Political Chili
Bear Grylls, the British adventurer and star of the TV series, “Man vs. Wild,” was once asked to explain his mania to summit Mt. Everest. “There’s a fine line between bravery and stupidity,” he famously replied. He might as well have been describing the thought process behind the most notorious food fight in the history of the U.S. Senate.
It’s best to begin at the beginning. On the morning of February 5, 1974, speaking in a grave tone he usually reserved for liberal Democrats, then-Texas Senator John Tower, a conservative Republican, rose from his chamber seat and addressed his congressional colleagues.
“I note from an article in the Houston Chronicle of this past weekend,” he said, with an air of disgust, “that the junior Senator from Arizona, the honorable Barry Goldwater, apparently made some comments on Texas chili at a function this past week at the National Press Club. The Chronicle quoted the Arizona Senator as saying, ‘I have heard that the Club serves only Texas chili. Tell me this is not true. A Texan does not know chili from leavings in a corral.’”
Gathering his breath, Tower then delivered a blistering rebuke, decrying Goldwater’s appalling absence of taste. He challenged the Arizona Senator to a chili cookoff — mano a mano, a beef-and-chili-peppers duel to the finish — to be held where the battle began, at the National Press Club. Goldwater, never one to back down from a challenge, be it political or gastronomical, accepted instantly. But neither took the other seriously enough to propose a contest date.
Interest in the matter might have died there, had not Ohio Senator Robert Taft Jr. risen from his seat and insinuated himself into their duel. Taft demanded, as a matter of state honor, that Cincinnati-style chili — a dish he ate only when campaigning there — be included in the contest. It would cost him his political career.
Two days later, on February 7, in a speech as unexpected as it was impassioned, Taft called upon his Senate colleagues to reject the Southwesterners’ claims of primacy and declare Cincinnati the chili capital of the world.
Some might wonder, as Tower and Goldwater did: What, exactly, is Cincinnati-style chili? Non-residents likely haven’t had the opportunity to sample the city’s interpretation of the dish. They should be grateful for their good fortune. It is a concoction best described as an acquired taste, though it’s difficult to imagine why anyone would want to do so.
Natives call Cincinnati’s classic form of chili a 5-Way. Its foundation is a mound of boiled spaghetti noodles, topped with a nondescript sauce mixed with “secret” herbs. Added in successive layers are chilies, kidney beans, onions and shredded cheddar cheese. The result glops onto a plate like an overweight pasta omelet. Let’s be clear: No chili dish is good for you. But Cincinnati chili is plain no good. Even so, Taft — whose father was former President William Howard Taft — informed reporters on February 19 that he was “in the chili war to stay.”
By mid-March, the Senator clearly had begun to unravel. In a letter to the National Press Club, dated March 14, he declared, “The Roman general Cincinnatus, when asked what his troops should be fed before an important battle, was heard to reply, ‘Let them eat Cincinnatus chili!’”
Yet on the night of the cookoff, April 4, Taft was nowhere to be found. Aides at the Press Club tried to cover for him. “The Senator has returned to Ohio, where he has a prior speaking engagement,” Randy Stayin, Taft’s administrative assistant, told reporters. Stayin, though, would not disclose where Taft would deliver his speech, or its contents.
As the Senator’s designated stand-in, Stayin knew he was in for a rough night. “The Press Club was jammed,” he later recalled. “Four hundred to five hundred people must have shown up. The place was just packed with Texans. The Tower people must have gotten to the judges, because the waiters were handing out rating cards that went from ‘excellent’ to ‘poor’ to ‘it just isn’t chili.’” Stayin hinted at conspiracy, claiming the last category had been added to remove Taft and Cincinnati chili from consideration.
Talk about an education gap. “All these crazy Texans were running around drunk, yelling, ‘Chili doesn’t belong on spaghetti!’’ Stayin said. “I could see that the spaghetti was going to cost us a ton of votes.”
The aide mounted a game defense. He gave a speech promoting what today we would call diversity at the dinner table. Noting that chili is not a specifically defined dish, he championed the Cincinnati version as an example of sublime experimentation. Sadly, much of his audience was too tipsy to pay attention. Tower and Goldwater had already delivered their speeches and appeared intoxicated, as well. Tower stood at one end of the room while Goldwater, coatless and tieless, a tumbler of bourbon in his hand, stood at the other.
“They were shouting obscene insults back and forth at each other, over the roar of the crowd,” Stayin said. “They were having a great time. I would like to have joined in, but I didn’t feel it was my place, being an administrative assistant. Bob [Taft] would have been useful here.”
In the end, Tower and Texas won the popular vote by acclimation; Goldwater and Arizona carried the so-called experts vote. Cincinnati, Stayin glumly conceded, “finished unranked and out of the money.”
According to Stayin, Taft was unfazed by the outcome. In fact, the aide said, “Taft didn’t care at all.”
Perhaps he should have. Two years later, in 1976, he lost his reelection bid to Howard Metzenbaum, a Democrat and avowed chili lover. Metzenbaum’s winning margin was less than one percent.
“Crazier things than chili have swayed elections,” Stayin said afterward, trying to explain Taft’s defeat. “Maybe a bloc of chili lovers decided to elect one of their own. You learn in this business that anything can happen with one percent of the vote.”
An earlier version of this piece ran in Cincinnati magazine. While on assignment, I sampled a Cincinnati 5-Way — so you won’t have to.
