After World War II, a new class of Republicans gained prominence; those who believed that the Republican Party needed to embrace internationalism and hold to Senator Vandenberg’s “politics stops at the water’s edge” line and tone down their opposition to New Deal policies. This sort of Republican, the sort that President Eisenhower called a “modern Republican”, fit New Jersey’s Howard Alexander Smith (1880-1966) to a tee.

As a young man, Smith attended Princeton University, where he was educated by none other than Woodrow Wilson, who he said was “the greatest teacher I ever had” and that he inspired him to enter public service (The New York Times). He subsequently attended Columbia University to earn his law degree. Smith was also in his early years influenced by progressive reformer Jacob Riis’ book, “How the Other Half Lives” on slum conditions, by the time he pursued a political career he had come to believe that increased domestic government was dangerous to individual freedom (The New York Times). Despite his view of Woodrow Wilson, Smith would not join his party. However, Wilson did impact his support for internationalism. Smith would have a long experience with foreign policy, with him working for Herbert Hoover under the United States Food Administration to feed the population of Europe after World War I. Although Smith made a lot of his money as a New York City attorney, he would move to New Jersey and served as executive secretary for Princeton University during the 1920s and be a lecturer from 1927 to 1930. His political career, however, did not start until he became active in the state’s GOP as treasurer of the New Jersey Republican State Committee. Smith would eventually serve as the head of New Jersey’s Republican Party and was a member of the Republican National Committee from 1942 to 1943.

During World War II, Smith’s chance at elected office came when Senator W. Warren Barbour died on November 22, 1943, and he ran to finish his term in 1944. He had a close race against Congressman Elmer Wene, but prevailed by under 2 points. As a senator, Smith quickly established himself as one of the chamber’s leading Republican internationalists on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In 1948, he sponsored with Rep. Karl Mundt (R-S.D.) the U.S. Information and Educational Exchange Act, permitting the State Department to make international broadcasts, one of these being the Voice of America. He broadly followed the conservative line on matters of taxes and organized labor. Smith was a staunchly religious man, praying every morning on matters from public policy to where he should vacation and maintaining a journal (Inboden).

In 1950, Smith led the fight against including foreign aid programs in budget cuts; he was successful in preventing a cut in Marshall Plan assistance but the Senate rejected his effort to exempt Point IV aid. Although Smith initially opposed a loan to Francoist Spain in 1949, the following year he voted along with most senators for a loan; the Korean War had since begun. In 1951, he figured prominently in the “Great Debate” over how many troops the U.S. could commit to Europe without Congressional authorization as part of NATO, and opposed the limitation adopted by the Senate. However, the following year Smith voted to limit presidential authority to participate in NATO military planning. He had a difficult vote when in 1951, he was the deciding vote on whether the Senate would proceed with the nomination of Philip Jessup as a delegate to the UN General Assembly. Jessup had been one of the State Department officials critical of Nationalist China and had bought the narrative pushed by the communists that they were democratic. Smith had strongly supported Nationalist China and his decision became more complex after Senator Joseph McCarthy had accused Jessup of being a conscious agent of the communist conspiracy. Smith reasoned in his decision, “I have known Philip Jessup for many years and I have absolute confidence in his integrity, ability and loyalty to his country. I am convinced that he has not and never had any connection with the Communist Party” but added, “the real issue raised by Dr. Jessup’s nomination in the light of past and present events is the approval or disapproval of our overall Far Eastern policy. Dr. Jessup has been identified with those forces in and outside the Administration which were responsible for the Far Eastern policy which has led to the present crisis. He was editor of the China white paper…He participated in the unfortunate events which led to the summary dismissal of General MacArthur. He is the symbol of a group attitude toward Asia which seems to have been proven completely unsound. This is not a case of mere difference of opinion. This is an issue that may well involve the future of Asia and the world” (Time Magazine). Therefore, despite pressures on him to rebut McCarthy’s accusations by voting to confirm, Smith voted to reject the nomination. Truman, however, gave him a recess appointment. However, Smith was far from a supporter of McCarthy’s style. He voted for the nomination of Charles Bohlen as Ambassador to the USSR in 1953, to which McCarthy led the opposition, and opposed McCarthy’s 1953 effort to cut foreign aid to nations that trade with Red China. He would unsurprisingly vote for McCarthy’s censure. Smith initially opposed the St. Lawrence Seaway and successfully motioned to kill its construction in 1948. However, President Eisenhower’s support for the Seaway may have moved him to vote for the 1954 Wiley-Dondero Act to construct it. That year, consistent with his internationalism, he opposed the Bricker Amendment to restrain what the president could do with executive orders, which failed Senate ratification by one vote.

Although Smith’s record was mostly supportive of civil rights measures, he was also cautious, believing that using force to achieve desegregation was unwise, stating, “you’ll never do it with paratroopers” (The New York Times). Although he voted against the jury trial amendment to the Civil Rights Act of 1957 he voted for Anderson-Aiken-Case Amendment, deleting the section permitting the Attorney General to enter into civil suits for preventative relief in civil rights cases, even if all remedies had not been exhausted. On revelations of union corruption, in 1958 Smith supported most proposals to curb the power of organized labor. By contrast, his considerably more liberal Republican colleague Clifford Case opposed the 1958 proposals. That year, Smiith sided with the Eisenhower Administration in its opposition to the Anti-Preemption bill to curb the Supreme Court’s authority to review state anti-subversive laws.

By 1957, Smith was 77 years old and conflicted on retirement. On one hand, he was cognizant of his aging but on the other he wanted his party to avoid a bruising primary, but ultimately his age as well as Congressman Robert Kean announcing his run motivated his dropping out. All three metrics I like to use paint a picture of a moderate: he sided with the conservative Americans for Constitutional Action 61% of the time, the liberal Americans for Democratic Action 40% of the time, and he has a DW-Nominate score of 0.159. Smith no doubt fit the mold of the “modern Republican” or the “country club Republican” His nephew, Peter H. Dominick, would serve in the House as a Republican from Colorado from 1961 to 1963 and then senator from 1963 to 1975. Sadly, Smith’s son, H. Alexander Jr., predeceased him in 1964. Smith died of a stroke on October 27, 1966 at the age of 86.

References

ADA Voting Records. Americans for Democratic Action.

Retrieved from

Voting Records

Inboden, W. (2008). Religion and American foreign policy, 1945-1960. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Retrieved from

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/religion-and-american-foreign-policy-19451960/guided-by-god-the-unusual-decisionmaking-of-senator-h-alexander-smith/0A45A8602B5E4B9EBDFFEB1040FAEFA6

H. Alexander Smith, 86, Dies. (1966, October 28). The New York Times.

Retrieved from

Smith, Howard Alexander. Voteview.

Retrieved from

https://voteview.com/person/8635/howard-alexander-smith

The Congress: Difficult Vote. (1951, October 28). Time Magazine.

Retrieved from

https://time.com/archive/6886457/the-congress-difficult-vote/

William S. Vare (R-Penn.), whose right to serve in the Senate was successfully contested.

When the U.S. Constitution was adopted, it set three requirements for being a senator, they are as follows:

“No Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen” (U.S. Constitution, Article I, section 3, clause 3).

After the War of the Rebellion, requirements were added that senators not have engaged in rebellion or treason. For conservatives on this issue, these were all that were required for seating. The circumstances of state elections were a state matter, whether widespread voting irregularities or violations of campaign finance law had occurred or not, and that any investigations should occur after, not before seating. For the ever-reform minded progressives, this would simply not do, and the 1920s in particular was a time for challenging elections. In that decade, there were seven contests of Senate elections. These were of Truman Newberry of Michigan, Earle Mayfield of Texas, Thomas Schall of Minnesota, Sam Bratton of New Mexico, Smith Brookhart of Iowa, William Vare of Pennsylvania, and Frank Smith of Illinois.

Truman Newberry: The Price of Crossing Henry Ford

Although the election happened in 1918, the case of Truman Newberry dragged into the 1920s. President Wilson had recruited Ford to run for the Senate to advance his message for peace and the League of Nations. He ran for both the Democratic and Republican nominations, believing that the Michigan public would overwhelmingly embrace him, the esteemed automaker. However, only the Democrats nominated him, with another wealthy individual, Truman Newberry, winning the Republican nomination. Ford was peeved that the Republicans didn’t nominate him, and although the race was close, Newberry won. He had spent a lot of money financing attacks against Ford’s pacifism, his anti-Semitism, and having allegedly engaged in extraordinary efforts to prevent his son Edsel from being drafted (U.S. Senate, Newberry). Newberry proved to be a staunch conservative who proved a thorn in Wilson’s side, including on the League of Nations. However, Newberry’s campaign had received and spent over $175,000, far above the $3,750 limit imposed by Michigan state law as well as the Federal Corrupt Practices Act on primary spending (U.S. Senate, Newberry). Although Newberry claimed ignorance of illegal campaign contributions and spending, that is not what the evidence indicated. He was indicted on November 29, 1919 along with 134 associates and convicted of violating the Federal Corrupt Practices Act on March 20, 1920, but he appealed to the Supreme Court, which ruled 5-4 in Newberry v. United States that the section of the Corrupt Practices Act that covered state primaries was unconstitutional and 9-0 that the judge in the case had given erroneous jury instructions (U.S. Senate, Newberry). Republicans in the 67^th Congress managed to block an effort to unseat Newberry and

voted 46-41 that he was the elected senator from Michigan. Republicans asserted that his Navy service in New York City at the time of the primary precluded extensive knowledge about campaign spending, the Democratic minority disagreed, asserting that he knew full well (U.S. Senate, Newberry). the 1922 midterms promised a much more difficult Senate and progressive Republicans were keen on joining with Democrats to oust Newberry. Thus, he opted to resign instead of facing a grueling battle.

