Mack Mattingly

Mack Francis Mattingly (born January 7, 1931) is the first Republican to have served as United States Senator from his adopted state of Georgia. His tenure extended for a single term from 1981 to 1987. He is the first Republican since Reconstruction to have been a U.S. Senator from Georgia.

Background

Mattingly was born in Anderson in central Indiana, on January 7, 1931. He served four years in the United States Air Force and was stationed in the early 1950s at Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, Georgia. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in marketing from Indiana University in Bloomington. Afterwards, he worked for twenty years for International Business Machines in Georgia and later operated his own business, M's Inc., which sold office supplies and equipment in Brunswick, Georgia.

Career

Mattingly first became active in politics in 1964 when he served as chairman of U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater's campaign for President in Georgia's 8th congressional district. Goldwater carried Georgia but lost forty-four states to U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson. Two years later, Mattingly would help Howard Hollis "Bo" Callaway (1927-2014) organize the Georgia Republican Party and joined Callaway's ticket as a candidate for the United States House of Representatives against incumbent Williamson Sylvester Stuckey, Jr. (born 1935), whose father founded the Stuckeyn of gift stores. Mattingly lost the race but was elected to his party's state executive committee, of which he was the vice chairman from 1968 until 1975. He served as Chairman of the Georgia Republican Party from 1975 to 1977 when he began exploring a race for the U.S. Senate.

In 1980, Mattingly scored a historic upset by unseating the veteran Democratic Senator Herman Talmadge, a former Georgia governor and the son of Governor Eugene Talmadge. Mattingly outpolled Ronald Reagan, who lost Georgia to native son Democrat Jimmy Carter.