 Later, in 1969, he bought the troubled Houston Mavericks of the American Basketball Association and moved them to North Carolina a year later as the Carolina Cougars.Active in Republican politics from the days the party barely existed in North Carolina, Gardner first made a splash when he ran for Congress in 1964 and nearly defeated 30-year Democratic incumbent Harold D. Cooley, the powerful chairman of the United States House Committee on Agriculture.In 1966, Gardner (by then chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party) toppled Cooley by a shocking 13-point margin to represent a district that included Raleigh as well as his home in Rocky Mount.