In the end, Ford did get his way. Newberry was out, and his successor was James Couzens. Although Couzens was a Republican, he was on the party’s progressive wing and was formerly vice president of Ford Motors, thus far more palatable to Henry Ford. Newberry would never run for public office again and Couzens would remain in the Senate until his death in 1936.

Schall vs. Johnson: Bull Moose v. Farmer-Labor

On April 28, 1923, Minnesota’s longtime Republican senator, Knute Nelson, died at the age of 80. Nelson had been a moderate conservative, but the Minnesota GOP was getting a challenge from the state’s Farmer-Labor Party, which was an economically progressive break-away from the GOP, and they succeeded in electing Magnus Johnson. However, Republicans picked a strong candidate for a full term in Thomas D. Schall, who had a history as a Bull Moose Republican, and he defeated Johnson by less than 8,000 votes in the 1924 election. Johnson challenged the election, claiming excessive campaign spending, scurrilous allegations against him, . The testimony of eight pro-Johnson witnesses did not produce any evidence connecting Schall to wrongdoing, and the investigating committee unanimously recommended that he be seated, and the Senate agreed (U.S. Senate, Schall). Schall would serve in the Senate until he was killed when a motorist accidentally struck him in 1935, and Magnus Johnson served a term in the House from 1933 to 1935, dying in 1936.

Mayfield vs. Peddy: A Quixotic Challenge

In 1922, the Senate election in Texas was Democrat Earle B. Mayfield against George E.B. Peddy, who was running both as a Republican and an Independent. Once the primaries were over, the winner was not in doubt as at the time statewide races (and indeed most other races in Texas) the winner was going to be a Democrat. On Election Day, Mayfield was elected, with strong support from the Ku Klux Klan, with 2/3’s of the vote. What was Peddy’s case for challenging the election? He challenged the procedures of the Democratic primary, excessive expenditures, voter fraud, and cited KKK involvement (U.S. Senate, Mayfield). However, Mayfield’s lead was insurmountably strong, even if there were shady practices he was going to be the winner in the general election given that the state was still part of the “Solid South” at the time. The Senate dismissed the challenge. Mayfield’s electoral fortunes had risen with the Klan, and they fell with the Klan too. He was defeated for renomination in 1928 by Congressman Tom Connally, who ran against him on an anti-Klan platform.

Brookhart vs. Steck: Progressive Republican vs. Moderate Democrat

In this case, the Senate outright rejected the election result and seated Democrat Daniel Steck. This was in part the product of Democratic partisanship but also in part the product of infighting between the conservative and progressive factions of the Republican Party. The controversy began when Brookhart, who had been elected in a special election to succeed William S. Kenyon, was running for a full term as a Republican. However, instead of endorsing Republican nominee Calvin Coolidge, he endorsed Progressive Robert La Follette of Wisconsin and campaigned for him after his nomination. This enraged many rank-and-file Iowa Republicans, who considered this trickery. The election reflected Republican faction tensions in this historically Republican state, with Brookhart only winning in official returns by around 800 votes to Democrat Daniel Steck, who was running as a moderate. Some conservatives in the GOP preferred reducing their majority by one because they found Steck ideologically preferable. In this case, despite the voters having voted for Brookhart, the full Senate voted to seat Steck. This was interestingly not a party-line vote, and there were seven Democrats who voted for Brookhart, including Mississippi’s Hubert Stephens, who wrote in defense of Brookhart’s election. A majority of Republicans voted for Brookhart, even a number of dyed-in-the-wool conservatives, although this was not out of sympathy for the views of Brookhart, rather because they did not believe the Senate should be rejecting winners of the state’s vote. In 1926, Brookhart successfully rebuked the Senate’s ruling on him when he defeated incumbent Albert B. Cummins for renomination and was elected. There is no better revenge than success, and there was no challenge that time.

The Republican establishment would ultimately oust Brookhart in the 1932 nomination contest, but the seat would be won by Democrat Louis Murphy, with Brookhart running as an independent Progressive candidate. Whether Brookhart would have won as a Republican in 1932 we can only speculate.

Bratton vs. Bursum: A Nothing-burger Challenge

Although New Mexico had been a Republican state when it was first admitted, by the 1920s Democrats were starting to gain power, and 1924 promised to be a close election between incumbent Holm O. Bursum, a high-tariff conservative Republican, and Judge Sam G. Bratton, a progressive Democrat. On Election Day, although New Mexico easily voted for President Coolidge, they did not do likewise for Bursum, with Bratton winning by 2.5%. Bursum challenged the election, claiming voter fraud. He claimed that eligible Indians were denied the vote while aliens, minors, college students voting from outside of their homes, and ex-cons were illegally allowed to vote (U.S. Senate). Although the Senate pushed Burusm to produce his evidence of such wrongdoing, he delayed for weeks and when he finally presented his evidence, although it reduced Bratton’s margin of victory, it fell far short of the irregularities alleged and Bratton kept his seat. Bursum would not seek public office again while Bratton would resign from the Senate in 1933 to accept a presidential appointment to the U.S. Court of Appeals. Democratic dominance of New Mexico would follow, with Republicans only making consistent gains starting in the late 1960s.

The Senate Contends with Big City Political Machinery: The Cases of Vare and Smith

Big city politics have had a reputation for corruption, and this was certainly the case with the Republican machines existing in Philadelphia and Chicago in the 1920s. In 1926, Congressman William S. Vare, the head of the Philadelphia machine, had defeated incumbent George W. Pepper for renomination. Pennsylvania was a very Republican state at that time and had not voted for a Democrat since 1856. The Democratic challenger was former Secretary of Labor William B. Wilson. The official results put Vare over the top with 54.6% of the vote as opposed to Wilson’s 43.1%, which was a respectable result for a Democrat at the time. It should also be noted that Wilson was leading until Philadelphia was counted (Hill). There was considerable doubt in the outcome and many did not want Philadelphia’s boss to be senator. The doubt in the Senate election in Pennsylvania was such that the state’s progressive Republican governor, Gifford Pinchot, refused to certify the election, instead stating that Vare “appears” to have been elected (Hill). However, Pinchot was finishing his term, and his successor, John Fisher, certified Vare.

The other highly contested race was Republican Frank L. Smith’s win with 46.9% of the vote, with Democrat George E. Brennan netting 43.1% of the vote. Smith had defeated incumbent William B. McKinley, who died shortly after his loss, on the issue of the U.S. joining the World Court. He received considerable campaign contributions from the controversial Samuel Insull, the holding company baron who played a major role in setting up America’s electrical grid. The problem? Smith chaired the Illinois Commerce Commission, which regulated utilities. This led to allegations of corruption by Smith, that he was giving Insull an easy ride in exchange for campaign financing. Senator Thaddeus Caraway (D-Ark.) took up the mantle against him. Obtaining information about spending on the Illinois race was not so cut-and-dry for the Senate, as the case of Newberry v. United States put primary campaigns out of the reach of regulation by the Senate and Illinois had no law capping campaign expenditures (U.S. Senate, Smith).

Vare and Smith were elected with strong support of corrupt political machines and extensive evidence was presented of illicit voting practices and excessive campaign financing. Conservatives held that because Vare and Smith met Constitutional requirements that they should be seated and then investigations into their elections proceed, but the fiercely independent William Borah (R-Idaho) was not having it, stating that the Senate had the right to deny them seating and considered doing so acting in the Senate’s preservation (Hill). Although the Senate concluded that despite voting irregularities that Vare had won the election, but that such widespread irregularities and excessive campaign spending had tainted his victory. Vare spoke in his defense, “How unfair and unjust my accusers have been in attempting to twist mere clerical irregularities and technicalities into acts of political fraud and conspiracy!” (Hill) Both were denied seating, although neither Wilson nor Brennan were ruled the winners. Ultimately Pennsylvania Republican Joseph Grundy, a prominent and staunchly conservative industrialist and lobbyist, was appointed interim senator while in Illinois, Republican Otis Glenn won the special election against future Chicago mayor Anton Cermak. The stress of the investigation broke Vare’s health, and he suffered a stroke on August 2, 1928, from which he never fully recovered. Although Vare tried to get back in as a Republican in 1930, the Republican organization turned on him and selected James J. Davis, Secretary of Labor under Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover, instead. Curiously, Vare would attempt a comeback by running for the Democratic nomination for the Senate in 1932, but he suffered another stroke, ending any prospects of return. He died of a heart attack on August 7, 1934.

