Month: August 2025

Fascinating Politics

The Voting Rights Act Debate

This month, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 turned 60; Lyndon B. Johnson signed the bill into law on August 6th. Thus, I am covering the subject of the process of its passage.

Selma

The violence seen on national TV in Selma, with non-violent protestors being beaten by police on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, shocked the nation and increased calls for action on voting rights. Further pushing public opinion was a racist mob beating Reverend James Reeb to death at Selma and the murder of Viola Liuzzo by members of the KKK. Although the previous year’s landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 had a section for voting rights, it was not regarded as sufficiently strong during the 1964 election. Although it was clear that in the Great Society Congress action would be taken, the question was which course would be taken?

A Harsh Bill

After these events that got worldwide press coverage, President Johnson instructed his Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach to craft “the goddamndest, toughest voting rights act that you can” to counter the situation in the South. The Johnson Administration’s measure, backed by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Emanuel Celler (D-N.Y.), contained the following provisions:

. A suspension of literacy tests for five years in areas where less than 50% of the eligible population was registered or voted in the 1964 election.

. Federal examiners to register and enforce the right to vote for all citizens unable to exercise the right.

. Nationwide prohibition on measures that are discriminatory in voting practices.

. Outright ban on the poll tax for voting in state and local elections.

. Language assistance for voters who were not proficient in English.

. A “preclearance” provision requiring covered states and localities to get their election changes approved by the US Attorney General. This was one of the most controversial provisions.

The Senate

The advocacy for a strong Voting Rights Act was led by Senator Phillip Hart (D-Mich.), the bill’s manager, and was aided in efforts to strengthen the bill by Hiram Fong (R-Haw.), Birch Bayh (D-Ind.), Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), Edward Long (D-Mo.), Joseph Tydings (D-Md.), Jacob Javits (R-N.Y.), Quentin Burdick (D-N.D.), and Hugh Scott (R-Penn.). The opposition to the measure would normally be led by Richard Russell (D-Ga.), but he was under the weather so the bulk of the work against came from Allen Ellender (D-La.), with help from Sam Ervin (D-N.C.), James Eastland (D-Miss.), John Stennis (D-Miss.), Herman Talmadge (D-Ga.), Lister Hill (D-Ala.), and John Sparkman (D-Ala.). The Senate’s party leaders, Mike Mansfield (D-Mont.) and Everett Dirksen (R-Ill.), were instrumental in crafting a bill that could get widespread support.

Whither Poll Taxes?

One controversy surrounding the Voting Rights Act was how the law should address poll taxes. The original bill had a provision that outright banned state and local poll taxes, but the bill was changed in the Senate on this count. A key vote on the Voting Rights Act was regarding Senator Ted Kennedy’s (D-Mass.) amendment to retain the bill’s explicit ban on the poll tax for states and localities. This amendment was opposed by President Johnson, Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, and Minority Leader Everett Dirksen. Mansfield and Dirksen crafted a substitute that declared that poll taxes were contrary to the right to vote and directed the U.S. Attorney General to initiate lawsuits against poll taxes in states and localities, believing that courts would act against poll taxes. Kennedy’s amendment failed on May 11th, 45-49. Courts would act as Mansfield and Dirksen anticipated in striking down poll taxes.  The most unusual vote was from Louisiana’s Russell Long, who voted for this amendment but voted against the Voting Rights Act.

Support for the Voting Rights Act:

George McGovern (D-S.D.), future presidential contender, stated, “For more than one hundred years this basic right [voting] has been denied to large segments of the American citizenry, solely because of the color of their skin. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 will secure that right. It will be passed by an overwhelming margin, because there is broad agreement on the part of the American people that to deprive the American Negro of the right to vote is to deprive all of us of the essence of our heritage and democracy” (11750).

Jacob Javits (R-N.Y.), one of the Senate’s leading liberals, justified support of the Voting Rights Act given numerous instances of denials of the vote, stating, “The fundamental basis for the bill is the factual finding of Congress that there have been such widespread denials of the fundamental right to vote in so many broad areas of the Nation as to require the application of remedies in order to implement the 15th amendment” (11740).

Milward Simpson (R-Wyo.), while acknowledging the bill was a tough measure, he also said, “Time and time again legislation has been before the Congress which is proposed with the view toward bringing the right to vote to all citizens. I am ashamed, and all Americans should be ashamed, that this right has not been one of those cherished rights guaranteed to all citizens, regardless of race or color” (11746). Simpson’s support is a significant development as he had been one of six Republican senators to vote against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 the previous year.

Opposition to the Voting Rights Act:

James Eastland (D-Miss.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee who had made his committee the “graveyard” for civil rights legislation, asserted that with the Voting Rights Act “we are entering an era of absolute government. The bill is a major step in that direction. It will destroy the system of government that we know now. We are destroying it under the whiplash of Martin Luther King and others of that ilk” and cited Article I, section 2 of the Constitution to justify opposition (11735).

John Sparkman (D-Ala.), who was the Democratic Party’s pick for vice president in 1952, opposed the bill on nine counts, including what he found to be unequal protection of the laws, a distortion of the proper relationship between federal, legislative, and judicial functions of government, and that the bill was sectional (11727-11728).

John Tower (R-Tex.) stated his sympathy with the aim of the bill and acknowledged that the federal government does have the authority to enforce the 15th Amendment, he objected to way it was to be achieved, holding, “Mr. President, the mathematical guilt formula to be so unjustly hung upon several States and counties, is arrived through the highly questionable assumption that literacy tests and lower voter participation always means discrimination. Other objective, basic assumptions that lack of participation in certain elections may be due to a strong one-party system, voter apathy toward one or more candidates, or even bad weather, are completely ignored” (11751).

Whither Literacy Tests?

The Voting Rights Act suspended literacy tests for five years in covered jurisdictions, and literacy tests would later be banned permanently. The core debate surrounded the question of whether literacy should be a consideration or if literacy tests should remain but with standards as to what constitutes literacy. Republicans, such as William McCulloch (R-Ohio), thought that a 6th grade education was sufficient proof of literacy. This standard would be placed into the Republican substitute of the bill. Another controversial proposal was by Rep. Jacob Gilbert (D-N.Y.), which permitted people to vote if they proved literate in a language other than English that was taught in their school. This amendment, primarily geared towards Puerto Ricans, was rejected 202-216. The bill passed 77-19 on May 26th, but the measure still had to get through the House.

Proposed Republican Substitute

House Republicans had an alternative voting rights plan, backed by Minority Leader Gerald Ford (R-Mich.) and William McCulloch (R-Ohio), ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee. This substitute aimed to balance out the interests of state’s rights and civil rights, by making enforcement on a by county basis. It established a 6th grade education as proof of literacy (thus allowing literacy tests for individuals who had not graduated from 6th grade), retained the ban on poll taxes and would also cover Texas under the Voting Rights Act, which President Johnson, who continued to look out for the interests of his home state, didn’t want. Although not exactly a prince of a state on the subject of voting rights, it was known that the conditions of Texas were not like those of the Deep South. Rep. William McCulloch critiqued the Celler (D-N.Y.) version of the bill, and did so on conservative terms, calling the automatic trigger mechanism in the bill “pure fantasy – a presumption based on a presumption” and considered the committee bill an attack on the ability of the states to determine voter qualifications (Reichardt). This substitute had a key foe in liberal stalwart Frank Thompson (D-N.J.), who argued, “…I oppose the Ford-McCulloch substitute amendment because it does not reach down into the heart of the problems were are trying to eliminate. It is no fiction that “tests and devices,” a key phrase in voting and registration legislation, are being used to restrict the franchise. A serious defect of the Republican leadership substitute is in its requirement that Federal examiners administer tests to applicants with less than six grades of education. This requirement would serve to continue into the present and the future a double standard of testing – the very evil we are attempting to eliminate. Negroes would be tested by the examiners on the basis of the standard set forth in the substitute amendment – completion of six grades or passing of the State literacy test. At the same time, whites would be applying for registration to the State or local registrar, who would presumably do what he has always done – register whites on the basis of their white skin rather than on the basis of any educational achievement or passage of any test” (16228). Most fatal to this proposed substitute, however, was the embrace most Southern Democrats gave this substitute, even if they did not intend to support it on passage. This signaled to the liberal 89th Congress, already predisposed to support President Johnson on domestic policy, that the Republican substitute was weak. Rep. Harold Collier’s (R-Ill.) effort for the House to adopt the Republican substitute as well as Rep. Robert McClory’s (R-Ill.) amendment failed 171-248. Interestingly, a few opponents of the Voting Rights Act voted against this substitute, including some from Texas, as this version would have covered Texas. One Republican proposed amendment that did pass, however, was the Cramer (R-Fla.) anti-voter fraud proposal, which passed 253-165 with all Republicans in support.

