Zell Miller
Zell Bryan Miller was an American politician who served as the 79th governor of Georgia from 1991 to 1999 and as a United States senator representing the state from 2000 to 2005. He was a member of the Democratic Party and before 2021 was the last Democratic senator from Georgia. He is also the last Democrat as of 2025 to be elected twice as Governor of Georgia.
Miller served as lieutenant governor of Georgia from 1975 to 1991. He was a conservative Democrat as a senator in the 2000s. In 2004, he backed Republican president George W. Bush over Democratic nominee John Kerry in the presidential election. Miller was a keynote speaker at both major American political parties' national conventions–Democratic in 1992 and Republican in 2004.
He did not seek re-election to the Senate in 2004. After retiring from the Senate, he joined the law firm McKenna Long & Aldridge as a non-lawyer professional in the firm's national government affairs practice. Miller was also a Fox News contributor. After he left his office in 2005, no Georgia Democrats were elected to the United States Senate for 16 years until Raphael Warnock won Miller's former seat in the 2020–2021 special runoff election and Jon Ossoff won the Class 2 seat in the 2020–2021 regular runoff election.
Early life and military career
Miller was born in the small mountain town of Young Harris, Georgia. His father, Stephen Grady Miller, was a teacher who died of cerebral meningitis when Miller was a 17-day-old infant, and the future politician was raised by his widowed mother, Birdie Bryan. He had a sister, Jane, who was six years older than he. As a child, Miller lived both in Young Harris and Atlanta. Miller received an associate degree from Young Harris College in his home town and later attended Emory University.Less than a month after the Korean War armistice, Miller wound up in a drunk tank in the mountains of North Georgia. Miller stated later that this incident was the lowest point of his life. Upon his release, Miller enlisted in the Marines. During his three years in the United States Marine Corps, Miller attained the rank of sergeant. He often referred to the value of his experience in the Marine Corps in his writing and stump speeches.
In his book on the subject, entitled Corps Values: Everything You Need to Know I Learned in the Marines, he wrote:
After serving in the Marines, Miller enrolled in 1956 and earned bachelor's and master's degrees in history from the University of Georgia. He taught history at Young Harris College following his graduation from the University of Georgia.
Political career
Miller's parents were both involved in local politics in the North Georgia mountains. Miller, a Democrat, taught history and political science at Young Harris College, before becoming mayor of Young Harris from 1959 to 1960. He was elected to two terms as a Georgia state senator from 1961 until 1964. In 1964 and 1966, Miller unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for the United States House of Representatives. He endorsed segregation in both races. In these congressional races, Miller denounced Lyndon Johnson as ""a Southerner who has sold his birthright for a mess of dark porridge.". Miller later served in state government as the executive secretary to Governor Lester Maddox and in the Georgia Democratic Party, and was the Georgia state chairman for Walter Mondale's 1984 presidential campaign.Miller's first experience in the executive branch of government was as Chief of Staff for Georgia governor Lester Maddox. Although Maddox had run on a segregationist platform, Miller convinced Maddox to do many shocking things in office, such as integrating the Georgia State Patrol, appointing African Americans to government positions, and reforming prisons. Miller was elected Lieutenant Governor of Georgia in 1974, serving four terms from 1975 to 1991, through the terms of Governors George Busbee and Joe Frank Harris, making him the longest-serving lieutenant governor in Georgia history. In 1980, Miller unsuccessfully challenged Herman Talmadge in the Democratic primary for his seat in the United States Senate. Some analysts surmised that Miller so severely weakened Talmadge in the primary, considered one of Georgia's nastiest, that it caused Talmadge to narrowly lose in the fall to Georgia's first Republican elected to the Senate since Reconstruction, Mack Mattingly.