References

Expulsion Case of Truman Newberry of Michigan. U.S. Senate.

Retrieved from

https://www.senate.gov/about/powers-procedures/expulsion/102TrumanNewberry_expulsion.htm

Hill, R. (2026, March 15). The Boss of Philadelphia: William S. Vare of Pennsylvania. The Knoxville Focus.

Retrieved from

https://www.knoxfocus.com/archives/this-weeks-focus/the-boss-of-philadelphia-william-s-vare-of-pennsylvania/

The Election Case of Daniel F. Steck v. Smith W. Brookhart. U.S. Senate.

Retrieved from

https://www.senate.gov/about/origins-foundations/electing-appointing-senators/contested-senate-elections/105Steck_Brookhart.htm

The Election Case of Frank L. Smith of Illinois. U.S. Senate.

Retrieved from

https://www.senate.gov/about/origins-foundations/electing-appointing-senators/contested-senate-elections/110Frank_Smith.htm

The Election Case of George E.B. Peddy v. Earle Mayfield. U.S. Senate.

Retrieved from

https://www.senate.gov/about/origins-foundations/electing-appointing-senators/contested-senate-elections/103Peddy_Mayfield.htm

The Election Case of Holm O. Bursum v. Sam G. Bratton of New Mexico. U.S. Senate.

Retrieved from

https://www.senate.gov/about/origins-foundations/electing-appointing-senators/contested-senate-elections/107Bursum_Bratton.htm

The Election Case of Magnus Johnson v. Thomas D. Schall. U.S. Senate.

Retrieved from

https://www.senate.gov/about/origins-foundations/electing-appointing-senators/contested-senate-elections/106Johnson_Schall.htm

The Election Case of William B. Wilson v. William S. Vare of Pennsylvania. U.S. Senate.

Retrieved from

https://www.senate.gov/about/origins-foundations/electing-appointing-senators/contested-senate-elections/109Wilson_Vare.htm

We have come to that time of year again, Earth Day. This day was the brainchild of a prominent liberal senator from Wisconsin, Gaylord Anton Nelson (1916-2005). 1958 proved, as I have written in the past, a massive boon for liberals. One of the victors was State Senator Gaylord Nelson, who was elected Wisconsin’s governor. As a state, Wisconsin had not been historically strong for Democrats. Indeed, it was considered shocking when Grover Cleveland won the state in 1892, and the liberal lane for decades was occupied by the progressive wing of the Republican Party, which came to prominence with the rise of Robert La Follette. Indeed, Democrats would not be able to make sustainable gains in the state until the 1950s, and Nelson’s victory was only the second time in the 20^th century that a Democrat was elected governor. He had been in the State Senate since 1948, and had a reputation as a staunch liberal, and indeed he won on a strongly liberal platform. As governor, he along with Senator William Proxmire and future Governor Patrick Lucey were the fathers of the modern Democratic Party in the Badger State. He established a state Youth Conservation Corps, based off of the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression, and the Outdoor Recreation Acquisition Project, which resulted in the purchase of 1 million acres for public parks. Nelson was not overwhelmingly popular at this time, and he was limited in what he could do because both houses of the legislature still had a Republican majority. In 1960, he clinched reelection by three points. Nelson’s second term would serve as a platform for the next office he wanted: Senator.

Winning Against Wiley

By 1962, Wisconsin’s longtime senior senator, Alexander Wiley, was 78 years old and past his prime. Nelson took advantage both of the age difference and Wiley’s increasing irritability by energetically campaigning across the state and attacking the conservative aspects of his voting record. On Election Day, Nelson won by 5 points. The Democratic class of ‘62, which included George McGovern, was quite a liberal one indeed, and Nelson proved one of the most liberal senators. A staunch supporter of civil rights legislation, he was present at the August 28, 1963 March on Washington in which King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial. He backed the Great Society to a hilt, and although he voted for the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution he was an early critic of the Vietnam War. Nelson could at times vote a conservative position on foreign policy, such as voting to cut foreign aid in 1965. After a resounding reelection by 23 points in 1968, Nelson proved among the staunchest foes of the Nixon Administration. In 1973, he was one of only three senators to vote against the confirmation of Gerald Ford as vice president. However, Nelson’s foremost legacy was on the environment. In September 1969, he delivered a speech in Seattle in which he proposed the creation of Earth Day as a grassroots demonstration in response to the January and February 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill which was the worst spill in US history at the time, with the first Earth Day happening on April 22, 1970. Nelson recalled the idea came to him after reading about nationwide teach-ins against the Vietnam War, “It suddenly dawned on me, why not a nationwide teach-in on the environment?” (Thulin) Unsurprisingly, he was one of the strongest champions of environmental regulations. Nelson dismissed the notion that economic development should take precedence over environmental protection, stating, “The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment, not the other way around” (Nelson).

In 1970, Nelson held hearings on the safety of birth control pills, with many witnesses testifying their concerns that the pill could be causing cancer. The result of the hearings was a new law that warnings of potential side effects now had to be included on the labels. Although a staunch liberal like Senator George McGovern (D-S.D.) and a supporter, he declined an offer to be his running mate. In 1974, for many Wisconsinites, his opposition to Nixon was looking pretty good, and he was reelected by his largest margin yet, 26 points, against future Congressman Tom Petri.

The 1980 Election

Nelson’s rise to high political office came in the excellent liberal year of 1958, but 1980 was for Republicans what 1958 had been for Democrats. The political climate had substantially changed since his landslide reelection in 1974, and Nelson was swept away in the Reagan wave, losing by two points to former Congressman Bob Kasten. His ultra-liberalism was shown in multiple measures; he sided with the liberal Americans for Democratic Action 94% of the time, the conservative Americans for Constitutional Action 8% of the time, and has a -0.567 from DW-Nominate, making him one of the most liberal senators of his day. In 1995, President Clinton awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his service and efforts for environmental protection, and the proclamation for the award read, “As the father of Earth Day, he is the grandfather of all that grew out of that event: the Environmental Protection Act, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Safe Water Drinking Act’ (The New York Times). And it wasn’t just Democrats who praised him. Republican Melvin Laird, who as a conservative representative from Wisconsin had frequently disagreed with him, praised his service, “Gaylord’s contributions in the fields of conservation reform and environmental improvement are a living memorial to him” (The New York Times).

References

ADA Voting Records. Americans for Democratic Action.

Retrieved from

Voting Records

Gaylord Nelson, Former Senator Who Founded Earth Day, Dies at 89. (2005, July 3). The New York Times.

Retrieved from

Medicine: The Pill on Trial. (1970, January 25). Time Magazine.

Retrieved from

https://time.com/archive/6816452/medicine-the-pill-on-trial/

Nelson, G. (2002). Beyond Earth Day, fulfilling the promise. Madison, WI.: University of Wisconsin Press.

Nelson, Gaylord Anton. Voteview.

Retrieved from

https://voteview.com/person/10816/gaylord-anton-nelson

Thulin, L. (2019, April 22). Earth Day. Smithsonian Magazine.

Retrieved from

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-oil-spill-50-years-ago-inspired-first-earth-day-180972007/

By 1930, Senator Furnifold M. Simmons had long been a powerful presence in North Carolina. He had been a senator since 1901 and had led the “white supremacy” campaign of 1898 that resulted in the Democrats coming back to power in the long run which also came with it the insurrection that overthrew the multiracial government of Wilmington, which had been the largest city in the state at the time. Although ideologically he could be thought of as a Wilsonian progressive, Simmons resolutely supported Prohibition. Thus, a problem arose for him when the Democratic Party nominated New York Governor Al Smith. Smith was against Prohibition and he had also risen in politics through New York City’s notorious Tammany Hall machine. Both were reason enough for Simmons to endorse Herbert Hoover over Smith. Simmons’ endorsement carried a lot of weight in the state and Hoover won both election and North Carolina. The last time a Republican had won North Carolina was in 1872. However, by 1930 the Great Depression had started and Hoover was very unpopular. This and that Simmons had not cultivated younger politicians made him vulnerable, and stepping in to challenge him was Josiah William Bailey (1873-1946).