House Supporters:

Ed Roybal (D-Calif.) cited recent violent events as justification for the Voting Rights Act and considered the measure a “clear, practical, effective, and legislatively responsible way to enable citizens to vote without the fear or threat of discrimination” (16280).

Majority Whip Hale Boggs (D-La.) stated, “I wish I could stand here as a man who loves my State, born and reared in the South, who has spent every year of his life in Louisiana since he was 5 years old, and say there has not been discrimination. But unfortunately it is not so” and went on to state, “I shall support this bill because I believe the fundamental right to vote must be part of this great experiment in human progress under freedom which is America” (U.S. House of Representatives). His announcement of support was a big deal given that he had previously opposed all civil rights measures save for the 24th Amendment.  

Jonathan Bingham (D-N.Y.) stated his support for the Celler (D-N.Y.) version, regarding the Ford-McCulloch substitute as much weaker (16273).

Paul Findley (R-Ill.) spoke in support of the bill, citing the Lincolnian heritage of the Republican Party as Lincoln’s Illinois hometown of Springfield being in his district, and praised Gerald Ford’s (R-Mich.) recent appointment of Frank Mitchell, the first black page of the House (16272).

Charles Goodell (R-N.Y.) stated his reserved support for the Celler (D-N.Y.) version of the Voting Rights Act and voiced his preference for the Ford-McCulloch substitute. He regarded the Celler version as “unnecessarily punitive” and critiqued only applying the Voting Rights Act to seven states, noting Texas being absent from coverage, but said he would vote for the Celler bill (16273).

William F. Ryan (D-N.Y.) wanted a measure that did more, and cited deprivations he witnessed as a civil rights activist of freedoms of speech, assembly, and press, but acknowledged that this measure was the furthest the federal government had gone so far (16265).

Frank Annunzio (D-Ill.) praised the bill and also cited the murders of civil rights activists Reverend James J. Reeb and Viola Liuzzo as being bad for the US’s image abroad (16272).

House Opponents:

John Dowdy (D-Tex.) condemned the suspension of certain state laws surrounding election policy and considered suspensions as characteristic of martial law or the tyrannical regimes of Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin, but not America (16268).

Glenn Andrews (R-Ala.) asserted that the Voting Rights Act itself was a form of discrimination against seven states, Alabama being among them, and cited Article II, section 1, clause 2 that states have the right to set voter qualifications (Congressional Record, 16274).

James Broyhill (R-N.C.) stated his opposition to the Celler version of the Voting Rights Act, but said that if the Ford-McCulloch substitute would be adopted that he would vote for the bill on passage (16270).

W.J. Bryan Dorn (D-S.C.) condemned the embrace of the Voting Rights Act as Congress “being forced to bow and subvert itself to the will of the mob”  and that the legislation was “punitive”, “vindictive and sectional”, and “evil” (16268).

The House passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 333-85 on July 9th.

There are a few things to note about the votes on the Voting Rights Act. First, opposition was almost entirely among Southern politicians. There were only seven legislators outside of the South that opposed the Voting Rights Act on both initial passage and the vote on the conference report: Senator Robert Byrd (D-W.V.), Republican Representatives H. Allen Smith of Glendale and James B. Utt of Tustin (Orange County), California, Republican George Hansen of Pocatello, Idaho, Republican H.R. Gross of Waterloo, Iowa, Democrat Paul C. Jones of Kennett, Missouri, and Republican Robert C. McEwen of Ogdensburg, New York. Also of note was the abstention of Democrat Adam Clayton Powell Jr. of Harlem, New York. Although in truth of disputable racial identity as he was of mixed racial origin (he had blue eyes) and thus could have passed for white, Powell identified himself as black, and a radical at that, and abstained as he thought the bill was not strong enough.  He held that this as well as the 1966 civil rights bill was a “phony carrot stick” for black middle class (CQ Press). There were also notable differences between the House and Senate versions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, including the House version’s outright ban of state and local poll taxes. The final version hammered out by the conference committee kept the Senate language on state and local poll taxes, thus they would be challenged in court, adopted the Senate’s provision that waived requirements for English literacy to vote in certain cases, and adopted the stronger triggering formula in the House bill as opposed to the Senate bill which allowed certain escape clauses (Reichardt). The net impact of the conference committee’s bill does seem to have been to make the bill stronger. The only senator who switched on the Voting Rights Act’s conference report was Florida’s George Smathers, who went from voting against to voting for, while in the House there were a few new Republican votes against, such as Paul Fino (R-N.Y.) over the English literacy provision but there were also some new Republican votes for, such as all three of Tennessee’s Republican representatives. In the South, there were a few Democrats who flipped from opposition to support, such as A.S. Herlong (D-Fla.) and George Mahon (D-Tex.). Contrary to what GovTrack and Voteview will tell you, one of these switches was not Watkins Abbitt (D-Va.). Through an error they mix up Abbitt’s vote with that of E. Ross Adair (R-Ind.), who voted for both the House and conference version of the Voting Rights Act. The result was a highly effective law that increased black participation in politics in the South, although it would take a few election cycles for the full power of their votes to be realized.

References

Controversies Surround Rep. Adam Clayton Powell. CQ Almanac 1966. Congressional Quarterly Press.  

Retrieved from

https://library.cqpress.com/cqalmanac/document.php?id=cqal66-1301925#_=_

Majority Whip Hale Boggs’ Support of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. US House of Representatives.

Retrieved from

https://history.house.gov/HistoricalHighlight/Detail/36267

Reichardt, G. (1975). The Voting Rights Act of 1965 (C): Congress and the Voting Rights Act. Harvard University.

Retrieved from

Click to access the_voting_rights_act_of_1965_-congress_and_the_voting_rights_act.pdf

The Senate Passes the Voting Rights Act. U.S. Senate.

Retrieved from

https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/Senate_Passes_Voting_Rights-Act.htm

Voting Rights Act of 1965. Congressional Record, 11715-11753.

Retrieved from

Click to access GPO-CRECB-1965-pt9-2-2.pdf

Voting Rights Act of 1965. Congressional Record, 16207-16286.

Click to access GPO-CRECB-1965-pt12-3-2.pdf

Fascinating Politics

RINOs from American History #25: Jim Jeffords

Vermont today is known as one of the most liberal states in the nation. Indeed, the last Cook Partisan Voting Index figure on the state is a D+17, making it the most Democratic state in the nation. Yet, when the last Republican to represent the state in the Senate, James Merrill Jeffords (1934-2014), was born, Vermont was the exact opposite; it was the only state that never voted for the Democratic Party’s nominee for president. The state stuck with Taft in 1912 when only Utah did so, and it was one of only two states FDR could never win. Vermont was where Calvin Coolidge was born and raised as a rock-ribbed Republican, and one of its senators, Warren Austin, was one of six to vote against Social Security in 1935. This is the furthest thing from the mind of the man who currently holds his Senate seat…Bernie Sanders. Furthermore, Vermont did not vote for a Democratic president until 1964 and did not do so again until 1992, yet its party loyalty for so long is somewhat deceptive as to the truth about the nature of Vermont’s GOP. By the 1950s, the state party was dominated by moderates, with the wing headed by George Aiken and Ernest W. Gibson, Jr. being at the forefront. Aiken was a governor and longtime senator, while Gibson Jr. had been briefly a senator, then governor, then a justice on the Vermont’s district court. It was Gibson Jr. who mentored Jeffords in law and politics while he was his clerk from 1962 to 1963. He once told Jeffords when he questioned focusing on facts of the case as opposed to the letter of the law, “Never let the law get in the way of justice; justice is what counts” (Thomas, 159). Gibson’s words would influence Jeffords greatly in his career, including in his most famous political act, which I will get to later. Jeffords practiced law for a few years before embarking on a political career, winning a seat in the Vermont Senate in 1966. His term was sufficiently impressive for him to be elected the state’s attorney general, serving for two terms. Although Jeffords’ effort at winning the Republican nomination for governor in 1972 failed, his future would be in Congress.

Congressman Jeffords

In 1974, Jeffords was elected to the House in the wake of the Watergate scandal. Although Vermont’s voters proved willing to narrowly elect a Democrat to the Senate for the first time since the creation of the Republican Party that year in Patrick Leahy, they were keeping up their old habits for the House. Jeffords proved to be of the Aiken-Gibson wing while in the House. In 1978, he sponsored a substitute for President Carter’s public service jobs program by placing a $3.2 billion ceiling and instead to increase by $500 million funds for youth and private sector employment programs. The Democratic House adopted this proposal 221-181 on August 9th. He supported creating a consumer protection agency and voted to override President Ford’s vetoes of surface mining legislation in 1975 as well as bills liberalizing the Hatch Act, establishing a child daycare program, and public works funding in 1976. Of all the causes, Jeffords was most passionate about education, and to this end he voted for the creation of the Department of Education in 1979, a change from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare that had existed since 1953. In 1981, Jeffords was the only House Republican to vote against the Reagan Administration’s tax cuts, embodied in the House as the Conable-Hance bill. On certain issues regarding business, he was more conservative, such as supporting tort reform. In 1982, Jeffords voted against a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution but would support versions of it in the 1990s.

