Early polls had shown the senator comfortably ahead of McCarthy, and La Follette didn't see how the relatively unknown judge from Appleton could possibly catch up. So the senator made the fateful decision not to return to Wisconsin to campaign until just eight days before the primary. He spent three of those days in Milwaukee, giving brief speeches to his supporters and distributing pamphlets. Belatedly, he realized that his campaign was in trouble, and he and his backers pleaded with the editors of the influential Milwaukee Journal to endorse him. But the editors, after much discussion, decided to remain neutral.
Meanwhile, Joe never let up. He continued to crisscross the state, meeting and greeting hundreds of people and asking for their support on primary day. The Young Republicans thought up a unique way to advance his cause. They enlisted 1,000 members, including many veterans, to distribute McCarthy campaign literature in every Wisconsin town with a population over 500 on the weekend before the election. Employing military terminology, the Young Republicans dubbed the effort "a statewide vote attack." Car drivers were called "flight captains," pilots "bombardiers," and local leaders "squadron commanders."
Three planes dropped bundles of campaign literature at airports all across Wisconsin. More than 200 cars, each staffed by four volunteers, picked up the bundles and handed out the four-page folders to voters in all the towns and villages in their assigned areas. The folders urged voters to cast their ballots for the "regular Republicans" on the ticket. They emphasized the importance of Joe's candidacy, and he was allotted a full-page photograph.
Joe ended his campaigning at a soldiers' home in Milwaukee, where he told the veterans stories of his wartime experiences in the Pacific. Then he drove to Urban Van Susteren's home in Appleton, where he listened to the election results with a number of close friends.
La Follette enjoyed a lead in the early returns, but the tide turned when votes started to come in from Milwaukee, Sheboygan, and other cities along the shore
McCarthy enjoys breakfast at the home of his friends Urban and Margery Van Susteren, the day after his stunning victory over incumbent Robert M. La Follette in the 1946 Republican primary election for the U.S. Senate. Wisconsin Historical Society
of Lake Michigan. In the 1940 election, La Follette had carried Milwaukee County by 55,000 votes; now, in 1946, he lost it to Joe by 10,000. In the end, Joe stunned many observers by defeating the well-known and widely respected La Follette, 207,935 to 202,557.
At six A.M., when any doubts about the outcome had been dispelled, Joe made a brief victory statement: "This was a contest not between men but between issues and the theories of government." La Follette responded with a single word: "Congratulations." Loyal Eddy offered his special acknowledgment to the Young Republicans: "Your last-minute blanketing of the state by 1,000 spirited volunteers ... was the final touch in one of the most important elections of our time." Tom Coleman confided to friends that La Follette's defeat "marked the greatest night in my life."
Many of La Follette's colleagues in the Senate reacted with sadness and regret. Senator Edwin C. Johnson of Colorado wrote the senator: "You must know how bitter I feel over the mistake the people of Wisconsin have made."
For Joe, his victory in the primary, while gratifying, was just another step on the road to the Senate.
8. Newcomer in Washington
NOW JOE HAD TO PLOT his campaign against the Democratic nominee, Howard J. McMurray, a former congressman and a strong advocate of labor unions, in the general election. Because Republicans greatly outnumbered Democrats in Wisconsin, McMurray was considered the underdog in the race. But he put up a much stronger fight than La Follette had, calling Joe "Two-job Joe McCarthy" because he had continued to work as a judge while running for the Senate.
Joe defended himself in a speech: "I did give up my job and my salary for a period of nearly three years, which time I spent in the U.S. Marine Corps. Now, ladies and gentlemen, it so happens that I am not a rich man or I could and perhaps would give up that salary again. My job is my means of support." Joe failed to mention the sizable sums he had made recently in the stock market.
In one of several debates with Joe, McMurray made fun of the postcard tactic the McCarthy campaign had used successfully against La Follette. Referring to Ray Kiermas's fund-raising efforts, McMurray said sarcastically: "They need money to hire girls to address postcards and sign the name 'Joe.'" Joe dismissed McMurray's comment as "petty" and said there was a more important issue they needed to discuss, namely, the matter of McMurray's loyalty to his country.
