Columbia, S.C. – Harry Dent, a former top adviser to President Nixon who helped Nixon win the South, died Friday. He was 77.
Bob McAlister, a longtime friend and Republican strategist, said Dent died after a long bout with Alzheimer’s disease.
Born in St. Matthews on Feb. 21, 1930, Dent served in the Korean War as an infantry officer after graduating from Presbyterian College. After the war, he went to Washington, D.C., to become a correspondent for several South Carolina newspapers. From there, he joined the staff of U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond and became the then-Democrat’s chief of staff in 1956.
While working for the senator, Dent got his law degree and decided in 1966 to return to Columbia to practice law and serve as chairman of the state Republican Party.
Dent led a small group that won 26 seats in the General Assembly that year and helped Thurmond win his re-election to the Senate as a Republican. Then in 1968, Dent and Thurmond played a major role in swinging conservative Southern primary voters to Nixon instead of Ronald Reagan.
They helped Nixon win the White House by beating Democrat Hubert Humphrey by a slim margin that included winning the previously solid Democratic South. Dent was rewarded by being named special counsel to the president.
Dent was not involved in the Watergate scandal that swamped Nixon’s second term, but he did plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge for “aiding and abetting” an illicit, secret 1970 campaign fund that steered nearly $3 million into Republican Senate and House races.
He and his wife later started a lay ministry that helped build churches and orphanages in Romania after the fall of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989, McAlister said.