On social issues, Jeffords was generally liberal. Although he was supportive of the death penalty he was not strongly so, he had a mixed record on gun control, and on the issues of abortion, regulation of online pornography, affirmative action, arts funding, busing, and LGBT rights he was liberal. On the Supreme Court, Jeffords bucked his party in his votes against the confirmations of Robert Bork in 1987 and Clarence Thomas in 1991 to the Supreme Court. He would later vote for the confirmation of John Roberts but against Samuel Alito in 2005.

Jeffords and Bill Clinton

Jeffords backed some key Clinton initiatives, including the Family Medical Leave Act, the Motor Voter Act, the Brady Act, and NAFTA. He also backed increasing the minimum wage as well as being the only Republican in Congress to voice support for Clinton’s proposed healthcare plan. This plan did not pass, but it was a precursor proposal to Obamacare. Jeffords would soon find himself holding a committee chairmanship for the first time.

Jeffords and the Republican Majority

In 1994, the Republicans won both the House and Senate, and this propelled Jeffords to the chairmanship of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. He would be a prominent voice within the party for moderation and advocated for increased education spending, especially for disabled children. However, Jeffords did back some fiscally conservative positions, such as backing reduced taxes as well as opposing food stamp benefits for the children of illegal immigrants. He opposed the impeachment of President Clinton and hoped the 2000 election would bring a new direction for the US as well as the Republican Party, but he would be mistaken on the latter.

The 2001 Switch

Republican George W. Bush had won the presidency in 2000 by the skin of his teeth, and it turns out the Senate Republican majority was much in the same state, as it was 50-50, with Republicans only having a majority based on Vice President Dick Cheney breaking ties. Any defections were serious business, and Jim Jeffords stood as one of the most liberal Senate Republicans. He had his hopes that George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” would prove him to be a closet Rockefeller Republican, but the reality was that he took after Ronald Reagan. He came into conflict with the Bush Administration when he conditioned his support for tax reduction on the administration providing $180 billion for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, a frequently underfunded law. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) and Minority Whip Harry Reid (D-N.V.) saw a golden opportunity in Jeffords’ dissatisfaction with the trajectory of the Bush presidency and began a quiet campaign of courting him to leave the GOP. Republicans were aware of the rumors that Jeffords would leave, and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) tried to keep him in the fold. He had put down conservative efforts to try to snatch his committee chairmanship from him and got him a post on the prestigious Finance Committee. However, Lott and other Republicans were not fully aware of how serious Jeffords’ intentions were to leave. What sealed the deal for him moving out of the GOP was the Bush Administration preferring tax reduction over increasing funds for education for disabled children; negotiations between the Bush Administration and Jeffords on the subject in April had ended in a frustrating stalemate. He subsequently visited Senator Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) in his office, complaining that “This doesn’t seem to be working” and that education “is the biggest thing for me. But I’m not sure what to do here” (Waller). After Dodd suggested he could become a Democrat, Jeffords dismissed the possibility. However, he did tell him that he might become an Independent, which was good enough for Dodd and other Democrats (Waller). Jeffords announced his switch from Republican to Independent on May 24, 2001, and would caucus with the Democrats, giving them a 1-seat majority. This incensed the Republicans, with now Senate Minority Leader Lott denouncing the act as “a coup of one” and “the impetuous decision of one man to undermine our democracy” (PBS News).  Although Republicans were unhappy about Jeffords’ decision, Vermonters largely agreed with Jeffords. However, his defection only produced a Senate Democratic majority for the rest of the session, as in 2002 Republicans won the majority back. In 2002 and 2004 he campaigned for Democratic candidates and his voting record moved considerably more liberal. For a time, he seemed raring to run again in 2006, if just to prove that Vermont supported him rather than the Republican Party. However, in 2005, Jeffords’ wife was diagnosed with cancer and things weren’t going well for Jeffords himself either. He had stumbled in his words in a radio interview, and he was experiencing memory problems (PBS). That year, Jeffords announced that he would not run for reelection. The following year, he was diagnosed as being in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. Jeffords’ Republican colleagues were still icy towards him over his 2001 switch, and among their senators, only Iowa’s Chuck Grassley delivered a speech praising him after he delivered his farewell speech. Throughout his career, Jeffords had agreed with the liberal Americans for Democratic Action 67% of the time, while he agreed with the conservative Americans for Constitutional Action 33% of the time from 1975 to 1984, and his DW-Nominate score as a Republican was 0.014 and as an Independent it was -0.277. This made him one of the most liberal Republicans but one of the more moderate figures in the Democratic caucus.

Retirement

Retirement was not kind to Jeffords. In addition to his progressing Alzheimer’s disease, his wife died of cancer in 2007. He would die of complications of Alzheimer’s on August 18, 2014 at the age of 80. Jeffords was the last of

References

ADA Voting Records. Americans for Democratic Action.

Retrieved from

ADA Voting Records

Former Sen. James Jeffords, who reshaped the Senate in 2001, dies at 80. (2014, August 18). PBS News.

Retrieved from

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/sen-james-jeffords-reshaped-senate-2001-dies-80

Jeffords, James Merrill. Voteview.

Retrieved from

https://voteview.com/person/14240/james-merrill-jeffords and https://voteview.com/person/94240/james-merrill-jeffords

Jim Jeffords. On The Issues.

Retrieved from

https://www.ontheissues.org/senate/Jim_Jeffords.htm

O’Connor, K. (2011, May 22). The party’s over. What became of Jeffords’ political switch? The Rutland Herald.

Retrieved from

https://www.rutlandherald.com/news/the-party-s-over-what-became-of-jeffords-political-switch/article_990030d9-c97d-5e46-a99b-45d47fbb4573.html

Thomas, M. (ed.) (2004). The right words at the right time. New York, NY: Atria Books.

Waller, D. (2001, May 28). How Jeffords got away. CNN.

Retrieved from

https://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/time/2001/06/04/jeffords.html

Fascinating Politics

The Controversial Career of Owen Brewster

Among the states, I wouldn’t say that Maine was particularly known for making waves with the politicians its voters have sent to the Senate in the 20th century…that is, save for Ralph Owen Brewster (1888-1961). Brewster was, to put it bluntly, considered ugly, one of the ugliest men to have made it big in American politics and perhaps the ugliest since Benjamin Butler. Time Magazine (1935) would describe him as “toothy, slack-jawed” and journalist Jack Anderson in 1979 described him as “billiard-bald on top, cheerless-eyed, meaty-lipped, an appearance dark and gloomy” (Simkin). However, what he lacked in looks he made up for in hard work, diligence, and intelligence. Brewster’s success helped him get married to the daughter of one of Maine’s most prominent citizens. Although in his obituary Brewster would be most noted for his conservatism and opposition to FDR, in his earlier career he was more open to reform and change. He backed both Prohibition and women’s suffrage and initially even endorsed public ownership of water power generation in Maine. Brewster would after call for reform and would battle with holding company magnate Samuel Insull.

The 1924 Gubernatorial Election

In 1924, a rising force in American politics that had factions in both parties was the Ku Klux Klan. This was the second incarnation of the “invisible empire” and this one was the most popular. This Klan was in truth many things; it was of course racist, but it was also anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic, nativist, Prohibitionist, and Protestant group that engaged in numerous activities. These included multi-level marketing, summer camps, charity, political lobbying, and most notably in the South, exacting their brand of vigilante justice (usually night whippings) against those they regarded as violating their moral tenets. Unlike the first KKK which was seen only in the South, this Klan was nationwide, and even reached up to Maine, in which their primary prejudice was against French Canadian Catholics. Against what the Republican establishment of the state wanted, a 36-year-old Owen Brewster ran for governor with Klan support. Brewster played a bit of a game on this one; he would maintain a golden silence on the subject of the Klan unless it was to deny he was a member. Indeed, it has never been proven that Brewster was a member. He was supported by the Klan for two reasons: 1. He never condemned them when the press prompted him to do so, and 2. He supported cutting all government aid to parochial schools (which were primarily Catholic). The latter stance Brewster came to independent of the Klan, believing that this was too much government involvement in religion. He had introduced such a measure in the State Senate but it failed as its president, Frank Farrington, was opposed and convinced the Senate to vote it down (Syrett, 218). The GOP establishment of the state, represented most prominently by Governor Percival Baxter, Farrington, Senator Frederick Hale, and Representative Wallace White, were strongly against the Klan for its racial and religious bigotry. However, many white Protestant Americans at the time saw the Klan as a means for social advancement as well as a patriotic and Protestant organization. Although some state Klans had had ugly incidents of vigilantism (particularly in the South), Maine’s was not one of them. Brewster managed to win the nomination narrowly after Governor Baxter found that voter fraud had occurred in an Irish-American ward in Portland (The New York Times). At the time, winning the Republican nomination for a statewide office was tantamount to election in the strongly Republican Maine.

