Arthur Vivian Watkins
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Arthur Vivian Watkins (b. December 18, 1886, Midway, Utah - d. September 1, 1973, Orem, Utah) was a U.S. Senator from 1946 to 1959.
Watkins attended Brigham Young University, 1903-1906, and New York University, 1909-1910. He graduated from Columbia University Law School, and was admitted to the bar the same year and commenced practice in Vernal, Utah.
He engaged in newspaper work in 1914 ((The Voice of Sharon, which eventually became the Orem-Geneva Times, a weekly newspaper in Utah County) and became assistant county attorney of Salt Lake County in 1914. He engaged in agricultural pursuits 1919-1925 with a 600-acre ranch near Lehi.
Watkins served as district judge of the Fourth Judicial District of Utah 1928-1933, losing in the Roosevelt landslide in 1932. An unsuccessful candidate for the Republican nomination to the Seventy-fifth Congress in 1936, he was elected as a Republican to the United States Senate in 1946, reelected in 1952 and served from January 3, 1947, to January 3, 1959. An elder in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Watkins was widely respected in Utah.
In 1954, Watkins chaired the committee that investigated the actions of Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy over whether his conduct as Senator merited censure or not. As Chairman, Watkins barred Television cameras from the hearings, and refused to allow outbursts from McCarthy. When in September 1954, McCarthy appeared before the Watkins committee, and started to attack Watkins, Watkins had McCarthy expelled from the room. Watkins's actions led McCarthy to exclaim that "It was the most unheard of thing I've heard of". The committee recommended the censure of Sen. McCarthy. Initially, the committee proposed to censure McCarthy over his attack on General Ralph Zwicker and various Senators, but Watkins had the charge of censure for the attack on General Zwicker dropped. The censure charges related only to McCarthy's attacks on other Senators, and pointedly excluded from criticism McCarthy's attacks on whose outside of the Senate.
McCarthy's anti-communist rhetoric was very popular with Utah's electorate, however. Former Utah Governor J. Bracken Lee took the opportunity to oppose Watkins for the nomination in the 1958 senatorial election. Though Watkins won the Republican primary, Lee ran as an independent in the general election, splitting the Republican vote and allowing Democrat Frank E. Moss to win the seat. Lee went on to a long career as mayor of Salt Lake City; Moss served three terms, losing to Orrin Hatch in 1976.
Watkins also served as chair of the Senate Interior Committee Subcommittee on Indian Affairs. He advocated termination of Indian Tribal Entities in order to integrate tribal members into the rest of American life. After he left the Senate he served as a member of the U.S. Indian Claims Commission from 1959 to 1967. He retired to Salt Lake City, and in 1973, to Orem.
In 1969 Watkins published a book of his investigation of McCarthy, Enough Rope: The Inside Story of the Censure of Senator Joe McCarthy by his Colleagues: The Controversial Hearings that Signaled the End of a Turbulent Career and a Fearsome Era in American Public Life, (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1969).
A project of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the Arthur V. Watkins Dam north of Ogden, Utah, creates Willard Bay off of the Great Salt Lake.
His son, Arthur R. Watkins, taught German at Brigham Young University for over 25 years.
[edit] Reference
- Klingaman., William The Encyclopedia of the McCarthy Era, New York : Facts on File, 1996 ISBN 0816030979.
| Preceded by Abe Murdock |
U.S. Senator (Class 1) from Utah 1947–1959 |
Succeeded by Frank E. Moss |
