Remembering Bob Dole in Oregon

The “Greatest Generation” is described as those Americans that came of age amidst the Great Depression and had their lives altered by World War II. Tom Brokaw popularized the term in his book by the same name. It produced many political leaders across the country. Young men returned home after the war and were recruited to run for office. Many found success and over a hundred of these veterans found their way to service in the U.S. Senate. One of the most prominent of these veterans was Kansas Senator Bob Dole. 

Dole passed away on December 5, 2021, at the age of 98, just two years shy of reaching 100. He had been an influential leader in the Republican party for most of my early life and had run for president three times (1980, 1988, and 1996). I thought it would be good to look back on his campaigns and visits to Oregon through the years. 

The Missing Oregon Portraits

I recently read the article in the Statesman Journal from Claire Withycombe (a descendant of Governor Withycombe) about the Oregon State Capitol Foundation trying to track down the whereabouts and general information about the missing portraits of Oregon's governors. I thought I would do a little sleuthing. I was hoping, perhaps there would be an old blurry photograph of one of the missing paintings hidden in the Wayback archives of our local Oregon newspapers. Sadly, no blurry images yet, but lots of interesting bits of information. 

I guess prior to 1896 there was no subject or explanation of who these painted men were until the office of the SOS issued cards with short bio statements about each painting. The Medford Mail Tribune mentions that biographical data will be made on cards. These two images of the article give us exactly what was written on the cards.

 

Write-Ins are Personal: Wayne Morse

 How fascinating that during the month of February we learn the origin of the 'Write-In Wayne Morse The Dark Horse' for President bumper sticker I picked up a few years ago on ebay from a seller in Washington State. If you are patient, with the massive digitizing of older media, you will eventually stumble upon some answers. 

Remembering Those We Lost in 2020

A number of Oregon politicos have left us in 2020, more so than most years and instead of trying to do lengthy posts about all of them, and some that we do not have many items for we have provided links to their obituaries or other online memorials. If we have written about them in the past we have included a link to that article on our own blog. Also, if you believe we have missed someone feel free to send us a note.

 

Reading Into It: Biographies of Oregon Governors Part 2

In our last post we covered six biographical looks at former Oregon governors. They ranged from some of the most recent works to earlier efforts. We are now going to follow up with just a few more that you may find interesting.

The first perhaps one of the oldest. It is written by T.T. Geer (Theodore Thurston Geer). He was the 10th Governor of Oregon. He was the first governor elected that was born in the Oregon (Oregon Territory at the time of his birth in 1851). To this day, some of his decedents still live in the Salem area and his family farm has been turned into an educational and development farm called GeerCrest.  After his time in office he wrote a book about seeking and holding elected office, politics, life and various other subjects. He titled the 536 page book: Fifty Years in Oregon: Experiences, Observations, and Commentaries Upon Men, Measures, and Customs in Pioneer Days and Later Times

It wont cost you a thing to read, you can download it for free online. If you wanted to get a first hand experience to what life for European settlers in the Willamette Valley was like and how the people of the Salem area adjusted to life after statehood you should check out a few chapters. It is a very easy read.

Tom McCall is very popular and after he was governor he struggled to find himself and what he exactly wanted to do. He took on the project of writing an autobiography, with the help of Steve Neal. It was called Tom McCall: Maverick.

These were published by noted local publisher Binford & Morts in 1977. Tom McCall traveled the state doing readings of the book. Many that are turning up right now in used book stores may even have his signature in them. It was always popular to get the authors signature, even more so since it was Tom McCall!

Some books are personal projects that become something more. W. Scott Jorgensen started off in local journalism and now works in local government. For years he had admired Oregon Governor Vic Atiyeh. He decided to take that passion and a growing relationship with Governor Atiyeh and write book. It's called Conversations with Atiyeh

While not a full weighty biography like Brent Walth's Fire at Eden's Gate of Governor McCall, Conversations with Atiyeh comes in at 130 pages and is more a collection of reflections Atiyeh shares with Jorgensen. Until a more lengthy work is published about Atiyeh, this will have to keep fans going until such time as one is written.

Mark Hatfield did just about everything you could in Oregon politics during his expansive career. He was in the legislature, elected Secretary of State, Governor and U.S. Senator. He even had short flirtations with the presidency and vice presidency between 1964 and 1972. When Ronald Reagan won the White House in 1980 it was Hatfield that was put in charge of the Inaugural Committee to oversea the ceremony on capitol hill. In his later years he would often be sought out to be the honorary chairman of various campaigns. During all this time of political engagement he also found time to write several books. Three in about a eight year period from 1968 to 1976.