Brewster’s means of rising to power was something of a scarlet letter that could always be used against him. In 1925, he was the second governor to climb Mt. Katahdin (the first was his predecessor). In 1926, ever ambitious, Brewster attempted to win the special election to the Senate after the death of Bert Fernald but lost to the anti-Klan Arthur Gould. In 1928, he again attempted to win a Senate seat by trying to defeat the anti-Klan incumbent Frederick Hale in the primary, but Hale was retained with 63% of the vote. This marked the end of Klan influence in Maine, which had already been declining since the rape and murder conviction of Indiana Klan Grand Dragon D.C. Stephenson. Maine’s Klan leader, DeForest Perkins, resigned in the aftermath of the election. However, the Great Depression, although quite bad for Republican prospects, brought opportunity for Brewster.

Brewster and the Great Depression

In 1932, Brewster defeated Congressman Donald F. Snow for renomination, and this was for the best in truth as Snow would later be sent to the penitentiary for embezzlement. However, he narrowly lost the election to Democrat John Utterback. Brewster would try again in 1934, running on a platform of supporting the Townsend Plan for old age insurance, and this time he would win despite the midterm resulting in net Democratic gains. As a representative, despite his later reputation he would be far from the most conservative of Republicans, and he would support more popular measures such as Social Security and the Fair Labor Standards Act. A few of his diversions from conservatism could be seen as him looking out for his district. For instance, in 1935, he was one of five House Republicans to vote to add potatoes to the crops covered under the Agricultural Adjustment Act. One of the counties in his district, Aroostook, was one of the leading potato growers in the nation, and Brewster called them the “forgotten crop” especially since 36 million pounds of potatoes were in storage and their market value had declined from $1.37 a bushel in 1930 to $0.37 a bushel in 1935, which depressed the county (Hill). Brewster did sustain the party line on certain other subjects, such as housing policy. He also made his displeasure known about Roosevelt’s reciprocal trade policy, which most Republicans opposed, denouncing it as “Alice in Wonderland” economics (Standard-Speaker). In Brewster’s first term, he quickly stirred up controversy when in the aftermath of his conflict with the Roosevelt Administration the Passamaquoddy Tidal Power Project was canceled. He alleged that Maine representatives were pressured by brain truster Thomas Corcoran to support the “Death Sentence” clause of the Public Utilities Holding Company Act in exchange for the Roosevelt Administration’s support of the project; Brewster voted to strike the clause. This was a vote that surprised people given his efforts against holding company baron Samuel Insull as Maine’s governor. Brewster claimed his vote against was a protest against “unethical lobbying” (Hill). However, Corcoran had a witness. His side of the story, in which the “threat” was him telling Brewster that if the administration can’t count on him for the “death sentence” clause of the public utilities bill that they can’t count on him for the Passamaquoddy Tidal Power Project, was backed almost to the exact detail by witness Dr. Ernest Gruening, which made it most likely that Corcoran’s story was the accurate version of events (Time Magazine). Some constituents in Lubec were angry as they regarded Brewster as imperiling funds for the project and hung him in effigy with a sign reading, “our double-crossing Congressman” (Kansas City Journal). Nonetheless, he proved popular in his area of Maine and he was reelected in 1936. Joining him in Congress were Republicans James C. Oliver of the 1st district and Clyde Smith of the 2nd, both supporters of the Townsend Plan. Maine was one of the few places in which the 1936 election was good for Republicans.  

On to the Senate

In 1940, Senator Frederick Hale opted to retire, and this time Brewster won the nomination and succeeded him. Although generally known as a conservative, in truth, as previously noted, his career was a bit more complicated than that, as demonstrated by his support of the Townsend Plan and his interventionist record on foreign policy. Brewster largely supported FDR’s foreign policy before World War II, voting to end the arms embargo in 1939, voting for the peacetime draft in 1940, and Lend-Lease in 1941, but stopped short of supporting permitting merchant ships to enter belligerent ports. While an observer may look at his support from the KKK as evidence of bigotry, there are aspects of his record that defy this characterization; in 1950 he voted to end debate on the Fair Employment Practices bill and voted to kill a Southern effort to undermine army desegregation. Furthermore, Brewster backed increasing the number of refugees admitted to the United States, and this would include a fair number of Jews. During World War II, he was one of the senators selected by Senator Truman to serve on his committee to investigate wartime expenditures. The committee was non-partisan and won great acclaim for its successes in saving taxpayer money and uncovering corrupt practices, thus elevating Truman’s profile enough for him to be nominated vice president in 1944. In 1943, at the age of 55, Brewster decided that he would change the name he would be known by from “Ralph O. Brewster” to “Owen Brewster”. There were two possible reasons for this change; first, to honor his son who had died ten years earlier of the flu at the age of 15, and second, so that people would no longer think of “R.O.B.” when they thought of him. In 1946, Brewster sat on a joint House-Senate committee investigating the attack on Pearl Harbor. The committee concluded that the Roosevelt Administration had not failed to prepare and rather placed the blame on Admiral Husband E. Kimmel and General Walter Short. Brewster along with Michigan’s Homer Ferguson dissented, with the former writing that the late president “was responsible for the failure to enforce continuous, efficient, and appropriate co-operation” in Washington “in evaluating information and dispatching clear and positive orders to the Hawaiian commanders” (The Journal Herald, 1). Both Brewster and Ferguson believed that the inquiry was incomplete. In 1946, the Senate flipped from Democrat to Republican and Brewster was now chairing this committee.

Brewster vs. Howard Hughes

Owen Brewster has not fared well in the court of historical opinion; he was portrayed by Alan Alda in the Leonardo DiCaprio film The Aviator as a villain. As chairman of the committee, he was investigating Hughes and TWA for alleged misspending in government contracts. Hughes proved a tough opponent for Brewster and although journalist Drew Pearson, a staunch New Deal liberal, was not typically inclined to back businessmen like Hughes, he did back him against Brewster, who along with Wisconsin’s Joseph McCarthy and Tennessee’s hot-tempered Kenneth McKellar ranked among his favorite political targets in the Senate. The mood of the committee on Hughes was that he was going to be easy to deal with as he had not too long ago recovered from a major plane accident that nearly killed him (Watt, 40). However, Hughes effectively played against Brewster by making Brewster himself the issue by accusing him of using this probe to try to pressure him into merging his company with Pan Am, which would be convenient for his community airline bill. Thus, the narrative became that Brewster was corruptly carrying water for Pan Am CEO Juan Trippe rather than him conducting a good government investigation on whether a big businessman had schmoozed his way into securing government contracts during wartime only to waste taxpayer money. Brewster waived his senatorial immunity to testify, and it was a bold move and one to try to convey the message that he was being honest. In the course he did admit that the subject of a potential merger with Pan Am had come up but denied that it was being used as leverage against Hughes. However, if he was the villain in this situation and this was a bluff, it didn’t pay off as he came off worse in the court of public opinion. Both men had testified under oath and thus this was yet another incident of Brewster’s word against another’s. Furthermore, the subcommittee chairman who took Brewster’s place in continuing the Hughes matter, Senator Homer Ferguson of Michigan, was not in the best state to regulate the situation as he had poison ivy all over his feet (Watt, 41). There was also another possible motive to target Hughes…as a means of targeting the Roosevelts. The Republican 80th Congress was very keen on uncovering anything that possibly went wrong during the Roosevelt Administration and Hughes had a connection to Elliott Roosevelt, thus this was used to attack the old Roosevelt Administration (Watt, 42-43).

Campaign Financing Controversy

Republicans still thought of Brewster highly enough after the Hughes controversy to place him as  head of the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee for the 1950 election. The results were good for the GOP, but there was a controversy regarding his neutrality in Republican primaries. Brewster was supposed to be neutral in primaries, and this meant that campaign money could not be used to fund anyone in the primaries. However, Brewster found a way to violate not the letter of the rule but the spirit of the rule by securing a $10,000 loan from the Liberty National bank in Washington and used shadowy middleman Henry Gruenwald to give $5000 each to candidates Richard Nixon of California and Milton Young of North Dakota (Quad-City Times). To his credit, it was Brewster who admitted this so this would not impact Gruenwald. Nixon did not have a contender in the primary who was actually a Republican as California at the time (and now) had an open primary, thus Democratic candidates Helen Gahagan Douglas and Manchester Boddy were also contenders. Young did have a Republican challenger in Thorstein H. Thoresen, formerly North Dakota’s lieutenant governor.

