When Carey Estes Kefauver (1903-1963) was elected to Congress from Tennessee’s 3rd district to succeed the late Sam McReynolds in 1939, the state was firmly in the grip of Boss Crump of Memphis. Kefauver was a populist and a foe of bossism. Although some Tennessee Democrats, even those with prior progressive records like Crump’s partner Senator Kenneth McKellar, were pushing back against some elements of the New Deal, Kefauver was sticking with it. He distinguished himself early by voting to ban the poll tax in 1942 and 1943, being among the first Tennessee Democrats to ever vote for civil rights legislation. Kefauver was also an opponent of a number of anti-communist domestic measures, including funding for the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1943, the permanent establishment of the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1945, and a measure requiring loyalty investigations for all federal employees in 1947.

In 1948, the young representative felt he was ready to move up to the Senate but he was against a powerhouse in Boss Edward Hull Crump, who detested him and backed a challenger to incumbent Senator Tom Stewart over his handling over TVA matters in a little known judge named John A. Mitchell. However, Congressman Kefauver decided to tour the state and would often wear a coonskin cap on the campaign trail. Although not a good public speaker, he was second to none talking to individual voters and had a fanbase who would show up to his events. During this campaign, Crump made a fatal error for his candidate that would contribute to the iconic image of Kefauver. He posted an ad with the headline “Estes Kefauver Assumes the Role Of a Pet Coon”, and it charged Kefauver with being easy on communism and possibly even a fellow-traveler, with a comparison between his votes in the House and those of pro-communist Vito Marcantonio of New York. Kefauver responded that he may be a “coon, but not Boss Crump’s pet coon” (Hill). This approach was a winner! Kefauver’s victory in 1948 marked the beginning of the end of Crump’s statewide control, with his influence becoming completely limited to Memphis after his ally Kenneth McKellar’s defeat for renomination in 1952. Kefauver faced off against former Congressman B. Carroll Reece in the general election, and although the Republicans ran a serious campaign, Tennessee was statewide still a solidly Democratic state and he won commandingly.

Kefauver’s Senate Career: Starting with a Bang

Kefauver quickly made a splash in the Senate, and in 1950 he sponsored the Celler-Kefauver Anti-Trust Amendments, which strengthened the Clayton Anti-Trust Act of 1914 by prohibiting a company from purchasing assets from a competing firm. He also was one of the few senators, and one of only two from the South, to vote to sustain President Truman’s veto of the Internal Security Act. That year, Kefauver moved to create the Kefauver Organized Crime Committee.

Kefauver vs. Organized Crime and Runs for President

These hearings were televised throughout 1950 and 1951 and made the public aware of organized crime, with 20-30 million viewers for the first time seeing prominent mobsters testify. Kefauver took a no holds barred approach to this investigation, uncovering whatever could be uncovered regardless of political consequence. This had the effect of making numerous politicians uncomfortable, including ones from his own party. Former New York City Mayor William O’Dwyer was revealed to have connections with organized crime, Florida’s Democratic Governor Fuller Warren was revealed to have extensive ties with illicit gambling syndicates which ended his political career, and former Republican Governor Harold G. Hoffman of New Jersey made an appearance before the committee. Hoffman would admit in a written confession in an envelope opened after his death four years later to having embezzled over $300,000 as governor (Blackwell). Kefauver also publicized before 1950 Election Day a Chicago police corruption scandal, which along with the generally conservative and anti-communist mood of the electorate contributed to Senate Majority Leader Scott Lucas’s (D-Ill.) narrow reelection loss to former Republican Congressman Everett Dirksen. Although popular among the public, such moves, combined with his sanctimonious tone, made him unpopular with other politicians.

These hearings elevated Kefauver on the public scene and there was talk of him running for president. In 1952, he made a solid bid for the nomination, winning most of the primaries. However, the Democratic party bosses managed to use their influence to prevent him from getting the majority of delegates at the Democratic National Convention, and the nomination went to Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson II. Kefauver tried again in 1956 and even had a televised debate with Stevenson in Miami, but this time Stevenson won more primary votes, although he would get the nomination for vice president. While the Southern Democrats were getting more conservative, he was staying staunchly liberal, giving him appeal among Democrats across the country.


Personal Life

Although Kefauver was a strong advocate for ethics in politics, he personally had his issues. A married man, he was both a heavy drinker and a womanizer, and an FBI source reported that he “made love in plain view” with his date at a party at the Mayflower Hotel, and then swapped dates with JFK (Cox). Kefauver didn’t sleep around in Tennessee, but in Washington and abroad, he was libertine, once escorting a famous call girl to a society ball while touring Europe. On one occasion, New York Times columnist Russell Baker overheard him say to an aide, “I gotta fuck!” (Russo, 120) His ravenous appetite was well known among the Washington insiders. William “Fishbait” Miller, the House’s longtime doorkeeper, once called him the “worst womanizer in the Senate” and this assessment was shared by Chicago Sun-Times newspaper columnist Irv Kupcinet, who added, “Whenever he came to town…he let the word out: ‘Get me a woman!’ He would have put Gary Hart to shame” (Russo, 120). Bear in mind, Kefauver served for years with stiff competition in LBJ and JFK in the Senate.