Not Quite So Simple (1968), OCLC 439212 Conflict and Conscience (1971), ISBN 0-87680-811-9 Between a Rock and a Hard Place (1976), ISBN 0-87680-427-X

He liked to write about politics and his faith as a christian. He also contributed to six different works, including a book with Ted Kennedy. That one is called Freeze! How You Can Help Prevent Nuclear War (1982), ISBN 0-553-14077-9

One of the more biographical works that Hatfield was written in 2008 by former staffer Lon Fendall and explores Hatfield as a progressive christian in a time in which Republicans are certainly christian but not seen as progressive. It's called Stand Alone or Come Home: Mark Hatfield as an Evangelical and a Progressive (2008). 

The other biographical book is Lonely Walk: The Life of Senator Mark Hatfield (1979). It was written by Robert Eells and Bartlet Nyberg. We don't know much about Eells and Nyberg other than that they wrote the book with Mark Hatfield's cooperation and participation. It deals with the mixing of politics and faith, which appears to be a common theme in his own writings.

The final Hatfield book was published in 2000 and was called Against the Grain: Reflections of a Rebel Republican by Diane N. Solomon. The author, with cooperation and interviews with Senator Hatfield reflects on his career, faith and the ever changing nature of politics in the country. It is probably the most comprehensive biographical work of Mark Hatfield, until a more scholarly work is written.

There is a lot of Mark Hatfield out there to read and study. Our next set of books will not be about Oregon Governors but Oregon politicians in general. There are few scholarly works out about U.S. Senators and members of Congress, but in recent years a surprising number of unique local politicians have started to document their lives and political careers. Some elected and some not. Stay tuned for a future post on those works.

Send Carl to Philly: The Buttons & Experience of one Delegate

In the summer of 2016 I boarded a plane for the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. For political junkies, a national political convention of any party is an experience to be remembered. I will have the buttons and photos to help my ailing memory one day as I reach my mid thirties. In writing this, I wanted to share my campaign experiences and political items I picked up along the way with my fellow APIC members.


I started my campaign about a month before Oregon’s congressional district nominating conventions began. In order to participate in these conventions you must declare a candidate caucus and register for the convention. This was after the Oregon Presidential Primary. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and celebrity Donald Trump won their respective primaries in Oregon. Knowing that competition in the First Congressional District would be fierce for Bernie Sanders delegate slots, I decided to file for a Hillary Clinton delegate position.

Charles McNary Notification Celebration

In Spring/Summer 1994 edition of The Keynoter, William Alley gives us a great background on the selection of longtime Republican Senator Charles McNary as the running mate of 1940 Republican presidential nominee Wendell Willkie. McNary was the last Oregonian to be nominated by a major party ticket for President or Vice President. We have written here in the past about a number of major and minor party nominees for Vice President Oregon has produced over the years. We are now at the 80th anniversary of the notification ceremony of Charles McNary on his selection as the 1940 vice presidential nominee. Democratic nominee Henry Wallace was also to have a notification event in Des Moines, Iowa during the same few weeks. Hopefully there is some Iowa and Wallace fan that can write that article.

First, it is important to know what a notification ceremony is, as political parties no longer hold such events. The closest thing that might come to a notification event in modern times is the press conference where a nominee will announce their selection of the vice presidential nominee.What is a committee of notification?  According to An Introduction to Political Parties and Practical Politics written by noted Berkeley Professor of Political Science Perley Orman Ray in 1912.

With the naming of a candidate for vice president, it only remains for the convention to authorize the appointment of a committee consisting of one from each State, formally to notify the presidential candidate of his nomination and a similar committee to notify the vice-presidential candidate. The business of the convention then being at an end, it adjourns sine die. These committees on notification subsequently visits the nominee at his home, or meet him at some appointed place. The chairman, or some other previously selected member, makes a formal speech notifying the candidate the action of the convention. Thereupon the candidate delivers his "speech of acceptance"           (p.164-165)

Modern conventions have no notification committees that travel out to nominees homes to hear of their acceptance. Now this all takes place at the highly choreographed political conventions we are accustomed to experiencing today. The 1940s were still the infancy of television. Most families did not see televisions enter their homes until after WWII in the 1950s. The political campaigns of the 1940, '44, and '48 were the last to be done before the majority of Americans owned televisions. Conventions were still affairs for the newspaper and radio services.

Modern day conventions wrap the whole process in a bow for the media. Instead of nominees being selected and ending the convention to travel to them to hear if they accept, the nominees now accept nomination before the actual convention. Nearly all nominees for vice president are known well in advance of the convention. The final night of the convention culminates with the presidential nominee and vice presidential nominee awash in a sea of delegates, balloons and bands. This was not the case in 1940, when Charles McNary accepted his nomination.