1952 Election

 In 1952, Hughes bankrolled Governor Frederick G. Payne’s primary challenge to Brewster. Payne and Brewster represented two different factions of the party. While Brewster was a strong supporter of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist crusade and supported nominating Ohio’s conservative standard-bearer Robert Taft in 1952, Payne backed picking the more moderate and internationalist General Dwight Eisenhower. Like Eisenhower defeated Taft, Payne narrowly won the primary. The significance of Payne’s win is that this is the only time in Maine’s history that a Republican incumbent senator was defeated for renomination, further underscoring Brewster’s controversial reputation. Not only did the feud with Hughes harm him but also Drew Pearson’s charge of unseemly lobbying by Francoist Spain’s lobbyist Charles Patrick Clark to convince him as well as Rep. Eugene Keogh (D-N.Y.) to sponsor aid to Spain (Hill). Clark would beat up Pearson in retaliation. However, Brewster may have managed to deal a blow to Payne that would hang over his head as a wine bottler claimed that he paid $12,000 to a political influencer to give to Payne for his product to be placed on the shelves of government liquor stores (Hill). Brewster was alleged to be behind these accusations, but he denied it. Although as noted before, he was considered a staunch conservative, the metrics I use indicate that he had voted with the liberal Americans for Democratic Action from 1947 to 1952 20% of the time while his DW-Nominate score was a 0.271. This indicates overall moderate conservatism in his career with his later career being a bit more conservative. Brewster attempted to secure another position both in the Senate and in the White House, but neither effort was successful. In the former case this was particularly a stinging blow as it constituted a rebuke by his former colleagues. Brewster would spend the rest of his life in semi-retirement, and for the last three years of his life he went around advocating for Americans for Constitutional Action, a newly formed conservative organization that was established as a counterpart to the liberal Americans for Democratic Action. Brewster offered himself as a candidate for the Senate in 1958 should Payne have chosen not to run for reelection (Hill). However, Payne did opt to run for reelection, and he lost by over 20 points to Edmund Muskie for reasons that were described in my post last year about the Sherman Adams controversy.

A member of the Christian Science church, Brewster died suddenly while on a Christian Science retreat in Brookline, Massachusetts, on December 25, 1961. His death was unexpected, although he had been suffering from cancer.

My Opinion on Brewster

Owen Brewster was a figure who in many ways maintained a highly clean appearance. He neither smoked nor drank, no hint of scandal existed with his personal life, and he was strongly religious. However, he also had two incidents in which the issue became his word against someone else’s, and he came out on the wrong side of it, at least in the court of public opinion. Brewster also proved willing to use cunning and tricky methods to get things done, such as his underhanded using of the KKK to win public office and his usage of a shadowy middleman to funnel money to Senate candidates against the spirit of the rules of his position. He was also quite interested in taking advantage of causes that were rising in popularity, such as his surreptitious courting of the votes of KKK members, his public support for the fiscally infeasible Townsend Plan, and his support for Joseph McCarthy. Brewster’s conservatism also strikes me as perhaps a bit overly touted when his record gets examine. In all, he was a complicated figure whose personal morality sometimes contrasted with his political methods.

References

ADA Voting Records. Americans for Democratic Action.

Retrieved from

ADA Voting Records

Brewster Declared Winner in Maine. (1924, August 8). The New York Times.

Retrieved from

Brewster, Ralph Owen. Voteview.

Retrieved from

https://voteview.com/person/1021/ralph-owen-brewster

Former U.S. Senator Dies. (1961, December 26). Standard-Speaker, 1.

Retrieved from

https://www.newspapers.com/image/61225510/

Hill, R. (2024). Owen Brewster of Maine. The Knoxville Focus.

Retrieved from

https://www.knoxfocus.com/archives/this-weeks-focus/owen-brewster-of-maine/

Owen Brewster Dies; Former U.S. Senator. (1961, December 26). The Journal Herald, 1.

Retrieved from

https://www.newspapers.com/image/394350317/

Sen. Brewster Tells Trick in Using ‘Conduit’. (1952, March 21). Quad-City Times, 2.

Retrieved from

https://www.newspapers.com/image/299380913/

Simkin, J. (1997). Owen Brewster. Spartacus Educational.

Retrieved from

https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKbrewsterO.htm

Syrett, J. (2001). Principle and Expediency: The Ku Klux Klan and Ralph Owen Brewster in 1924. Maine History, 39(4).

Retrieved from

https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1221&context=mainehistoryjournal

The Congress: Boomerang and Blackjack. (1935, July 22). Time Magazine.

Retrieved from

https://time.com/archive/6754199/the-congress-boomerang-blackjack/

Unpardonable Sin. (1935, August 17). Kansas City Journal, 11.

Retrieved from

https://www.newspapers.com/image/1024050087/

Watt, R.Y. (1979). Oral History Interview. Washington, D.C. United States Senate Historical Office.

Retrieved from

Click to access watt-ruth-young-full-transcript-with-index.pdf

Fascinating Politics

Sam Hobbs: Alabama’s Law and Order Congressman

As a state, Alabama has had a complicated political history even though for a long time it was a one-party state, as the party became split between conservative and liberal factions in the mid-20th century, with the state having one of the most powerful liberal wings in the South until 1964. One figure who straddled both the New Deal and conservative lines of Alabama politics was Sam Hobbs (1887-1952). A lawyer by profession, in 1921, Governor Thomas Kilby appointed him a judge, a post for which he would be reelected. As a judge, Hobbs found the KKK’s vigilante justice objectionable and served as campaign manager for Benjamin Meek Miller, who successfully ran for governor on an anti-Klan platform in 1930. He was an early supporter of FDR and he thanked him for his support by appointing him to Alabama’s National Recovery Administration Committee. The prestige he gained from this role enabled him to make a run for higher office.

In 1934, Hobbs challenged Congressman Lamar Jeffers, who had been serving since 1921, for renomination. Jeffers was a man who was known for his white supremacist views and for his sometimes incendiary rhetoric surrounding race as well as declining to condemn lynchings (Spann). He succeeded in defeating him and this was tantamount to being elected as Alabama was a one-party state at the time. Although many Alabamians at the time were staunchly pro-New Deal, Hobbs, despite having been considered a New Deal supporter, was a bit less enthusiastic about it than some of his colleagues. Indeed, save for Birmingham’s George Huddleston, he was the least supportive of Alabama Democrats of the New Deal at the time. For instance, he voted with Huddleston to strike the controversial “death sentence” clause from the Public Utilities Holding Company Act, a key issue for President Roosevelt. Hobbs also opposed the Bituminous Coal Act in 1935 and minimum wage legislation in 1938. He was supportive of agricultural legislation, the Tennessee Valley Authority, Social Security, and extending the National Industrial Recovery Act. Hobbs was also quite helpful in bringing federal funds to his district to construct the Edmund Pettus Bridge, managed the impeachment of Judge Halsted L. Ritter, and was successful in encouraging Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau to use marble in the construction of federal buildings. However, Hobbs became most known for his expertise in law enforcement issues and his close ties with J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI.

In 1939, Hobbs sponsored a measure that if enacted would have provided for the setup of detention facilities for criminal aliens who were ordered deported, but their countries would not take them back. To win approval and to prevent the measure from potentially being ruled unconstitutional, the bill stipulated that inmates would not be forced to work and that it would only be among aliens that were criminals in other ways. Critics dubbed the measure the “concentration camp bill” and although the House passed this measure overwhelmingly, it was not voted on in the Senate.

As part of his support for law enforcement, Hobbs sponsored legislation to apply the 1934 anti-racketeering law to unions, thus prohibiting robbery and extortion in interstate commerce. This was pushed due to numerous racketeering incidents regarding unions and most notably one in which members of the Teamsters union coerced truck drivers travelling from New Jersey to New York, through beatings and threats of beatings, to pay them wages for work whether they did the work or not. The Supreme Court had ruled that these actions did not constitute a violation of the anti-racketeering statute. After passage in 1943 didn’t result in Senate enactment, the Hobbs Act would ultimately be signed into law in 1946. Hobbs was repeatedly supportive of legislation to limit the power of labor unions, and he was also predictably opposed to civil rights legislation. In 1943, he attempted to strike from the anti-poll tax bill the prohibition on poll taxes for primaries (The Call). Although strongly disliked by left-wing and civil rights groups, Hobbs was far from all right-wing in his views. After all, he had supported a good amount of the New Deal, was an internationalist, supported rent control, and in 1943 he objected to Martin Dies’s (D-Tex.) proposal to deny funds for the payment of three government officials his Un-American Activities Committee had found to be subversive.