Bailey had strong religious convictions as a Baptist, and after his father’s death in 1895 served as the editor of the North Carolina Baptist Convention’s newspaper the Biblical Recorder, and from 1903 to 1907, he headed the state’s Anti-Saloon League, but resigned when the organization started pushing for prohibition rather than temperance, not believing that the former would work (Moore). In 1913, President Woodrow Wilson tapped Bailey to be collector of revenue for the eastern district of North Carolina, and it was there that he gained practical experience on government efficiency, and managed to reduce the cost of collections by 65% (Moore). He served in this role until 1921 In 1914, Bailey pushed with Clarence Poe of the Progressive Farmer a platform for the Democratic Party Convention which included among its planks state primaries, increased assistance to public health and education, stronger regulation of freight and insurance rates, and strengthening child labor laws (Moore). This platform was not adopted, but it established Bailey’s reputation at the time as a progressive. By the early 1920s, Bailey became independent of the Simmons political machine and in 1924 he ran a reformist campaign in the Democratic primary for governor. Although he lost, he was now a known and credible political quantity in the state.

Bailey, who as editor of the Biblical Recorder had backed Simmons’ white supremacy campaign of 1898, hammered him for party disloyalty and this approach worked, with Bailey winning the nomination. Simmons gracefully accepted defeat and had no regrets about his decision to oppose Smith. Although Bailey had campaigned against Simmons on party disloyalty, he would ironically prove far more at odds with his party’s philosophy than Simmons had ever been. Indeed, Bailey had very distinct ideas about right and wrong. As the left-wing publication The Nation noted about him, he was a “diligent scholar whose devotion to abstract principles of right and wrong, and specifically to righteousness in civil and political affairs, borders on fanaticism…He is a brilliant but painstaking student whose mind quickly cuts through to the heart of a thing, with a logic that is irrefutable, and a command of language probably unequalled by any other living North Carolinian” (Tucker). While he campaigned for FDR in 1932, during the first 100 days of the New Deal, Bailey voted against the Agricultural Adjustment Act, being the only North Carolinian to do so. His stance was in contrast to his history of having been a progressive reformer in the 1910s and 1920s. Bailey did support some measures such as the National Industrial Recovery Act, the Tennessee Valley Authority, FDR’s gold measures, and Social Security. In FDR’s first term, Bailey served as a sometimes supporter and sometimes opponent of the New Deal. In 1935, Bailey was one of five Democratic senators to oppose the Wagner Act, commonly regarded as the Magna Carta of labor rights. He would consistently oppose legislation to increase the power of organized labor and support legislation to reduce it. Although Bailey was not blind to social problems and wasn’t necessarily opposing every measure to address them, he had his limitations which he saw as consistent with Jeffersonianism, stating, “Being a Baptist, I am liberal, and believe in liberty. Being a Democrat, I am a liberal and believe in liberty. Once we abandon the voluntary principles, we run squarely into Communism. . . . There can be no half-way control” (Tucker). Bailey was not willing, however, to go strong in opposition until after the 1936 election, but the next year he really went after the philosophy of the New Deal. In 1937, Bailey joined Burton K. Wheeler (D-Mont.) and Vice President John Nance Garner in leading the opposition to FDR’s “court packing plan” and delivered a powerful speech against on the Senate floor. In 1937, he and a group of conservative Democrats and Republicans crafted the “Conservative Manifesto”, with he and Arthur Vandenberg (R-Mich.) being the primary authors. This was a ten point document that outlined conservative alternatives to New Deal programs. This document, however, was prematurely leaked to The New York Times and when inquiries were made about who authored it, Bailey stepped up and admitted it while other Democrats were silent. Vandenberg and Warren Austin (R-Vt.) also stepped up and admitted themselves as participating in the drafting. The reason others were shying away from their involvement was because the ten point plan bore resemblance to what the American Liberty League had been calling for, and President Roosevelt had successfully painted the organization to the public as simply a vehicle for economic privilege. Indeed, Senate Minority Leader Charles McNary (R-Ore.), who had leaked the Manifesto, did so as he was concerned that this would overshadow a planned Republican platform and stated, “Anyone who signs that thing is going to have a Liberty League tag put on him” (Moore, 31-32). Bailey’s record on domestic issues after Roosevelt’s reelection was considerably more conservative on domestic issues, and he sought a program that involved lower spending, more emphasis on state’s rights, and more emphasis on free enterprise to help recovery. He stated, stated, “We do not have a Government at Washington. It is a gift enterprise and the gifts are at the expense of those who work and earn and save. Our President is not actuated by principle, but by fears. He will try to head off anything in order that he may stay at the head. I expect him to run for a third term, and if I am living, I expect to fight a good and last fight” (Moore, 26). Bailey’s leading role in the Conservative Manifesto presaged an overall shift in the state’s politics to the right, and one could consider him as an agent of change in the state who served the role that Republican George Aiken served for his state. Both men believed that in their views they were upholding their party’s traditional values but were often differing with their own parties. Bailey led the shift of North Carolina away from the national party, while Aiken led the shift of Vermont’s Republican party away from the Coolidge-style conservatism that characterized it during the 1930s. The collaboration of Bailey and Republican Vandenberg as central authors also could be marked as the start of the bipartisan Conservative Coalition which started to have pull after the 1938 midterms.

While Bailey was at odds with President Roosevelt on domestic policy, he was strongly supportive on foreign policy, backing all his major initiatives. Indeed, he contrasted considerably with his colleague, Robert Rice Reynolds, who had been much more supportive of New Deal programs but had voted against all of the president’s prewar initiatives save for the peacetime draft. Bailey was again back to the status of moderate opposition to President Roosevelt’s agenda. He was also an internationalist, and opposed the unsuccessful Revercomb (R-W.V.) amendment to require participation in international organizations be by treaty only. Although he had supported much of the president’s war policies, he was against a postwar direction of more government spending and emphasis on the public sector. However, Bailey’s role in the postwar world would be limited; in 1945, his health began to decline and on December 15, 1946, he died in office of a cerebral hemorrhage. Bailey’s DW-Nominate score is a -0.118, which although seems rather low given his domestic conservatism, party-line and procedural votes also get counted. By Democratic standards, he does fit on the party’s conservative wing. Indeed, as noted before, Bailey was the start of North Carolina’s shift to the right and away from the national Democratic Party politics. Although he is largely a forgotten figure, he got some recognition as one of the people profiled in Garland S. Tucker III’s 2015 book, Conservative Heroes: Fourteen Leaders Who Shaped America, From Jefferson to Reagan.

References

Bailey, Josiah William. Voteview.

Retrieved from

https://voteview.com/person/349/josiah-william-bailey

Moore, J.R. (1979). Bailey, Josiah William. NCpedia.

Retrieved from

https://www.ncpedia.org/biography/bailey-josiah-william

Moore, J.R. (1965). Senator Josiah W. Bailey and the “Conservative Manifesto” of 1937. The Journal of Southern History, 31(1), 21-39.

Retrieved from

Click to access new-deal-critics2.pdf

Tucker, G.S. Obscure no more: N.C. Senator Josiah Bailey. Walter Magazine.

Retrieved from

Obscure no more: N.C. Senator Josiah Bailey

Woods, T.E. (2015, August 28). A Missing History of Conservatism. The American Conservative.

Retrieved from

A Missing History of Conservatism

Bipartisanship is a less common commodity than it used to be, but there was a time in which postwar foreign policy was a bipartisan creation, and one of its champions was South Dakota Republican John Chandler “Chan” Gurney (1896-1985). Although Republicans historically had an advantage in South Dakota, the Great Depression depressed their prospects everywhere, even if said Republicans were progressive. In 1930, progressive Republican Senator William McMaster lost reelection to Democrat William J. Bulow. However, given the state’s usual Republican orientation, perhaps Bulow’s election was a fluke. This was a proposition that Chan Gurney tested in 1936. Gurney was a solid pick as he had a voice that was known across South Dakota as a radio announcer for radio station KNAX in Yankton. However, that year would be FDR’s greatest election, with him winning all states except Maine and Vermont. Only one Democratic seat flipped to the GOP that year, and South Dakota’s wasn’t it. Although Gurney lost, he had only lost by two points, running ahead of Republican presidential nominee Alf Landon by ten points. An opportunity would arise less than two months after the election, as on December 20, 1936, Republican Senator Peter Norbeck died of cancer, thus was gone the power of incumbency for that seat. Although Democratic Governor Tom Berry tapped Herbert Hitchcock to serve the remainder of the term. Berry intended to run himself, and defeated Hitchcock for running for the full term. Since Gurney had a good performance considering the environment of 1936, he was able to win the GOP nomination again, and this time he won by five points. As Drew Pearson and Robert Allen (1938) reported in the Washington Merry-Go Round, “In 1936, radio announcer Chandler Gurney had the displeasure of reporting to his listeners that he had been defeated in the race for the United States senate. Last month, announcer Gurney had the pleasure of reporting that he had won his race for the senate” (32).