McMurray was startled by Joe's abrupt change of subject. "I have never had a responsible citizen challenge my loyalty before," he responded. "I am sure my friends and the students in my political science classes [McMurray was a lecturer
Poster used in McCarthy's successful 1946 Senate campaign against his Democratic rival, Howard McMurray. Marquette University Archives
at the University of Wisconsin] will not challenge my loyalty. This statement is a little below the belt."
Joe was determined to pursue the matter. Several weeks earlier, Fred Blau, chairman of the Wisconsin Communist Party, had endorsed McMurray in a letter to the Daily Worker, the newspaper of the Communist Party U.S.A., which was published in New York City. Two pro-McCarthy newspapers in Wisconsin picked up on Blau's letter and asked in similar editorials: "Does Mr. McMurray repudiate the Communists who have infiltrated the New Deal political machine in this state? Or does he crave political success so deeply that he would accept any support, disregarding its origin and sinister purpose?" Now Joe asked McMurray if he had been glad to receive "the endorsement of the Daily Worker.
McMurray replied firmly: "I have not seen the reported statement in the Daily Worker ...[but] I certainly repudiate that paper and their whole tribe." McCarthy's charge had already registered with the audience at the debate, however, and it would get more space in the morning newspapers than McMurray's denial.
McCarthy wasn't the only Republican to raise the Communist issue in the 1946 election campaign. Voters were distressed that the end of the war—which had cost so much and to which so many lives had been sacrificed—had not brought genuine peace to the world. Instead, Stalin's territorial demands in Europe, which Winston Churchill had lamented in his "Iron Curtain" speech, made people fearful and uneasy. A new conflict seemed to be shaping up, one that journalists had begun to call the cold war.
In such a nervous climate, it was almost inevitable that people would look for a scapegoat to blame for their uneasy feelings, and many found one in Communism. From there, it was easy for Republicans to make a connection between Communism and their political opponents, the Democrats. E. Dewey Reese, the National Chairman of the Republican Party, stated the connection sharply and clearly: "Democratic party policy as enunciated by its officially chosen spokesmen ... bears a made-in-Moscow label. That is why I believe I am justified in saying the choice which confronts Americans this year [1946] is between Communism and Republicanism."
Joe McCarthy didn't know much about Communism, except that most people thought it was bad. He had not taken part in any of the heated discussions about Communist ideology, pro and con, that were so common during his college years. Nor did he appreciate the distinctions among reformers, radicals, socialists, and Communists. What he did know was that anti-Communist rhetoric could drown out the arguments of an opponent and resonate with voters who were looking for simple, clear-cut answers to complicated political and social problems. And so he was more than willing to employ it as a tactic, as he did with Howard McMurray.
On the eve of the election, Joe predicted he would win by a margin of around 227,000 votes. His guess was amazingly close. The actual vote was 620,380 for McCarthy, 378,722 for McMurray—a margin of 241,658 for Joe.
After a joyous postelection celebration in Appleton on Tuesday night, Joe and several men friends drove north to the resort town of Land O' Lakes on the Michigan border. Joe was exhausted. He went to bed at seven-thirty on Wednesday even
ing and slept until three-thirty on Thursday afternoon. After eating a meal of two thick steaks, he went back to bed at ten-thirty. He was still sleeping when a reporter phoned at noon on Friday. "Why are you calling me in the middle of the night?" Joe asked.
McCarthy arrived in Washington by train on December 1. He wouldn't be sworn in with the other new senators until January 3, 1947, but he wanted time to settle in and begin to get a feel for the nation's capital.