Although Hobbs supported the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947 he was largely opposed to the Republican agenda of the 80th Congress and in 1948, Hobbs backed the candidacy of State’s Rights Democrat Strom Thurmond for president. Although he was arguably a better alternative to some Southern politicians of his day, he was nonetheless a firm supporter of the Jim Crow system as were all Alabama elected officials at the time, and he was willing to go up against his party’s nominee over it. Hobbs agreed with the liberal organization Americans for Democratic Action 60% of the time from 1947 to 1950, far from indicative of a solid conservative record, as was his -0.176 from DW-Nominate. By 1950, he was in poor health and his doctors warned him that running for another term was tantamount to suicide (The World-News). He thus opted not to run for reelection, but nonetheless died on May 31, 1952.

References

ADA Voting Records. Americans for Democratic Action.

Retrieved from

ADA Voting Records

Alien Internment is Voted by House. (1939, May 6). The New York Times.

Retrieved from

Former Rep. Hobbs Dies In Alabama. (1952, June 2). The World-News, 2.

Retrieved from

https://www.newspapers.com/image/914365402/

Hobbs, Samuel Francis. Voteview.

Retrieved from

https://voteview.com/person/4471/samuel-francis-hobbs

Neeley, G.R. (2017, November 15). Samuel Francis Hobbs. Encyclopedia of Alabama.

Retrieved from

https://encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/samuel-francis-hobbs/

Spann, K. (2017, November 17). Lamar Jeffers. Encyclopedia of Alabama.

Retrieved from

https://encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/lamar-jeffers/

Words Fly as House Passes Anti-Poll Tax Bill; Gird for Senate. The Call, 36.

Retrieved from

https://www.newspapers.com/image/1032012762/

Fascinating Politics

John Davis Lodge: The Original Actor to Republican Politician

Perhaps the most famous people in the United States to have made the jump from actor to politician are Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Donald Trump is not primarily an actor, rather he was the host of The Apprentice and has had numerous film cameos and TV appearances. Rather, he is a celebrity businessman turned politician. All of them identify or identified as Republicans during their political careers. The first actor, however, to make the jump from actor to Republican politician was John Davis Lodge (1903-1985).

To be perfectly clear, Lodge’s family background set him up to be a politician. After all, he was descended from multiple families that produced politicians. The Lodge family, for instance, was one of the most prominent early families of Boston, and both his grandfather and older brother, Henry Cabot Lodge Sr. and Jr., were both prominent and influential politicians. Although Lodge studied law at Yale and became a lawyer, the call of Hollywood had him drop his lucrative legal practice. Naturally handsome, he would appear in numerous films from 1933 to 1940. Lodge later recalled his time in Hollywood, stating that he had known Ronald Reagan although never acted in the same film with him, explaining, “We were involved in different aspects of acting. I was leading man for Marlene Dietrich, and I acted with Katharine Hepburn in ‘Little Women,’ and I played Shirley Temple’s father in ‘The Little Colonel’” (Folkart). By the way, does this not look like a movie star to you?

During World War II, Lodge served as a lieutenant and lieutenant commander in the Navy, acting a liaison between the American and French forces. He served with distinction, being awarded the rank of Chevalier in the French Legion of Honor and the Croix de Guerre with Palm by Charles de Gaulle (National Governors Association). In 1946, a political opportunity opened up when Clare Boothe Luce of Connecticut’s 4th Congressional district decided not to run for reelection after the death of her daughter. This was an excellent year to be a Republican, and they won majorities in the House and Senate as well as had a complete sweep of the state’s House delegation.

Congressman Lodge

Lodge was without doubt a moderate Republican, as opposed to being among the conservative Old Guard. He sided with Americans for Democratic Action 40% of the time, and his DW-Nominate score was a 0.063, which indicates centrism. While in Congress, Lodge supported income tax reduction, the Taft-Hartley Act, aid to Greece and Turkey, the Marshall Plan, reducing the power of the Rules Committee to bottle up legislation, and public housing. Although the 1948 election was more difficult for Republicans, he won reelection by 12 points, easily the best performance among the state’s House Republicans. Lodge was also one of the strongest Republican internationalists, opposing foreign aid reductions and supporting Point IV aid to poor nations. Although he supported amendments weakening rent control, he supported extending it in 1950. That year, he opted not to run for reelection to run for governor against incumbent Chester Bowles, and campaigned against him as extremely left-wing (Krebs). Bowles in turn was dismissive of him, publicly regarding him as merely an actor. This was a political error as numerous retired actors lived in Connecticut (Folkart). The election was close, with Lodge winning by two points with a plurality of the vote. Had the votes for the Socialist candidate gone to Bowles, he would have won the election.

Governor Lodge

Lodge was the first governor for which the four-year term applied. Previously, Connecticut governors had served two-year terms. This gave him time to enact some measures, such as enhancing unemployment and worker’s compensation, increasing funds for education and the construction of public buildings, as well as the construction of the Lodge Turnpike (National Governors Association). However, the latter is often regarded as the reason behind his loss of reelection in 1954 to Abraham Ribicoff by just over 3,000 votes. After his loss, Republicans would have a tough time winning gubernatorial elections over the next forty years. Until 1994, the only time in which Republicans won the governorship was Congressman Thomas J. Meskill’s 1970 win.

Ambassador Lodge

Like his brother, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., John was a friend of President Eisenhower, and he was tapped to the post of Ambassador to Spain. In this capacity, he played a role in the increasing normalization of relations between the US and Franco, serving until 1961. In 1964, Lodge attempted to revive his electoral career by running against Democratic Senator Thomas J. Dodd. Although he was far from being a Goldwater Republican, Dodd’s combination of domestic liberalism and anti-communism on foreign policy played well and Goldwater at the top of the ticket dragged down his campaign. Dodd won reelection by nearly 30 points, with Lodge only outperforming Goldwater by 3 points. Lodge did not run for political office again, but Republican presidents continued to find use for him. In 1969, President Nixon called him back into service as Ambassador to Argentina, a role he served in until 1973. Lodge’s last role would be as President Reagan’s Ambassador to Switzerland, serving from 1983 until his resignation in 1985. On October 29th, he delivered a speech at the Women’s National Republican Club in New York City but after he finished, he suffered a heart attack and was pronounced dead on arrival at St. Clare’s Hospital.

References

ADA Voting Records. Americans for Democratic Action.

Retrieved from

ADA Voting Records

Folkart, B.A. (1985, November 2). Ex-Envoy John Davis Lodge Dies. Los Angeles Times.

Retrieved from

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-11-02-fi-1333-story.html

Gov. John Davis Lodge. National Governors Association.

Retrieved from

John Davis Lodge

Krebs, A. (1986, May 26). Chester Bowles is Dead at 85; Served in 4 Administrations. The New York Times.

Retrieved from

Lodge, John Davis. Voteview.

Retrieved from

https://voteview.com/person/5740/john-davis-lodge

Fascinating Politics

Homer T. Bone: Public Power and Non-Intervention

Although you could arguably say this about any state, Washington’s history has been of particular interest to me since I moved here four years ago. Many Americans would probably be surprised to know that the state was arguably more left-wing in the 1930s than it is today, with Postmaster General James Farley once half-jokingly speaking of the “47 states and the Soviet of Washington”. One of the major figures that gave Washington this reputation was Senator Homer Truett Bone (1883-1970).

Bone’s personal history made him inclined against war throughout his life. His father, James Milton Bone, fought in the War of the Rebellion and was deeply impacted by the brutal conditions of the prisoner of war camp he was held at for the rest of his life and his mother, Margaret, lost her first husband in the war (Chesley). In 1893, the family suffered a major downturn in fortunes from the Panic of 1893 and that’s when the family moved to Washington. Bone’s views were from the start not only anti-war but also left-wing populist and he started out in the Socialist Party. However, in 1916, he was read out of the party by its leadership as he was regarded as too moderate. Bone would affiliate himself with multiple parties throughout his career, including the Farmer-Labor (running for a Washington House seat in 1922 and winning) and Liberty third parties as well as the Republican Party (trying to win their nomination for the House in 1928), but he ultimately found his home in the Democratic Party in 1932. While in the state House, he pushed for and ultimately was able to get the Granger Power Act and the Bone Power Act, which permitted cities to sell power to rural areas. Although strongly ideological, he was not much one to care about party discipline, and once said, “Party labels don’t mean a thing to me” (The New York Times). Of all the domestic issues, Bone stood strongest against private power interests, supporting government-owned generation and transmission of power. He held that in Washington such utilities “monopolize the last and most valuable of the natural resources” (The New York Times).