Governor of Georgia
Miller was elected governor of Georgia in 1990, defeating Republican Johnny Isakson after defeating former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young and future Governor Roy Barnes in the primary. Miller campaigned on the concept of term limits and pledged to seek only a single term as governor. He later ran for and won re-election in 1994. James Carville was Miller's campaign manager.In 1991, Miller endorsed Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas for president. Miller gave the keynote speech at the 1992 Democratic National Convention at Madison Square Garden in New York City. In two oft-recalled lines, Miller said that President George H. W. Bush "just doesn't get it", and he remarked of a statement by Vice President Dan Quayle:
Twelve years later, Miller would give the keynote address at the opposing party's convention, also held at New York's Madison Square Garden, in 2004.
As governor, Miller was perhaps best known for his advocacy of a law passed in Georgia known as "two strikes and you're out", as any person convicted for the second time of any included offense would automatically be sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. The law derives its name from and stands in contrast to the three strikes law, and is also known as the Seven-deadly-sins law. The law was passed in April 1994, although it had been advocated by Miller for many years previously. It was approved by voters on November 8, 1994, and was signed into law by then Governor Zell Miller on December 15, 1994, and went into effect on January 1, 1995. The law is codified and found under Title 17, Chapter 10, Section 7 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated. The law states that those convicted of second-degree murder, armed robbery, or kidnapping must serve a minimum term of 10 years in prison, and those convicted of rape, kidnapping of a minor under 14 years old, aggravated sexual battery, aggravated sodomy or aggravated child molestation must serve a minimum term of not less than 25 years in prison. First-degree murder is punishable by death, life without parole, or life in prison with no parole until the offender serves at least 30 years in prison. These crimes are known in Georgia as the "seven deadly sins".
As governor, Miller was a staunch promoter of public education. He helped found the HOPE Scholarship, which paid for the college tuition of Georgia students who both established a GPA of 3.0 in high school and maintained the same while in college, and who were from families earning less than $66,000 per year. The HOPE Scholarships were funded by revenue collected from the state lottery. In December 1995, his office announced a proposal for $1 billion more in spending on education. HOPE won praise from national Democratic leaders. The HOPE Scholarship program still to this day provides Georgia students with an opportunity to attend a public college or university, who otherwise may have no opportunity to do so.
Upon leaving the governor's office in January 1999, Miller accepted teaching positions at Young Harris College, Emory University, and the University of Georgia. He was a visiting professor at all three institutions when he was appointed to the U.S. Senate in 2000.
U. S. Senator
Miller's successor as governor, Roy Barnes, appointed Miller to a U.S. Senate seat following the death of Republican senator Paul Coverdell in July 2000. Although the Democratic Party's historic control of Georgia politics had been waning for years, Miller remained popular. He defeated former U.S. Senator Mack Mattingly in a special election to keep the seat in November 2000.Miller often supported Republicans and criticized Democrats during his tenure in the Senate. He supported much of George W. Bush's agenda, including tax cuts and oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. He supported anti-abortion policies as a senator, after supporting abortion rights as governor. He also supported a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage as senator, after inviting the Gay Games to Atlanta as governor. However, Miller remained a Democrat, saying, "I'll be a Democrat 'til the day I die." Miller campaigned for fellow Georgia Democrat Max Cleland in his 2002 re-election campaign against Republican Congressman Saxby Chambliss, despite their ideological differences.
Miller argued in his book A National Party No More: The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat that the Democratic Party lost its majority because it did not stand for the same ideals that it did in the era of John F. Kennedy. He argued that the Democratic Party, as it now stood, was a far left-wing party that was out of touch with the America of today and that the Republican Party now embraced the conservative Democratic ideals that he had held for so long. The book spent nine weeks in the New York Times Best Seller list for hardcover non-fiction, peaking at number four.
In 2003, Miller announced that he would not seek re-election after completing his term in the Senate. He also announced that he would support President George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential election rather than any of the nine candidates then competing for his own party's nomination. Shortly after announcing his retirement, Miller began to call for the repeal of the Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which allowed for the direct election of U.S. Senators, rather than having U.S. Senators be elected by state legislatures. During his four years in the Senate, Zell Miller received a cumulative rating of 70% from the American Conservative Union, including a rating of 96% in 2004.