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5. Turning Point: California Politics in the 1950s
- University of Pennsylvania Press
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chaPTer 5 Turning Point: california Politics in the 1950s democrats were assisted in their efforts to become the majority party in california by the republican Party’s self-immolating lurch to the right in the landmark 1958 elections; placing anti-union shop “right to work” initiatives at the center of William Knowland’s campaign for governor had the immediate effect of rallying the whole of organized labor behind the democrats.1 Yet their rise to power was taking place well before the state GoP decided on an antilabor initiative: in 1952 the democrats won only 11 of the 40 state senate seats and 26 of 80 state assembly seats. two years later, with the introduction of party labeling on the ballot and vastly superior organization through the cdc, democrats won 16 state senate seats, including the election of richard richards to the single los angeles seat previously held by arch-republican Jack tenney, and 32 assembly seats. in 1956, the year of Phil Burton’s spectacular triumph in san Francisco, the democrats took exactly half the senate seats and 38 assembly seats to the GoP’s 42.2 Burton may have been a master campaigner and electoral strategist who would go on to have one of the most important careers in congressional politics arguably of anyone in the twentieth century, and he may have had a unique relationship with his district that allowed him to triumph repeatedly without the assistance of a major support organization. “He just ran the whole operation,” recalled Willie Brown of san Francisco politics in the late 1950s and 1960s. “He did all the thinking and didn’t suffer from the need for advice or counsel. He made the decisions and sold them to us as the proper way in which to do it.”3 These figures demonstrate , however, that his victory was part of a much bigger political phenomenon transforming the landscape of california politics. democrats were gaining power and political influence all over the state. and Burton was far chapter 5 106 from a political loner, running for national chair of the Young democrats in 1959 and strongly supporting cdc and his friends in the labor movement. stirrings: The 1954 campaigns in many ways the campaigns of 1954 that followed the formation of cdc represented the turning point in democratic Party fortunes, building confidence that would push activists toward further victories in 1956 and 1958. initial portents did not augur well for the democrats. The campaign of incumbent governor Goodwin Knight, appointed to the post after earl Warren’s elevation to the u.s. supreme court the year before, benefited from the support of virtually the entire state media network, as well as the american Federation of labor. Knight’s campaign employed the services of notorious public relations firm Whitaker and Baxter, made famous by their successful campaign on behalf of the american Medical association against federal health insurance in the late 1940s. richard Graves, the democratic nominee endorsed by cdc, had only recently defected to the party from the republicans, and lacked experience of the kind of brutal media campaign to which he would be subjected, though ironically it was partly by reason of his distance from the party regulars that he had been nominated. several local democratic campaigns for congress, notably those of Jimmy roosevelt and robert condon, were tarnished by scandal, damaging the statewide ticket as it struggled for political legitimacy. Yet the 1954 campaigns pointed up the need for a widening of the terms of political debate that would galvanize liberal activity as the 1956 campaigns got underway. The Whitaker and Baxter campaign to elect Knight demonstrated the growing chasm between the record of the governor, relatively friendly to labor and supportive of his predecessor’s centrist agenda, and the rightward lurch in the republicans’ campaign strategy that would only intensify as the party’s right wing increased their influence over election tactics during the 1950s. Knight’s campaign treasurer, a san Francisco banker, assured one potential donor that “an intelligent and hard hitting campaign has been carefully planned which will utilize every medium of public expression to win the fight.”4 Whitaker and Baxter could rely not only on the supine acquiescence of the state press, but also on a vast reserve of campaign finance, dwarfing the Graves campaign budget of roughly $80,000, much of this raised by an offshoot labor committee that rebelled against the dominant aFl’s endorsement of Knight.5 While every move of Knight...