The 1930s: A Time of Change

Although Republicans had significant presence in the state for many years, including its prominent senator and long-time incumbent, Wesley Jones, their appeal fell dramatically during the Great Depression.  The Seattle Times was most notable in opposing Bone as a “socialist” but Hearst-owned newspapers strongly backed him (Chesley). However, all these editorials probably didn’t matter given the national mood. Bone defeated Jones by 200,000 votes, outpolling Franklin D. Roosevelt (The New York Times). This outcome ultimately didn’t matter much for Jones, as he died less than two weeks later.

Bone strongly supported much of the New Deal but couldn’t vote for the final version of the National Industrial Recovery Act given that it suspended anti-trust laws to allow for cartels to exist under the National Recovery Administration. His most notable accomplishment in the Senate was in 1937, when Bone sponsored the bill creating the National Cancer Institute. Although he saw himself as fundamentally progressive, this would not be the last major matter in which he would cross the Roosevelt Administration. He also opposed the Roosevelt Administration cutting veterans’ benefits to fund the New Deal and had reservations about Roosevelt’s “court packing plan” in 1937, even though he voted against killing the bill. Bone’s reservations on the latter resulted in Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes to regard him as “a liberal of the very soft variety” (Chesley). Consistent with his views on US involvement in foreign affairs, Bone opposed the World Court in 1935. Speaking of…

Foreign Policy

Although the state of Washington was among the most supportive of the New Deal, indeed the state did not elect Republicans to Congress again until 1942, its Democrats were divided on the subject of getting involved in World War II. Even a young Congressman Henry Jackson, known in his later career as a Vietnam war hawk, voted against Lend Lease. Bone sat on the Senate Munitions Investigating Committee, which investigated the causes of World War I, Bone voted against the peacetime draft in 1940, against Lend-Lease in 1941, and against permitting entry of US convoy ships into belligerent ports. He was also notably absent during the vote to declare war on Japan, but this was due to getting surgery, not an anti-war statement. Bone’s record after was strongly pro-Roosevelt across the board. Interestingly, his DW-Nominate score was -0.047, on the center despite his mostly left-wing views on domestic views, but this was likely largely on account of his foreign policy views.

End of Career

In 1939, Bone had an accident in which he injured his hip. He never fully recovered, indeed, that’s what his 1941 surgery was about, and he dreaded the prospect of campaigning for reelection using crutches (The New York Times). That year, President Roosevelt nominated him to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and he resigned to accept, serving in this position until 1956, when he assumed senior status, a state of semi-retirement. He would fully retire in 1968 and died on March 11, 1970 at the ripe old age of 87.

References

Bone, Homer Truett. Voteview.

Retrieved from

https://voteview.com/person/843/homer-truett-bone

Chesley, F. (2023, December 28). Bone, Homer Truett. History Link.

Retrieved from

https://www.historylink.org/file/5628

Ex-Senator Homer Bone Dies; Foe of Washington Utilities, 87. (1970, March 12). The New York Times.

Retrieved from

Bonus: Homer Bone giving a quick speech.

Fascinating Politics

Truman vs. Slaughter: The 1946 Kansas City Democratic Primary

Representatives Everett Dirksen, Roger Slaughter, and Howard W. Smith.

In 1938, President Roosevelt learned a hard lesson about the politics of the time: voters did not appreciate interference from the president in their state primaries. This is the opposite of true today, as numerous Republicans who have crossed Trump can tell you. However, his successor, President Truman, thought that he could throw his weight around in primaries. One notable figure he publicly supported was Montana Senator Burton K. Wheeler, who was facing a left-wing challenger in Leif Erickson in the primary. However, Wheeler was hit for his foreign policy views before World War II and his voting record not being regarded as sufficiently progressive and he lost the primary. Truman tried again to interfere in primaries, but this time it was on his home turf of Kansas City. For decades, the city had been ruled by the Democratic Party, and the contest was between two factions: the Goats and the Rabbits. The Goats were part of the machine of Tom Pendergast, and the Rabbits were led by Congressman Joe Shannon. However, by 1942 Shannon was long past his prime in power and 75 years old, and thus he opted not to run again. He was succeeded by Roger Slaughter.  Slaughter, a Rabbit like Shannon, would not only prove different from faction to President Truman, who was a Goat, but would also have numerous fundamental disagreements with him on policy, and this was not only a pain for Truman because he was from Kansas City but also that he sat on the powerful House Rules Committee. Perhaps the most controversial part of Truman’s political career was how he advanced, through the corrupt Pendergast machine, and the Rabbits were sort of frenemies to them by this point. One key matter Slaughter differed from Truman on was organized labor. Slaughter was strongly supportive of legislation curbing the power of organized labor and once said, “The President of the United States is a prisoner of the C.I.O.-P.A.C.” (Time Magazine, 1946). He also had also opposed reporting out fair employment practices legislation backed by the Truman Administration and consistently voted against civil rights legislation. By 1946, Truman was sick of having an opponent in his backyard and he sought the aid of the head of the Pendergast machine, Jim. Jim Pendergast was a nephew of the now deceased Tom Pendergast, and he sought to get Enos Axtell, a 37-year-old lawyer and newcomer, elected to office rather than Slaughter. Truman thought of this primary race as an important test for his power, and said regarding Slaughter, “If he’s right, I’m wrong” and although he claimed to know Axtell all his life in endorsing him, he also had trouble recalling his first name (Time Magazine). The Pendergast machine went to work on the day of the primary, and in the process, engaged in some of the old tricks of the machine under Tom Pendergast. The result was a 54-46 win for Axtell. However, the result immediately provoked suspicion, and this resulted in investigations by the House Campaign Expenditures Committee and the Kansas City Star, which found convincing evidence that voter fraud in Axtell’s favor had indeed occurred. A grand jury in Jackson County thought the same. They found from the examination of ballots in 34 of 255 precincts that a “deliberate, calculated, and premeditated plan” to commit extensive voter fraud had existed, with them concluding, “It is our belief that Slaughter was deprived of the nomination by a fraudulent miscount of votes and other types of fraud” (Time Magazine, 1947). It looked like a substantive case was going to be moving forward against the Pendergast machine, but…

KABOOM! There Goes the Evidence!

Although the grand jury had made its finding, certain actors had other ideas. The night of the grand jury’s finding, a group of unidentified burglars broke into the Kansas City courthouse, blew up the vault of the election board with nitroglycerin, and absconded with most of the evidence in the case (Time Magazine, 1947). This included poll books, ballots, and vote tallies. This was a major blow to the case.

Truman’s attorney general, Tom Clark, was not exactly keen to act. Although he had cited the FBI report as justification not to act on allegations of vote deprivation, he had limited the FBI’s use of evidence for its report to the Kansas City Star’s reporting and the findings of four Kansas City election commissioners (Time Magazine, 1947). The president’s critics bemoaned that this was so, and President Truman called for a full investigation. The suspect result of the Democratic primary plus the general national fatigue with the Democrats produced the victory of Republican Albert Reeves, Jr. in the district. I suppose for Truman if he had to have an opponent representing his home turf better it be a Republican than someone in his own party.

The End Results

After all, this victory for the Republicans would be short-lived, as in 1948 Reeves would be defeated for reelection by young anti-Pendergast liberal Richard Bolling, who was perfectly satisfactory by Truman. The Pendergast machine also went down in this election to candidates backed by mobster Charles Bonaggio. However, there were Pendergast officials who were prosecuted for voter fraud in the 1946 election, and another jury concluded in 1947 that the existing fraud had not been sufficient to have changed the outcome in the primary (Knowles). Slaughter would become a lobbyist after his defeat, but Truman’s beef with him hadn’t finished. His Justice Department indicted him for alleged violations of federal lobbying laws, but he was acquitted in 1950 (Lawrence).

References

Burnes, B. A. (2020, September 9). Sordid History of Kansas City Election Fraud. Flatland Kansas City.

Retrieved from

A Sordid History of Kansas City Election Fraud

Hill, R. James P. Kem of Missouri. The Knoxville Focus.

Retrieved from

https://www.knoxfocus.com/archives/this-weeks-focus/james-p-kem-of-missouri/

Knowles, C. (1947, December 19). Kansas City Vote Is Upheld By Jury. The New York Times.

Retrieved from

Lawrence, W.H. (1950, April 18). Slaughter Freed in Lobbying Trial. The New York Times.

Retrieved from

Political Notes: Home to Roost? (1947, June 16). Time Magazine.

