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 scurilous 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 virulent Fascists, likewise collaborated on The Defender, an anti-Semitic newspaper partly owned by Reynolds that portrayed Jews as the anti-Christ. 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.

Originally from the town of Asheville, Reynolds practiced law there and was elected to serve as solicitor (prosecuting attorney) for the area (1910–1914). He ran for Lieutenant Governor of North Carolina in 1924, losing to J. Elmer Long in the Democratic primary. Reynolds first ran for the United States Senate in 1926, but was not successful. He ran again in 1932 and defeated interim Senator Cameron Morrison in the Democratic primary runoff by nearly two to one after running a particularly nasty, populist campaign, which 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?"

President Franklin Roosevelt recruited Franklin W. Hancock, Jr. to oppose Reynolds in the 1938 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.