Kefauver and Civil Rights

Although without question Kefauver was one of the most pro-civil rights Southerners in the Senate, he had difficulty with the idea of racial integration and was in favor of cross-examination of black complainants in voting rights cases. Kefauver also voted against ending debate on the Fair Employment Practices Committee in 1950 as well as in favor of weakening army desegregation. He displeased his Southern colleagues by being one of three Southern senators to not sign the segregationist Southern Manifesto (the other two were LBJ and Al Gore Sr.). Although Kefauver voted for both key weakening amendments (strike 14th Amendment implementation and jury trial amendment) to the Civil Rights Act of 1957, he voted for the final bill. He also voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1960.

The Comic Book and Switchblade Crusade

Kefauver’s campaign for public morals extended beyond organized crime and he aimed to tackle juvenile delinquency as well. In 1954, he was on the special Senate committee holding hearings on the allegedly corrupting influence of comic books, especially “horror comics” which could have gruesome covers and images. Its chairman, Senator Robert Hendrickson (R-N.J.), called them “the fifth horseman of doom” (Gonzalez). Among the people who testified was William Gaines, who would found MAD Magazine. Although the committee ruled out government censorship, they called upon the comic book industry to self-regulate, which they did with the Comics Code, which remained a substantial force in the industry into the 2000s.

In 1957, Kefauver, based on sensationalized newspaper reporting of threatening young hoodlums in leather jackets with switchblade knives, pushed for a federal ban on interstate sales and possession of them. He would categorize all sorts of knives under the umbrella term of “switchblade knives”, a bit of a precursor to the employment of the term “assault weapons” for numerous types of guns by gun control proponents. His legislation, however, was roundly rejected by his colleagues.

Final Term

In 1960, Kefauver decided instead of running for president again that he would run for a third term and won by a 2-1 margin – despite Richard Nixon’s 7-point victory over JFK in Tennessee, the Republican Party was still years away from its rise on a state level. Kefauver, like his colleague Al Gore Sr., proved a strong supporter of JFK’s New Frontier programs. He also had one last legislative accomplishment to achieve.

In the wake of the thalidomide catastrophe that mostly occurred abroad, Sen. Kefauver pushed for a new drug law, which became the Kefauver-Harris Amendment to the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act in 1962. This required drug manufacturers to prove efficacy and safety of their products before they could be approved by the FDA.

On August 8, 1963, Kefauver suffered what was diagnosed as a “mild” heart attack on the Senate floor and was taken to Bethesda Naval Hospital. However, there was something far more serious underlying and he needed surgery. However, dramatically underestimating the essence of time for this procedure, Kefauver put it off so he could see his wife and daughters before the operation – he suffered a ruptured aortic aneurysm and died before they could arrive, two days after his heart attack. Given his playboy lifestyle combined with heavy drinking, his demise at 60 certainly adds up. His adjusted average Americans for Democratic Action score, which tracks his career from 1947 and also counts his votes for part of 1963, is an 89%. His DW-Nominate score is a -0.429, which by that standard makes him more liberal than JFK, LBJ, Hubert Humphrey, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden.

References

Blackwell, J. 1954: The governor was a thief. The Trentonian.

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https://www.capitalcentury.com/1954.html

Brown, T. (2017, October 8). Carey Estes Kefauver. Tennessee Encyclopedia.

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https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entries/carey-estes-kefauver/

Cox, A.M. (2010, May 23). Doing It for the People: The 25 Greatest Philanderers in American Political History. GQ.

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https://www.gq.com/gallery/the-twenty-five-greatest-philanderers-in-american-political-history

Gonzalez, J. (2022, October 26). The Senate Comic Book Hearings of 1954. Library of Congress.

Retrieved from

https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2022/10/the-senate-comic-book-hearings-of-1954/

Hill, R. The Greatest Campaigner Of Them All. The Knoxville Focus.

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https://www.knoxfocus.com/archives/the-greatest-campaigner-of-them-all-senator-estes-kefauver-part-five/

Russo, G. (2008). Supermob: how Sidney Korshak and his criminal associates became America’s hidden power brokers. London, UK: Bloomsbury Publishing.

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https://www.google.com/books/edition/Supermob/YalWxsoWEIkC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Estes+Kefauver+womanizer&pg=PA120&printsec=frontcover

Sherrill, R. (1971, November 7). A decent man, but not a big one. The New York Times.

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https://www.nytimes.com/1971/11/07/archives/kefauver-a-political-biography-by-joseph-bruce-gorman-illustrated.html

Special Committee on Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce. U.S. Senate.

Retrieved from

https://www.senate.gov/about/powers-procedures/investigations/kefauver.htm