Retrieved from

https://time.com/archive/6793206/political-notes-home-to-roost/

Slaughter, Roger Caldwell. Voteview.

Retrieved from

https://voteview.com/person/8569/roger-caldwell-slaughter

The Presidency: If He’s Right, I’m Wrong. (1946, July 29). Time Magazine.

Retrieved from

https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,776913,00.html

Fascinating Politics

RINOs from American History #24: Joseph C. Baldwin

New York City has had a long history of liberalism since the early 20th century, and Republicans found it more and more difficult as time passed by. There were some enclaves they had, and one of the foremost was the wealthy “silk stocking district”. This area elects Democrats now, but when it elected Republicans it often elected liberal Republicans, and the real first among the liberal Republicans to represent was Joseph Clark Baldwin (1897-1957). Baldwin’s rise to influence started after his service in World War I, becoming a political reporter for the New York Herald Tribune and getting active in the local Republican Party. In 1928, he was elected to the 95-member New York City Board of Aldermen, and from 1932 to 1934 he was the only Republican to serve on the board. Given his lonely position, he seemed to be a voice howling in the wilderness for investigating the corrupt administration of Mayor Jimmy Walker, but his voice was heard and the Seabury Investigation would expose the rot in the Walker Administration and result in numerous corruption prosecutions. In 1934, the Tammany Hall machine would be out of power with the election of liberal Republican Fiorello LaGuardia, a crusader for good government. From 1935 to 1936, Baldwin would be in the State Senate, followed by a return to New York City government, serving as city councilman from 1937 to 1941.

In 1941, opportunity grimly knocked when Representative Kenneth F. Simpson of the 17th Congressional district, the extremely wealthy “silk stocking district” of Manhattan, died of a heart attack after only 22 days in office. Baldwin ran to succeed him and won. Baldwin was a strong internationalist, and on February 13, 1943, he requested President Roosevelt send to Congress legislation to promptly enact the Atlantic Charter, stating, “Delay might prove fatal to the future peace of the world” (Independent). Baldwin was also socially liberal, being a consistent opponent of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. He also opposed legislation that aimed to curb the power of organized labor, including the Smith-Connally Act of 1943, the Hobbs Act, and the Case bill in 1946. He did oppose some New Deal programs, such as a work relief bill in 1942, but he sided more with liberals than conservatives throughout his time in Congress. Indeed, his DW-Nominate score was a -0.041, unusually low for a Republican. Despite his liberalism, Baldwin was most insistent in his brand of Republicanism. He was once quoted as having said, “I would rather die as a Republican than live as a mugwump” (The Waynesburg Republican).

Baldwin was a strong supporter of taking in Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, and his sympathy for the plight of Jews led him to become the administrative chairman of Political Action Committee for Palestine, Inc. in 1946, with a goal of the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. In 1946, Baldwin sought to be reelected, be it whatever ticket he could, thus he cross-filed, running for reelection on the Republican, Democratic, and American Labor Party tickets. He was opposed in the Republican primary by State Senator R. Frederic Coudert, running to his right. Baldwin’s liberalism, which was going especially strong in how he was voting in 1946, was not playing well with the Republican base. He had voted liberal on nearly all major issues that year, including opposing every effort to weaken price control, being one of three Republicans to vote against returning U.S. Employment Service promptly to the states and he lost renomination. Baldwin also lost the Democratic nomination, but he won the American Labor Party nomination. Most of the district’s residents, however, stuck with their party rather than their representative, and Baldwin only won 8.3% of the vote. By contrast, in 1944 Baldwin had won reelection with 52.4% of the vote, with the American Labor candidate getting 8.3%. The Vicksburg Post (1946) noted the general conservative trend in the Republican primaries that year, “The defeat of Congressman Joseph C. Baldwin seeking renomination in the New York city primaries, follows the sensational overthrow of Senator Robert M. LaFollette, Jr., in Wisconsin. Both deviated from the orthodox party line to follow what is commonly known as the liberal viewpoint.”

Baldwin would never run for public office again, rather pursuing a career in public relations, serving as a representative for United Dye and Chemical Corporation and William Recht Co., Inc. He also authored the 1950 book Flowers for the Judge. Baldwin died on October 27, 1957 in the Manhattan Veterans Administration Hospital at the age of 60.

References

Atlantic Charter Legislation Wanted. (1943, February 14). Long Beach Independent, 5.

https://www.newspapers.com/image/717839923/

Baldwin, Joseph Clark. Voteview.

Retrieved from

https://www.voteview.com/person/388/joseph-clark-baldwin

J.C. Baldwin Dies; Ex-Legislator, 60. (1957, October 28). The New York Times.

Retrieved from

Quotes of the Week. (1946, August 8). The Waynesburg Republican, 7.

Retrieved from

https://www.newspapers.com/image/1147389959/

The New Party Trends. (1946, August 31). Vicksburg Post, 2.

Retrieved from

https://www.newspapers.com/image/1043238575/

Fascinating Politics

The Loyd Jowers Trial: Conspiracy to Kill MLK Revealed?

Loyd Jowers at the time of the MLK trial.

Although the most theorized assassination in American history is the JFK assassination, there are also theories about the MLK assassination, and these were explored in the special House Committee on Assassinations in the 1970s. Although this committee found that there was likely a conspiracy to kill King, that the conspirators were James Earl Ray’s brothers rather than the government. However, new life was given to MLK conspiracy theories when a man allegedly in on a plot to kill King went public.

In 1993, former Memphis café owner Loyd Jowers claimed in an interview on ABC PrimeTime Live that James Earl Ray was a patsy and that he had been hired to arrange the assassination on behalf of mobster Frank Liberto. The reason Jowers was considered plausible by some is that his café had been located on the first floor of the building that the prosecution claimed James Earl Ray had shot King from. He also named the man who pulled the trigger on King as Memphis Police Lieutenant Earl Clark.  Such revelations attracted the attention of the King family, who had for years believed that there was a greater conspiracy. In 1998, they filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Jowers.

On December 8, 1999, the Memphis jury unanimously ruled that Jowers was in on a conspiracy to kill King and that others, including government agencies were involved. Did this prove that there was a vast conspiracy to kill King involving the mob and the government? Truth be told, it turns out that there are serious problems with this narrative.

Before I proceed, there are some things to bear in mind about a civil trial as opposed to a criminal trial. First, the standard is preponderance of the evidence rather than a reasonable doubt for a ruling of liability, meaning that if over 50% of the evidence supports the plaintiff, the plaintiff wins the case. Furthermore, the standard of evidence that is allowed is lower than in a criminal case. What’s more, the defendant in a civil case usually does testify, unlike the defendant in a criminal case.

Major Problems

Before giving his story to ABC PrimeTime, Jowers had long denied having had any role in the King assassination and at the time he went public, he named several people as the trigger man, including “Raoul” who James Earl Ray alleged existed and was the shooter, before sticking with Earl Clark. Another thing to be aware of is that Frank Liberto and Clark were unable to speak in their own defenses as both were conveniently dead by 1993. During the Jowers trial the jury had not been presented with Loyd Jowers’ history of contradictions. Furthermore, we have an issue of standards of evidence. For instance, an acquaintance of Loyd Jowers testified that he had heard of a conversation in a Memphis barbershop in which a man who said he worked for the FBI claimed the CIA was responsible for the King assassination (U.S. Department of Justice). This is double hearsay, which is not usually allowed in civil court and it is not admissible in criminal court. The only eyewitness testimony that was heard was regarding government surveillance of King, not of government involvement in his assassination.

Further adding to the lack of credibility to Jowers is that he never made his allegations under oath, did not testify in King v. Jowers,  However, when he had a recorded discussion with a state investigator, Jowers stated that the idea that King was shot with a different rifle and by another man than James Earl Ray was “bullshit”, a key feature of his story (LaCapria).  In all, the Loyd Jowers story was a publicity stunt, with him hoping he could get a book deal out of the matter. When a great man is assassinated, it can be hard to accept that a man of such a low stature like James Earl Ray could be responsible. Thus, some people need a greater story than that, a story that involves powerful actors and a grand conspiracy. After all, it only makes sense that a man of great stature would be taken down by people of great stature rather than a loser.

References

LaCapria, K. (2014, January 20). Was the U.S. Government Found Guilty of Assassinating Martin Luther King, Jr.? Snopes.

Retrieved from

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/government-mlk-assassination/

Loyd Jowers; Jury Found He Played a Role in King’s Slaying. (2000, May 24). Los Angeles Times.

Retrieved from

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-may-24-me-33485-story.html

Vii. King V. Jowers Conspiracy Allegations. U.S. Department of Justice.

Retrieved from

https://www.justice.gov/crt/vii-king-v-jowers-conspiracy-allegations