He had persuaded his good friend Ray Kiermas to come to Washington with him as his office manager. Kiermas and his wife, Dolores, found a two-bedroom apartment in the city, and Joe moved in with them. He took one of the bedrooms, while the Kiermases' young daughter slept on a couch in the living room. Joe's room was simply furnished, and a visitor noticed that there were no personal photographs on the bureau or desk. The only reading matter was a pile of the paperback Western stories that Joe liked to read before going to sleep.
Wisconsin's other senator, Alexander Wiley, had long since forgotten Joe's unsuccessful run against him in 1944. Now Wiley introduced Joe to several of the most influential Republicans in the Senate, including Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts and Robert Taft of Ohio, who was known by many as "Mr. Republican" because of the respect he was accorded by his fellow Republicans. Joe was eager to impress the senators and told Taft he hoped to get a seat on the powerful Armed Services Committee. Taft made no promises; all senators got committee assignments, but seats on that committee were usually reserved for far more experienced senators than Joe.
As a good-looking young bachelor, Joe found himself receiving more invitations to Washington cocktail and dinner parties than he could accept. He bought a dinner jacket at a discount clothing store and started attending five or six social functions an evening. He couldn't keep up that pace for long, however, and soon accepted only those invitations he thought would help him politically. At one cocktail party, after looking over the elegant crowd, he turned to a friend and said, "I wonder what these people would think if they knew I once raised chickens."
Two railroad cars full of Joe's Wisconsin supporters had come to Washington for the senatorial swearing-in ceremony in January. Among them was Patricia Corry, a beautiful young woman from Menasha, whom several newspapers called Joe's fiancée. But she was only one of many women Joe was seen with in his first months in Washington. "McCarthy loved to squire pretty young women," a Wisconsin reporter recalled later, "and the more numerous the better." Their presence added to his image as a vital, attractive man, but he never displayed a serious interest in any of his dates. When a journalist asked him why he had never married, Joe replied jokingly, "I can't work at politics if I can't stay away from supper when I want to."
The new junior senator from Wisconsin.
Wisconsin Historical Society
The cartoonist Herblock's view of the 1946 election results, which gave Republicans a majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. The Library of Congress
The Congress that Joe entered in 1947 was controlled by Republicans for the first time since 1931. Their margin in the House of Representatives was 246 to 188, and they held 51 seats out of 96 in the Senate, giving them a majority in that body also. This meant Republicans chaired all the Senate and House committees and subcommittees. Even so, Joe, as a freshman, failed to get a seat on his first choice, the Armed Services Committee. He had to settle instead for seats on the less-prestigious Committee on Banking and Currency and the Committee on Expenditures in the Executive Departments.
Determined to make an impression in the Senate—and get his name into the newspapers—Joe looked for ways to make the most of his committee assignments. He fought for and obtained an immediate end to wartime sugar rationing when the matter came before the Banking and Currency Committee. In doing so, he earned the enmity of the committee chairman, Senator Ralph E. Flanders of Vermont, who favored a more cautious approach. McCarthy didn't care; he knew that the end of rationing would be popular with homemakers throughout the country, and he was right. However, his victory received far less space in the papers than another issue of the day: the rising fear of the Soviet Union's territorial ambitions abroad, and the actions of the Communist Party U.S.A. at home. In the eyes of many, there was no difference between a member of the Communist Party and a spy for the Soviet Union.
The Communist Party U.S.A. had never been a major political force in the United States. Even in the Depression year of 1932, the Communist candidate for president, William Z. Foster, garnered only 102,991 votes. During World War II, when the United States and the Soviet Union were allies, party membership reached a high of 75,000. It plummeted rapidly in the postwar years, as the Soviet Union changed from ally to enemy, until by the late 1940s there were only 10,000 or so active members.
Many idealistic young Communists and their sympathizers had entered government service during the 1930s and '40s, and some were still applying for government jobs. To counter any influence they might have on policy (and to answer his right-wing critics), President Truman, on March 21, 1947, signed an order requiring all civilians seeking employment in the executive branch to undergo an extensive investigation of their past activities and associations.