As a new senator, Gurney proved antagonistic to the New Deal, supported curbing the growing power of organized labor, and stressed fiscal restraint on domestic spending. However, he also supported priorities for South Dakotans, such as rural electrification projects for the state and developing the Missouri River. However, he surprised political observers by supporting an interventionist position. Of South Dakota’s federally elected officials, he was the only one to vote for all of FDR’s major interventionist measures. Gurney, who had served in World War I, believed in national service and there would be no hypocrisy in the coming war as his sons also served. Ironically, his colleague Bulow, who had shifted to the right after FDR’s first term, would be the most opposed of all of South Dakota’s federally elected officials to interventionist foreign policy. In multiple ways, Gurney was contrary to his Republican predecessor, Norbeck, who was largely supportive of the New Deal and had opposed U.S. entry into the World Court. However, he was also staunchly anti-communist, and although he voted for Lend-Lease he had voted for an amendment to prevent Lend-Lease aid going to the USSR. In October 1941, Gurney joined Senators Styles Bridges (R-N.H.) and Warren Austin (R-Vt.) in calling for outright repealing the Neutrality Act, going further than many of their colleagues wanted (Time Magazine, 1942). He was also a strong supporter of the development of aviation and opposed a 1940 effort to cut spending for the Civil Aeronautics Board. In 1942, Gurney sponsored the law reducing the draft age to 18 and increasing the upper limit to 37 and argued that “the American people want to win the war in the shortest possible fashion and will do what it takes to accomplish that” and that drafting of 18 and 19-year-olds was required to do so (Time Magazine, 1942). During World War II, Gurney supported efforts at a new postwar international order, and opposed Senator Revercomb’s (R-W.V.) unsuccessful amendment requiring membership in international organizations to be done by treaty only. In 1944, he won reelection by 28 points, winning all but two counties.

Although Gurney was a senator who was willing to side with the Roosevelt Administration on foreign policy and on certain war measures for the home front, he was adamantly against long-term government involvement in the economy, voting to restrict the emphasis on the public sector in securing full employment in the Full Employment Act of 1946. In 1946, the Republicans won majorities in both houses of Congress, which meant that Gurney was now the chairman of the Armed Services Committee. As chairman, he introduced and led the push for the National Security Act of 1947 and the Selective Service Act of 1948, the latter reinstating the draft. For his work on defense issues, he was a trusted figure with the military brass. Gurney’s anti-communism was expressed both in his support for President Truman’s foreign policies of aid to Greece and Turkey and the Marshall Plan but also in his support for a loan for Francoist Spain, a policy Truman opposed.

Gurney and Civil Rights

Gurney had a record on civil rights that was mixed, more on the side of supporting in his first term and more to opposition in his next term. In 1940, he voted for the Wagner (D-N.Y.) Amendment to the Selective Service Act of 1940, which prohibited racial discrimination in enlistments and in 1943 he voted for an anti-discrimination rider to an education bill. However, in 1944 he voted to delete funding for the Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC) and voted against ending debate on establishing a permanent FEPC in 1946 and 1950. However, Gurney did vote for a short-term appropriation for the FEPC in 1945. As chairman of the Armed Services Committee in the 80^th Congress, he opposed Senator Langer’s (R-N.D.) efforts to add civil rights riders to the Selective Service Act of 1948, not wishing to complicate passage of the legislation with such riders. Gurney also was one of four Republican senators to support Senator Richard Russell’s (D-Ga.) unsuccessful 1950 amendment to allow soldiers to choose whether they want to serve in racially integrated units or not.

The 1950 Election

Gurney had reason to believe that he was safe in his seat. After all, he had been a highly productive legislator, especially as chairman of the Armed Services Committee. His record on domestic issues surely had been conservative enough for the Republican base, and his seniority and expertise were of value. Thus, when Representative Francis Case (R-S.D.), who had been a pre-war non-interventionist and voted against the Marshall Plan ran against him, neither Gurney nor many observers took the run seriously. However, Case barnstormed the state making his case if you will for his nomination and that economy in government was important, including on matters of foreign aid spending. Gurney had dismissed campaigning back in his home state and declined to debate Case, stating that he was “busy” (Time Magazine, 1950). He changed his mind on campaigning in South Dakota two weeks before the primary when it was abundantly clear that Case was gaining traction. His campaign stressed the benefits to South Dakota of his seniority, opposition to deficit financing, opposition to big domestic government, and his stances on foreign policy (Argus-Leader). However, it was too late and he lost renomination by 15,000 votes. Senator George Aiken (R-Vt.) commented, “It made some of those who are up for re-election realize they had better go back home to do some politicking” (Time Magazine, 1950). Gurney’s DW-Nominate score is a 0.217, certainly being depressed by his foreign policy votes, and he agreed with the liberal Americans for Democratic Action 16% of the time from 1947 to 1950.

Gurney was out of elective politics, but President Truman had a job for him: to serve as a member of the Civil Aeronautics Board. He was appointed chairman in 1954, serving in this role until 1957, when he became vice chair until retirement in 1964. Gurney was subsequently on the board of directors for North Central Airlines. He died on March 9, 1985 at the age of 88, far outliving his South Dakota Republican colleagues. Gurney is remembered in South Dakota as Yankton’s municipal airport is named after him for his contributions to aviation policy.

References

ADA Voting Records. Americans for Democratic Action.

Retrieved from

Voting Records

Chan Gurney Candidate for Senator – Political Advertisement. (1950, May 26). Argus-Leader, 6.

Retrieved from

www.newspapers.com/image/230191757/

Chan Gurney left his mark on state. (1985, March 12). Rapid City Journal, 4.

Retrieved from

www.newspapers.com/image/350714418/

Gurney, John Chandler (Chan). Voteview.

Retrieved from

https://voteview.com/person/3882/john-chandler-chan-gurney

Mr. Gurney’s Convictions. (1942, September 13). Time Magazine.

Retrieved from

https://time.com/archive/6604759/mr-gurneys-convictions/

Pearson, D. & Allen, R. (1938, December 11). Washington Merry-Go-Round. Joplin Globe, 32.

Retrieved from

www.newspapers.com/image/1003813456/

South Dakota: Too Busy to Win. (1950, June 18). Time Magazine.

Retrieved from

https://time.com/archive/6796257/south-dakota-too-busy-to-win/

Today Iowa seems to only be getting further cemented as a Republican state, and indeed historically Iowa was a very Republican state, even if its Republicans didn’t always neatly fit the conservative mold. From the 1856 elections up to the Great Depression, Iowa had only had one Democratic senator in Daniel Steck and the circumstances of his election made it a fluke, and its only Democratic governor since the Republican Party’s foundation was Horace Boies, who served from 1890 to 1894. However, the Great Depression taxed the popularity of Republicans so much that it even hit major offices in Iowa. Democrat Richard Murphy won a Senate seat in 1932, Clyde Herring was elected governor, and Guy Gillette (1879-1973) won a Congressional seat in a typically Republican Iowa district. However, even in this early stage of his career, he proved independent from FDR and the New Deal; he voted against the Agricultural Adjustment Act and the National Industrial Recovery Act in 1933. However, Gillette backed other New Deal laws including the Tennessee Valley Authority, FDR’s gold policies, the Securities and Exchange Act, and Social Security. His margin of reelection only increased in 1934. His career was undoubtedly helped by his senatorial looks and geniality, with author Allen Drury writing in A Senate Journal that he was, “a nice fellow … impressively handsome with a friendly twinkle in his eye” (U.S. Senate). Although Gillette had won renomination for reelection to the House in 1936, fate had a different idea. On July 16, 1936, Senator Richard Murphy was killed in a car accident, and Gillette ran for his seat. This was yet another excellent year for the Democrats, he was elected to serve the remainder of the late Senator Murphy’s term.

Murphy had been a staunch New Dealer, but Gillette soon proved he would continue his independence by his opposition to FDR’s court packing plan as well as that year’s proposed Fair Labor Standards Act. A different version of the latter would be passed the following year. However, he did support his controversial proposed 1938 reorganization plan, which critics had dubbed the “dictator bill” for its centralizing of power. Not enthused about Gillette’s record, FDR backed Democratic Congressman Otha Wearin against him. Although strongly with the president now, Wearin had ironically also voted against the Agricultural Adjustment Act and the National Industrial Recovery Act in 1933. However, Iowa Democrats were sufficiently appreciative of Gillette’s independence as well as in opposition to FDR’s putting his thumb on the scale of state primaries. It was a different time back then. Although Roosevelt did not like Gillette being the nominee again, he undoubtedly preferred him to Republican candidate Lester J. Dickinson, who had been in the Senate from 1931 to 1937 and was a staunch foe of President Roosevelt. It was a tough campaign, with Gillette winning reelection by less than 3,000 votes. Had Wearin won the nomination, it seems likely that Dickinson would have returned, thus having an outright opponent rather than someone whose vote was not always certain. This win, by the way, was historic, as this was the first time a Democrat had won reelection to the Senate from Iowa since 1852.

