Charles Mathias
American politician (1922-2010)

Charles McCurdy Mathias Jr. (July 24, 1922 – January 25, 2010) was an American politician and attorney from the U.S. state of Maryland. A member of the Republican Party, he served in both chambers of the United States Congress as a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1961 to 1969 and as a member of the United States Senate from 1969 to 1987. He was also a member of the Maryland House of Delegates from 1959 to 1961.
After studying law and serving in the United States Navy during World War II, Mathias worked as a lawyer and was elected to the state legislature in 1958. In 1960, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Western Maryland. He was re-elected three times (1962, 1964, 1966), serving in the House for eight years, where he aligned himself with the then-influential liberal wing of the Republican Party.
Mathias was elected to the Senate in 1968, unseating the incumbent Democrat, Daniel Brewster, who twenty years earlier had been his roommate while attending the University of Maryland School of Law. He continued his record as a liberal Republican in the Senate, and frequently clashed with the conservative wing of his party. For a few months in late 1975 and early 1976, Mathias considered running an insurgent presidential campaign in an attempt to stave off the increasing influence of conservative Republicans led by Ronald Reagan.
“Charles Mathias” enters the record as american politician (1922-2010). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Charles, Mathias and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q457455. VIAF identifies the subject as 1275783. The Library of Congress control number is n78079235. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1922, 2010, 1961 and 1969.
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This entry incorporates text from “Charles Mathias” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.