Charles Ellsworth Goodell Jr. (1926–1987) was a New York politician who served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1959 to 1968 and in the U.S. Senate from 1968 to 1971, taking office in both chambers only after the deaths of his predecessors—winning a special election for the House seat of Daniel A. Reed and being appointed by Governor Nelson Rockefeller to fill the vacancy left by the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. Once in the Senate, he transformed from a moderate-conservative congressman into a liberal Republican, becoming a vocal anti–Vietnam War advocate alongside Senator Mark Hatfield. He sponsored legislation to help small rural towns build infrastructure and voted for the Civil Rights Acts of 1960, 1964, and 1968, as well as the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In 1970, he lost his Senate seat to Conservative Party candidate James L. Buckley in a three-way race, splitting the liberal vote with Democrat Richard Ottinger. He was the father of NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, and his career highlights the ideological shift within the GOP during the Vietnam era and the rise of the conservative movement.