In his second term, Gillette more often supported Roosevelt on domestic issues than not, but he also stood as one of the Senate’s opponents of FDR’s foreign policy. Although he had voted for the repeal of the arms embargo in 1939, he opposed the peacetime draft, Lend-Lease, and the permitting of merchant ships to enter belligerent ports. Writing confidentially for the British Foreign Office, Isaiah Berlin assessed Gillette thusly,

“[He] resembles Van Nuys in that he is a typical Mid-Western Senator with a moderately steady Isolationist voting record, although he is not an articulate opponent of the Administration’s policy. Unlike Van Nuys, he is a supporter of reciprocal trade pacts but shares his suspicion of the President. A simple, confused, but very honest Presbyterian of considerable character, he views the corn interest, which he represents, with an almost religious devotion. He leads the Senate Lobby interested in producing synthetic rubber out of corn, and coming from the Republican corn belt, is virtually a Republican in sentiment and conduct. He is not at all anti-British, but as isolationist as his general environment. His speeches in Congress take the form of thinking aloud. On foreign policy he is not a bigoted anti-Rooseveltite but is exceedingly uncertain” (Hachey, 146).

During World War II, Gillette strongly pushed for active efforts to save European Jews from the Holocaust. As a devout Christian, he sympathized with the historical plight of the Jews and sought to help them. He also shifted his foreign policy views from moderate non-interventionism to support for internationalism, most notably in evidence in his vote against Senator Revercomb’s (R-W.V.) unsuccessful 1943 amendment to require participation in international organizations be established by treaty only.

Although 1944 was a considerably better year for Democrats than expected, this didn’t apply enough in Gillette’s case to save him from the candidacy of Governor Bourke B. Hickenlooper in 1944, who won with 51% of the vote. By this time, differences between Gillette and the president appeared to be patched up, and he was appointed chairman of the Surplus Property Board. However, he did not care much for his role, and he often found himself outvoted by the board’s two other members. After his resignation in May 1945, Gillette was offered a judgeship by President Truman, but he turned it down as he believed himself unqualified as he had been too long out of the practice of law, a demonstration of his personal honesty (Hill). Gillette, a committed supporter of Zionism, was president of the American League for a Free Palestine, which was disbanded after the establishment of Israel in 1948. That year, Gillette sought a political comeback. President Truman and Gillette heavily appealed to farmers in this campaign, Truman campaigned for Gillette, and told Iowans that if they didn’t elect him to the Senate again there was something wrong with them (Hill). On Election Day, Gillette pulled a stunning victory by 162,448 votes against incumbent George A. Wilson, who had previously been popular.

Gillette’s Next Round

This time around, Gillette was a bit more supportive of the Democratic Administration and unlike his previous term in the Senate, he was solidly internationalist. He supported the Point Four program in 1950, and opposed most proposals to cut foreign aid. On domestic issues, Gillette had a hodgepodge of positions; he supported a “local option” amendment for rent control in 1949, but supported extending rent control in 1950, supported a conservative substitute for minimum wage legislation in 1949, opposed a 1950 proposal making housing credit more available to co-ops and non-profit housing projects, opposed the Knowland Amendment restricting the authority of the Social Security Administrator to enforce federal standards for unemployment compensation, and opposed the Tidelands Act in 1953. Gillette supported civil rights, opposing Senator Russell’s (D-Ga.) effort to undermine army desegregation and backed ending debate on a Fair Employment Practices bill. In 1952, Gillette voted against overriding President Truman’s veto of the McCarran-Walter Immigration Act. Curiously, during the Eisenhower Administration, Gillette’s foreign policy record seemed to take a turn to the right, with him backing a significant foreign aid cut in 1953 and supporting the Bricker Amendment the following year. In 1954, Gillette went for another term, but was defeated by Congressman Thomas E. Martin, who netted 52% of the vote in an otherwise good election year for Democrats, once again placing Gillette on the low end of a good Democratic year and was a reaffirmation of Iowa’s traditional Republicanism. This was a major upset as polling had put Gillette in the lead and on Election Night he believed he would be winning another term. He had sided with the liberal Americans for Democratic Action 66% of the time during his final term and his DW-Nominate score is a -0.076, the latter indicating that he was a moderate. Gillette got a cameo appearance in the 1962 film Advise and Consent, fittingly as a senator along with octogenarian former Senator Henry Ashurst (D-Ariz.) and sitting Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson (D-Wash.). While retired, Gillette suffered a stroke which paralyzed his right side, but he succeeded in learning how to write with his left hand. On March 3, 1973, he died in a nursing home at the age of 94.

References

ADA Voting Records. Americans for Democratic Action.

Retrieved from

Voting Records

Gillette, Guy. Encyclopedia of America’s Response to the Holocaust.

Retrieved from

Gillette, Guy

Gillette, Guy Mark. Voteview.

Retrieved from

https://voteview.com/person/3603/guy-mark-gillette

Guy Gillette: A Featured Biography. U.S. Senate.

Retrieved from

https://www.senate.gov/senators/FeaturedBios/Featured_Bio_GilletteGuy.htm

Hachey, T.E. (1974). American Profiles on Capitol Hill: A Confidential Study for the British Foreign Office in 1943. The Wisconsin Magazine of History, 57(2), 141-153.

Retrieved from

Click to access bib139a.pdf

Hill, R. (2013, February 17). Guy M. Gillette of Iowa. The Knoxville Focus.

Retrieved from

Guy M. Gillette of Iowa

Wearin, Otha Donner. Voteview.

Retrieved from

https://voteview.com/person/9890/otha-donner-wearin

Whitman, A. (1973, March 4). Ex-Senator Guy Gillette Dead; Iowan, 94, in Congress 18 Years. The New York Times.

Retrieved from

In recent times, less and less is required for the press to count a Democrat as a “moderate” or even “conservative”. The closest one has come in recent years was West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, but someone who really did fit this bill was Zell Bryan Miller (1932-2018). Miller was always two things: a Democrat and a man of Young Harris, Georgia. He never knew his father, as his father died only 17 days after his birth from cerebral meningitis. He and his sister were raised by their mother in modest circumstances and the fact that she had built the family home with rocks she got from a stream instilled into young Zell the value of rugged independence (Grant). As a young man, Miller attended and graduated from Young Harris College but lacked the discipline to proceed at Emory University. However, he gained the discipline required from his subsequent service in the U.S. Marines (Grant). In 1954, Miller married Shirley Carver and they had two sons, with him continuing his education in 1956 at the University of Georgia, earning Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in history, learning from prominent historian E. Merton Coulter, a proponent of the Dunning School of historical interpretation of Reconstruction. In 1958, while teaching history and political science at Young Harris College, Miller won his first election to serve as Young Harris’s mayor at the young age of 26. Serving from 1959 to 1960, he was then elected to the Georgia State Senate, serving until 1964. He attempted to win the Democratic nomination for Congress in both 1964 and 1966, and like most Georgia politicians of the time, he ran on a segregationist platform. Although not successful in his bids for Congress, Miller served as executive secretary for Governor Lester Maddox from 1968 to 1971. In this role, he was credited with influencing Maddox to make more appointments of blacks to government positions and to improve higher education (Grant). From 1971 to 1973, Miller served as chairman of the state’s Democratic Party, which set him up for a run in 1974 for lieutenant governor. Miller proved popular in this role, and his time resulted in him considering a run for the Senate.

The 1980 Senate Primary

Although the name Talmadge carried a lot of political heft in Georgia, during his fourth term, Senator Herman Talmadge’s reputation began to suffer. An alcoholic, his drinking got out of hand after the drowning death of his son in 1975, and his publicized divorce was ugly and bitter. In addition, Talmadge was hit with a dishonor that only nine senators have ever suffered, and only one has ever served another term after: he was censured by the Senate (although the term “denounced” was used in his case). Furthermore, his past as a segregationist was not aging well as black participation was increasing in the state’s Democratic Party, thus Zell Miller challenged him for renomination and received endorsements from numerous black political figures, including State Senator Julian Bond and Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson (Harris). Talmadge, however, commanded a lot of loyalty in the Democratic Party, his seniority helped, and there were black supporters of him for delivering on certain priorities. Miller fell short in his bid to deny Talmadge renomination by 18 points, but in the general election, he would narrowly lose reelection to Mack Mattingly, chairman of the Georgia Republican Party. Some Democrats believed that Miller’s candidacy made the difference in the general election. in the meantime, he would continue to serve as lieutenant governor. In 1990, Miller decided to move up to governor, successfully gaining the nomination in 1990 and winning against Republican Johnny Isakson by over 8 points.

As governor, he pledged to serve only one term and sought to make the most of the time. Miller focused strongly on education, and proposed an amendment to the state’s constitution to permit a state lottery with the funds going to fund the state’s education system, which the voters passed. He also established the HOPE Scholarship Program, in which every Georgia student who averages a B or better is eligible for a fully paid scholarship to any Georgia state college or university. Miller was keen on both preventative and punitive measures on criminal justice, and got the toughest sentencing guidelines in the country passed, a two strikes law (Grant).

