Scott won the Republican nomination for Virginia's 8th congressional district in 1966. He expected to face 18-term incumbent and House Rules Committee chairman Howard W. Smith, a conservative Democrat, but Smith lost renomination to a more liberal Democrat, State Delegate George Rawlings. With support from conservative Democrats as well as Republicans, Scott handily defeated Rawlings in November. He was easily re-elected twice, and served from January 3, 1967 to January 3, 1973.
United States Senate
In 1972, Scott won the Republican nomination for the United States Senate and defeated Democratic incumbent William B. Spong Jr. in a close race, making Scott the first Republican Senator from Virginia since Reconstruction. Scott benefited from Richard Nixon's landslide victory in that year's presidential election, with Nixon winning Virginia by almost 38 points and carrying all but one of the state's counties. Scott served one term, January 3, 1973 to January 1, 1979. He did not run for re-election in 1978, and resigned on January 1, 1979, two days before the end of his term. Scott's resignation enabled the Governor of Virginia to appoint the winner of the 1978 Senate election, John Warner, to fill the vacancy, giving Warner one day of seniority over other Senators who were elected in 1978. During his Congressional service, Scott was criticized for excessive expenses incurred during his fact-finding trips abroad.
Scott was frequently cited as an example of racism in Congress, and some of Scott's words and actions were reported in the media. At the time he was in office, Scott's views on race were considered mainstream in much of Virginia, where politics had long been dominated by the segregationist Byrd Organization. When criticizing the implementation of the Post Office's ZIP Code program, Scott was quoted as saying "the only reason we need zip codes is because niggers can't read." In addition, his name appeared in an exposé of Congressional staff hiring practices as one of the members who had given "No Blacks" and other similar instructions to the Capitol Hill Placement Bureau. Scott was also alleged to have displayed anti-semitism while in Congress. One news report indicated that during a job interview, Scott was told that the applicant was Jewish, and he replied "Oh, I've got too many of them here now to hire you."
"Dumbest Member of Congress"
A 1974 article in New Times by Nina Totenberg reported that Scott had been ranked at the top of the list of "The Ten Dumbest Members of Congress". Scott's critics cited many examples to support this claim. While being briefed about the military capabilities of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Scott reportedly confused missile silos for grain silos and said "Wait a minute! I'm not interested in agriculture. I want the military stuff." In addition, 1975 press accounts of a trip he took to the Middle East stated that Scott was a "diplomat's nightmare" who mistook the Suez Canal for the Persian Gulf, refused to enter a mosque because it wasn't "a Christian building", and asked Israeli Prime MinisterYitzhak Rabin "What is this Gaza stuff? I have never understood that." Scott held a press conference to deny the claims of the New Times story, which had the effect of giving the allegation wider circulation and enhanced credibility. In 2000 and afterwards, journalist Harry Stein, who had provided much of the background information to Totenberg based on an earlier Stein article for another publication called The Private Faces of Bill Scott, said the articles had been a "vicious hatchet job", and agreed with Scott's assessment at the time that the articles were written by "some left-wing kids from Richmond with an agenda." Stein went on to say that while Scott was a tempting target—roundly disliked by his colleagues and his staff, and widely regarded as incompetent—Stein and his colleagues had done Scott "a disservice" for which Stein expressed regret. Stein was noted for his liberal political point of view early in his career, but over time his politics became more conservative.