The investigations would be conducted by the heads of the government agencies or departments to which the job seekers were applying. The investigators would examine the applicants' school and college records and the files of local law-enforcement bodies, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and other organizations. Meanwhile, starting immediately, the FBI would conduct similar investigations of all those already working in the executive branch.
New applicants could be rejected and longtime employees fired from their jobs if "on all the evidence, reasonable grounds exist for belief that the person involved is disloyal to the government of the United States." Disloyalty was defined as meaning, among other things, sabotage, espionage, disclosure of confidential government documents, and "membership in or sympathetic association with an organization or group declared by the Attorney General to be totalitarian, Fascist, Communist, or subversive." Soon after the order was announced, the attorney general released a list of 82 organizations the FBI labeled disloyal, and more were added later.
President Harry'S. Truman takes a stroll along a Washington street, accompanied by a Secret Service bodyguard. The National Archives
A loyalty board would be set up in each agency or department to process appeals. That wasn't enough to satisfy liberal critics, who believed that the order violated the individual's constitutional rights. One wrote, "Here is the doctrine of guilt by association with a vengeance." Others objected to the fact that an accused couldn't subpoena witnesses, cross-examine informants, or gain access to the confidential information used against him or her, as in a court of law.
Many conservatives, on the other hand, criticized the order for being timid and full of loopholes. They thought the loyalty issue was too important to be left in the hands of the agencies and departments affected. They favored the formation of a bipartisan (two-party) loyalty review board that would have overall authority in the matter, and could impose even stricter standards on everyone involved. Joe sided with the conservatives.
Late in March 1947, McCarthy joined a minority of senators in opposing the nomination of David E. Lilienthal, President Truman's choice to head the new Atomic Energy Commission. Lilienthal, a moderate, had since 1941 served as chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), a New Deal project to bring electric power to the poverty-stricken Tennessee River Valley region. In 1946, he was also appointed to chair a high-level commission to study how atomic energy might be controlled internationally. Scientists hailed Lilienthal's nomination, and it was accepted by a Senate committee in an eight-to-one vote. But conservative senators like Joe challenged the nomination when it came before the entire Senate. They believed the TVA was "socialistic" and filled with "subversive" employees, and some even doubted Lilienthal's own loyalty to his country.
David E. Lilientha
l.
The National Archives
Working quietly with the conservative senators was J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI. Hoover sent the senators confidential FBI reports that contained charges against some of Lilienthal's appointees at the TVA. One assistant, for example, was reported to have added the words "insofar as my conscience will allow me" at the end of an oath to support the Constitution. Joe had complete faith in the FBI report and told fellow senators he was deeply troubled by the added phrase. "That is not the type of reservation that I believe a man should make, especially when he is a man who has been chosen for such a job as this man," Joe said. He also expressed serious doubts about Lilienthal himself: "I'd much rather run the risk of discarding a competent man than run the risk of being stuck with a dangerous man."
Shortly before the Senate voted on the Lilienthal nomination, Joe took part in a radio debate about the Communist threat that was broadcast nationwide. On the program, Joe said he was in favor of outlawing the Communist Party. Some 61 percent of Americans agreed with him, according to a Gallup poll at that time. He went on to list a number of further measures the government should adopt "if we are to survive the Communist menace." To start with, he said, "All Communist aliens should be forced to leave the country." Moreover, "[American] Communists and members of Communist-front organizations [those that supported Communist goals] should be required to register with a federal agency and be fingerprinted."
Joe must have known that such proposals, especially the last, violated rights guaranteed by the Constitution and would never be accepted by the courts. He probably made them anyway in order to get attention from the national media. His remarks were picked up by a few newspapers, but they were soon overshadowed by other news, including the Senate confirmation on April 9 of David Lilienthal as the first chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission. Lilienthal's supporters had succeeded in beating back the opposition, and the final vote was 50 to 31 in favor of the nominee.
The Rise and Fall of Senator Joe McCarthy Page 6