In 1992, Miller gave his strong backing to the candidacy of Bill Clinton and helped him get the Democratic nomination. He delivered a strong keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention, in which he said, “I made it because Franklin Delano Roosevelt energized this nation. I made it because Harry Truman fought for working families like mine. I made it because John Kennedy’s rising tide lifted even our tiny boat. I made it because Lyndon Johnson showed America that people who were born poor didn’t have to die poor” (Stout).

Although Miller was successful in helping Clinton to the White House and carrying Georgia for him, he had his own political future to consider. He had been quite a success as governor, and this motivated him to change his mind and run for a second term. This was far from without controversy, and Georgia voters were souring on the Clinton Administration, which resulted in Miller only winning reelection by two points in 1994. Although on the presidential level, second terms are often considerably worse than first, Miller’s second term as governor was even better than the first. He worked hard to make the state attractive for growth and investment. Miller even established a special program to use private funding to distribute classical music CDs to every family with babies born in Georgia, and by the end of his second term, his approval rating was an astronomical 85% (Grant). Although after his term, Miller sought to continue his education career and taught at Emory, University of Georgia, and of course Young Harris College, the call of political office would come to his doorstep.

Senator Miller

On July 18, 2000, Republican Senator Paul Coverdell died of a cerebral hemorrhage, and Democratic Governor Roy Barnes tapped Miller to serve in the interim. He sought a full term, and for the 2000 special election, he faced Mack Mattingly. However, Miller had recently been an extremely popular governor while Mattingly had been out of elective office since his reelection loss in 1986. The result was a blowout for Miller, winning by 20 points while Republican George W. Bush carried the state by over 11 points. One could interpret this victory as a vindication of Miller’s 1980 candidacy for the Senate. As a senator, Miller’s record started moderate, and he was one of a few Senate Democrats to vote for the Bush tax cuts in 2001. He stated, “I agree with President Bush that the taxpayers are better judges of how to spend their own money than we are” (Stout). His disagreement with Democratic leadership grew when they came out strongly against an amendment he sponsored with Phil Gramm (R-Tex.) to loosen union and personnel rules for the Department of Homeland Security and held up the legislation shortly before the 2002 midterms over the issue, he became a critic of the party’s leadership. Miller saw this as placing the priorities of an interest group (federal employees) over the priority of national security. He blamed the results of the 2002 midterm on the Democratic Senate leadership, stating, “When you bring it down to whether you are for homeland security or for protecting federal employees’ jobs, that is pretty hard to defend” and blamed repeated votes on the issue for the defeats of Max Cleland (D-Ga.) and Jean Carnahan (D-Mo.) (Preston). Miller had campaigned for the former’s reelection. After the 2002 midterms, his record shifted strongly to the right. In 2004, Miller announced that he would not be running for a full term. This freed him to do what he wanted, including introducing a Constitutional amendment repealing the 17^th Amendment (direct election of senators) as he believed this lessened the power of states in favor of the federal government. Miller’s separation from the national Democratic Party was complete with his endorsement of George W. Bush. This time, he was a keynote speaker at the Republican National Convention. Miller delivered yet another strong speech,

“Never in the history of the world has any soldier sacrificed more for the freedom and liberty of total strangers than the American soldier.

And, our soldiers don’t just give freedom abroad, they preserve it for us here at home.

For it has been said so truthfully that it is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the press.

It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech.

It is the soldier, not the agitator, who has given us the freedom to protest.

It is the soldier who salutes the flag, serves beneath the flag, whose coffin is draped by the flag, who gives that protester the freedom he abuses to burn that flag” (Presidential Rhetoric).

He was also staunchly critical of Senator John Kerry’s (D-Mass.) voting record on defense issues, as he had a history of voting for defense cuts. During his speech, he told the audience, “This is the man who wants to be the commander in chief of the U.S. Armed Forces? U.S. forces armed with what? Spitballs?” (Stout). After the speech, reporters started asking him questions. When correspondent Chris Matthews asked him over a microphone to elaborate on the “spitballs” remark, Miller snapped, “Do you know what a metaphor is? Get out of my face!” and subsequently stated, “I wish we lived in the day when we could challenge someone to a duel,” but expressed regret for the remark (Stout).

Despite his endorsement of Bush, as noted earlier, Miller never switched parties, always seeing the Democratic Party as his home. He made the direct comparison when asked about why he didn’t switch, stating, “I compare it to being in an old house. It’s a house that I’ve lived in for years that’s getting kind of drafty and hard to heat. The plumbing won’t work, and some strangers have moved into the basement, and I don’t know who they are, and there’s no doubt I would be more comfortable in another house. But, you see, I was here first. I’ve lived in this house for years and years. It’s home, and I’m not going to leave” (Stout). With his departure from the Senate on January 3, 2005, was the departure of the last true conservative Democrat of the Senate in this author’s opinion. Miller sided with the liberal Americans for Democratic Action only 23% of the time, while he sided with the American Conservative Union 71% of the time. His DW-Nominate score is a 0.146, which is extremely high for a Democrat. Miller’s storied political life and the various stances he took over his career led some to call him “Zigzag Zell”, and this reflected the mixed feelings people in the Georgia Democratic Party had about him at the end. His successor, interestingly enough, was Johnny Isakson, the man he bested in 1990. President Bush subsequently appointed him to the American Battle Monuments Commission, and in 2008 the University of Georgia honored him by dedicating the Zell B. Miller Learning Center (Grant).

Although in retirement from elective office, Miller did still let his opinions be known, and often supported Republican candidates for public office, such as Saxby Chambliss for reelection to the Senate in 2008 and Governor Nathan Deal. However, he did support Democrats now and again, such as Michelle Nunn in her 2014 Senate run. In 2017, Miller retired from public life due to a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease and died the next year on March 23^rd at 86 in Young Harris. Whatever happened in his life, wherever he politically stood, and whoever he supported, Zell Miller was born a Young Harris Democrat and died a Young Harris Democrat.

References

ADA Voting Records. Americans for Democratic Action.

Retrieved from

Voting Records

Former U.S. Sen. Zell Miller dies at 86; Was 2-term Georgia governor. (2018, March 23). The Florida-Times Union.

Retrieved from

https://www.jacksonville.com/story/news/2018/03/23/former-us-sen-zell-miller-dies-at-86-was-2-term-georgia-governor/12867515007/

Grant, C. (2018, June 4). Zell Miller. New Georgia Encyclopedia.

Retrieved from

https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/government-politics/zell-miller-1932-2018/

Harris, A. (1980, August 23). Drawlin’ and Brawlin’. The Washington Post.

Retrieved from

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1980/08/23/drawlin-and-brawlin/636ce4af-b747-40f5-909e-618566f13946/

Miller, Zell Bryan. Voteview.

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https://voteview.com/person/49904/zell-bryan-miller

Preston, M. (2003, February 14). Miller Blames Leaders for ‘02. Roll Call.

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https://rollcall.com/2003/02/14/miller-blames-leaders-for-02/

Speeches from the 2004 Republican National Convention: Zell Miller. (2004, September 1). Presidential Rhetoric.

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http://www.presidentialrhetoric.com/campaign/rncspeeches/miller.html

Stout, D. (2018, March 23). Zell Miller, Feisty Democrat Who Sided With G.O.P., Is Dead at 86. The New York Times.

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At one time, California Republicans were of great significance; Hiram Johnson was a celebrated leader of the progressive faction of the Republican Party and nationally known for his role in defeating the Versailles Treaty, Richard Nixon was from California, and Ronald Reagan’s political career began in California. As late as 2023, a California Republican had a leadership role, Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Another figure of significance, although not as well known as Nixon or Reagan, was William Fife Knowland (1908-1974), who was one of the foremost figures of Washington at the height of his power.

Knowland’s birth as well as how his father, J.R. Knowland, regarded him set him up for a career in politics. The elder Knowland had been a member of Congress in the conservative faction of the party from the Roosevelt to Wilson Administrations representing Oakland (different time, different Oakland). J.R. also was a mentor to Earl Warren, who would diverge considerably from conservative politics with time. From his youth, the younger Knowland was an active player in California politics, serving in the State Assembly from 1933 to 1935 and the State Senate from 1935 to 1939. In 1942, at the age of 34, he joined the army; he and his father’s newspaper, the Oakland Tribune, for which he worked as assistant publisher, had supported the peacetime draft law and he figured that if he supported such a policy that he should live it for the duration of the war.

After Senator Hiram Johnson died in 1945, Warren approached J.R. Knowland about a temporary Senate appointment, but he declined and recommended his son. Interestingly, Knowland learned of his appointment by the reading the Stars and Stripes newspaper; his wife Helen had attempted to call him to tell him about his appointment, but her call was turned down by military censors as “not essential government business” (Hill). The army honorably discharged him and sent him to Washington to serve.

