All roads eventually lead to New Jersey, the center of America’s political universe, so it shouldn’t be surprising that an Eisenhower-era congressman from Iowa with a shady past who is celebrating his 100th birthday today has ties to Teterboro (pop. 67), the third-smallest municipality in the state.
Merwin Coad, a Democrat who served in the U.S. House of Representatives while Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy were in the White House, is the earliest-serving Member of Congress still alive and the second-oldest, behind Frank J. Guarini (D-Jersey City), who turned 100 less than six weeks ago.
Coad was a 32-year-old minister and Boy Scout leader when he won a congressional seat in 1956. He unseated six-term incumbent James Dolliver by 198 votes in a contest that Republicans sought to overturn. He was re-elected in 1958 with 58% and in 1960 with 54%.
But in 1962, Coad abruptly announced that he would not seek a fourth term. After that, his life began to unravel when the media began to figure out some of the details of his personal life.
Coad had gone to Alabama (then a quickie divorce state) in 1961 to obtain a divorce without telling his wife of seventeen years and then secretly married the 26-year-old ex-wife of his chief of staff, Edward J. Peters, shortly after they obtained a divorce in Las Vegas. It took more than a year for the story to get out. His new wife, who was Miss Ogden, Utah in 1956, was also a member of Coad’s congressional staff, and after their marriage, he raised her salary to make her the highest-paid employee in his office. In today’s dollars, the new Mrs. Coad was making about $125,000 annually.
In June 1960, Coad had sent Peters back to Iowa to run his re-election campaign and sent his wife and four children back home while he remained in Washington with Peters’ wife, saying he needed his secretary on Capitol Hill. Delores Coad apparently did not know her husband had divorced her until a reporter told her.
The story of Coad’s marital situation caught the interest of Des Moines Register reporter Clark Mollenhoff, who did a deep dive into Coad’s finances. Coad had accumulated significant debt, losing money as a grain market speculator despite his seat on the House Agriculture Committee. He had gambling losses, including a $2,000 hit in a late-night Washington poker game – that’s about $20,000 in 2023 dollars. Coad took on a big mortgage for a new house in Washington and bounced a $4,000 check with the House Segreant-At-Arms.
After leaving Congress, Coad got a job as a consultant for the Agency for International Development. But when Iowa’s U.S. Senator, Republican Bourke Hickenlooper, found out about his $75-per-day gig, he called the Kennedy White House to complain, and Coad was gone one day later.
Coad went into the real estate lending business in the Washington suburbs and later faced allegations of mortgage fraud when a widow claimed he had charged her a usurious borrowing rate and defrauded her.
U.S. District Court Judge John J. Sirica, who would gain fame during the Watergate scandal a few years later, slammed the former congressman and minister.
“This is just a racket…that’s all it is… just a racket,” Sirica said in a 1967 ruling that rejected his bid to foreclose on the widow’s home. “This thing smacks of fraud.”
In 1981, another Des Moines Register reporter, Daniel Pederson, found Coad had moved to Nebraska and ran ads in a local inviting people to come to hear him speak at a local Holiday Inn about how to get rich: “You can buy real estate with no money down and become wealthy in your spare time,” he explained. “Congressman Coad’s 12 proven no-money-down secrets to wealth.”
According to Pederson, dozens of attendees paid Coad $395-a-person to learn his secrets. By the 1990s, Coad faced accusations of defrauding investors in real estate schemes. He had also been married and divorced at least two more times.
Coad now lives in Florida.
Two weeks ago, the New Jersey Globe heard from Georgette Hill-Coad, 66, a Teterboro resident who said she was Coad’s wife.
Hill-Coad said she married Coad on September 19, 1991
Records show that Merwin Coad divorced her in Florida in April 1998, but Hill-Coad appeared unclear about her status.
Editor’s note: an earlier version of this story incorrectly identified Jack Miller as the GOP senator from Iowa who had Coad fired; it was Bourke Hickenlooper.