraged American
families to plant vegetable gardens for food, recreation, and
to combat inflation.20 Along with Alabama Representative
William Flynt Nichols, she sponsored a bill to create a
Tuskegee Institute National Historic Park.21 Although
the House did not vote on this bill before the end of the
session, the park was one of several historic sites established
by a 1974 law.22 The site commemorated the teachers’
school that Booker T. Washington founded in 1881 that
later became a center for African-American education and
home to an aeronautics program and flight school which
produced the legendary Tuskegee Airmen of World War II.
Andrews also favored the Richard M. Nixon
administration’s plan for withdrawing U.S. troops from
Vietnam, the so-called “Vietnamization” of the war ef fort,
noting that “military victory has been abandoned as a
goal.”23 Andrews made only one floor speech during her
nine months in office, taking to the well of the House
to denounce “professional dissenters” and protestors the
day after presidential candidate and Alabama Governor
George Wallace was critically wounded in an assassination
attempt while campaigning in Laurel, Maryland. “Failure to
maintain order for all presidential candidates during their
public appearances has resulted in an ominous atmosphere
of tension, hostility, and clear danger,” Andrews told
colleagues. “All Americans, regardless of philosophy or party
affiliation, should be dismayed at this vicious assault on a
man who dared to go out among the people in his quest for
support in a presidential campaign.”24
When Andrews’s term expired, her House colleagues
praised her service. Fellow Alabama Representative
William Jackson (Jack) Edwards noted, “In serving
her constituents this year she worked harder than most
freshmen Members running for re-election … furthering
the programs her husband worked so hard for.” Jamie
Whitten of Mississippi observed that Andrews “carried on
in the style her district has been accustomed to.”25 Prior to
retiring, the 62-year-old Congresswoman told a reporter
that “the district needed the mantle to fall on someone
younger.”26 After she left Congress in January 1973,
Andrews retired to Union Springs and remained active in
civic affairs for several decades. On December 2, 2002,
Congresswoman Andrews passed away in Birmingham.
View Record in the Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress
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