Although Knowland would develop a public reputation as a conservative, in his first years in the Senate he was politically moderate. Indeed, when appointed, he publicly identified himself as a “liberal Republican pointed toward national social programs and business stability and international cooperation based on a non-partisan approach to foreign policy” (Montgomery and Johnson, 53). He demonstrated his willingness by backing President Truman’s Full Employment bill in 1945, which would be signed into law but in a compromised form the following year. He was, however, fiscally conservative, and was concerned about the accumulation of debt (Montgomery and Johnson, 67). Knowland’s warnings on debt have since been largely unheeded by both parties. In 1950, Knowland, a strong supporter of authority of states, sponsored an amendment to that year’s Social Security bill restricting the authority of the Social Security Administrator to require states to adopt federal standards for unemployment compensation, requiring a 90 day notice for noncompliance findings and required judicial review before funds could be withheld from states. The amendment was adopted as part of that year’s legislation. Bill Knowland was also not what we would think of as a politician temperamentally, he was humorless, not charismatic, and had a tendency not to remember people he had previously met. However, he was also highly principled, and indeed the integrity of his public life is unblemished. However, Knowland’s private life was a different story. Although he and his wife Helen loved each other, both had extra-marital affairs. They had married very young and hadn’t had a chance to “sow their wild oats”. Helen conducted an affair with journalist and later senator Blair Moody, while Knowland had an affair with Moody’s wife, Ruth.

In 1952, Knowland faithfully backed fellow Californian and family friend Earl Warren for the Republican nomination for president. Richard Nixon was also supposed to be a backer of Warren, but he double-crossed Warren by working behind the scenes to get the California delegation to flip to Eisenhower on key procedural votes during the Republican National Convention, thus securing his nomination (Farrell). Knowland himself had received an offer for an arrangement from Taft which he declined, most likely meaning a vice president nomination in exchange getting California’s delegates to his side. Had Knowland acted before Nixon, he would have secured the nomination for Taft. And since Taft died on July 31, 1953, we would have had President Knowland. This demonstrates that principles in politics can come at a cost. Earl Warren, however, would get a pretty substantial consolation prize with the advocacy of Knowland: Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. During the Eisenhower presidency, he increasingly identified with the conservative wing, particularly once he succeeded Taft as Senate Republican leader, and voted against Senator Joseph McCarthy’s censure in 1954. Although not a slavish devotee of his, indeed Knowland had voted against his pushes to reject Charles Bohlen’s nomination as Ambassador to Russia as well as reducing aid to nations trading with Red China in 1953 and objected to his breaches of Senatorial decorum, he nonetheless thought that McCarthy’s prime sin was exaggeration as opposed to the validity of his crusade. He reflected on McCarthy in 1970, “…one of Joe McCarthy’s liabilities was a tendency to overstate his case. I think he hurt himself a good deal by this overstating his case, and he offended a lot of Republican senators by some of the statements he made” and further stated, “I haven’t agreed with Senator Fulbright on the way he performed either during the Eisenhower Administration or during the Johnson Administration, or even currently. But he was a senator of the United States, and I really resented when McCarthy got up on the floor and referred to him as Senator Halfbright. I mean, it was this kind of a thing, you know, that just isn’t done” (Frantz, 21).

As a leader, Knowland was not as skilled as Democratic leader Lyndon B. Johnson, who often got the better of him. As veteran journalist William S. White noted, “Knowland was very inflexible and not one-tenth as bright as Johnson in maneuvers and so on. So Johnson took care that he always maintained a very close personal relationship with Knowland, so that he could approach him at any time. He really just sort of overwhelmed Knowland with his brilliance as a leader” but also added that, “It only meant that he was a more intuitive man, operating with more freedom of motion in a more relaxed party. To put it another way, the stiffness of Knowland, an honorable and very down-right man quite incapable of subtlety, had a kind of inevitability in the very nature of his party. The flexible, inventive, more volatile characteristics of Johnson were in a sense really the human characteristics of his party” (Montgomery and Johnson, 140-141). President Eisenhower also noted Knowland’s deficit in leadership. He wrote in his diary on January 18, 1954, “Knowland means to be helpful and loyal, but he is cumbersome. He does not have the sharp mind and the great experience that Taft did. Consequently, he does not command the respect in the Senate that Senator Taft enjoyed” (Montgomery and Johnson, 150-151). While Knowland was without question a man of integrity in his public actions, his leadership deficiencies precluded moving higher. Interestingly, something that also connects to today is Knowland’s recounting of himself and other members of the Republican Senate leadership trying to convince President Eisenhower to replace some of Truman’s people in government departments, which he would not budge on as he did not want to be seen as attacking the civil service (Frantz, 24-25). Republican presidents since have been more friendly to the views of Knowland and other Republican bigwigs in the need to build up the party. Although Eisenhower had his differences with Knowland and others in the Republican leadership, Knowland rejected the interpretation that Eisenhower was ideologically closer to Democratic leader Lyndon B. Johnson than the GOP (Frantz, 29). In 1957, he sponsored an unsuccessful amendment retaining the restriction on bartering of commodities for communist nations, in keeping with his anti-communist stance. In 1958, Knowland successfully introduced an amendment blocking liberalization of the Battle Act as an amendment to foreign aid legislation to permit aid to communist nations aside from the USSR, China, and North Korea. Consistent with his views on unions, he also sponsored two unsuccessful secret ballot amendments to that year’s proposed labor reform bill.

Knowland and Civil Rights

After the decision of Brown v. Board of Education (1954), legislative action was bound to follow. In 1956, the House passed an Eisenhower Administration-backed civil rights bill, which focused on voting rights. Knowland and Majority Leader Johnson wanted to hold off on civil rights until after the election, and all but five senators agreed. In 1957, Knowland backed the Eisenhower Administration bill fully, and managed to bypass the Senate Judiciary Committee to bring it to the floor. The committee was chaired by James Eastland (D-Miss.), one of the most prominent and outspoken segregationists who made the committee a graveyard for civil rights bills. However, Knowland did not prevail in his effort to prevent weakening amendments, most notably striking the section of the bill granting the Attorney General authority to initiate 14^th Amendment lawsuits and the adoption of a jury trial provision for contempt of court voting rights cases. Majority Leader Johnson had prevailed in the adoption of the latter two, which resulted in passage of the bill, as the Southern bloc had agreed not to have a coordinated filibuster if these weakening amendments were added. Johnson got a good deal of credit for securing the passage of the first civil rights bill, which also cemented him as a national rather than regional figure and made him a presidential contender.

Knowland atop an elephant during the 1958 Senate campaign.

Defeat and After

I have already covered the story of Knowland and the 1958 election, so long story short, he lost the gubernatorial election badly to Pat Brown in a deeply troubled campaign, and this ended his political career. Knowland sided with the liberal Americans for Democratic Action 31% of the time, and the conservative Americans for Constitutional Action 77% of the time, both measures indicating a moderate conservatism. His DW-Nominate score is a 0.227. Knowland’s political career was over at the age of 50, and he resumed publishing, succeeding his father as publisher for the Oakland Tribune.

Although Helen Knowland’s extra-marital activities had ended with Blair Moody’s death in 1954, Bill’s affair with Ruth lasted until her death in 1961, and he continued to have affairs after. Finally, in 1972, the couple divorced so Bill could marry a much younger woman. However, she was a tempestuous woman, a full-blown alcoholic, and addicted to spending. This, combined with Knowland’s gambling addiction drained the family fortune. By 1974, Knowland was over $900,000 (over $5 million in today’s money) in debt to banks and mobsters. He considered selling the Oakland Tribune, but he ended up landing on a different course of action. On the morning of February 23, 1974, Knowland drove up to his compound in Guerneville, got his gun, went to his pier on the Russian River, and fired a shot into his right temple, dying instantly at the age of 65.

References

ADA Voting Records. Americans for Democratic Action.

Retrieved from

Voting Records

Farrell, J.A. (2017, March 21). Richard Nixon’s Ugly, 30-Year Feud with Earl Warren. Smithsonian Magazine.

Retrieved from

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/inside-story-richard-nixons-ugly-30-year-feud-earl-warren-180962614/

Frantz, J.B. (1970, March 23). Oral history transcript, William F. Knowland, interview 1 (I). LBJ Presidential Library.

Retrieved from

https://discoverlbj.org/item/oh-knowlandw-19700323-1-00-05

Knowland, William Fife. Voteview.

Retrieved from

https://voteview.com/person/5343/william-fife-knowland

Montgomery, G.B. & Johnson, J.W. (1998). One step from the White House: the rise and fall of Senator William F. Knowland. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Retrieved from

https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft4k4005jq;chunk.id=0;doc.view=print