Pat McCarran

Patrick Anthony McCarran (August 8, 1876 – September 28, 1954) was a Democratic United States Senator from Nevada from 1933 until 1954, and was noted for his strong anti-Communist stance.

Early life and career

McCarran was born in Reno, Nevada, the child of Irish immigrants. He attended the University of Nevada, Reno, but had to withdraw to work on the family sheep ranch when his father suffered an injury. He passed the state bar exam in 1905, after studying law independently. In 1903 he became a member of the State legislature and after earning his law degree he became district attorney of Nye County (1907–09).

McCarran was also Nevada Chief Justice (1917–18), chairman of the Nevada State Board of Parole Commissioners (1913–18) and chairman of the Nevada State Board of Bar Examiners (1919–32). A member of the Democratic Party, McCarran ran unsuccessfully for Senate in 1916 and 1926. In 1932 he ran a third time, securing the Democratic nomination and defeating Republican incumbent Tasker Oddie, becoming Nevada's first native-born U.S. Senator. During the 1930s, McCarran became well-known as one of the few Congressional Democrats who totally rejected the New Deal.

Senator

He sponsored laws concerned with the nation's security, including the Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938, the Federal Airport Act of 1945 and the Administrative Procedures Act of 1946. He was also an early advocate of a separate air force, sponsoring legislation in Congress to that effect as early as 1933.^[1]

An admirer of General Francisco Franco of Spain, McCarran was nicknamed the "Senator from Madrid" by the columnist Drew Pearson because of his efforts to increase foreign aid to Spain. McCarran's other favorite foreign leader was Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek of China, whose loss of mainland China in 1949 was blamed by McCarran on alleged Soviet spies in the State Department. In 1952, McCarran attended a dinner hosted by the Kuomintang Chinese Ambassador to Washington together with Senators Joseph McCarthy and William Knowland that began with the toast "Back to the mainland!"

After World War II, McCarran established himself as one of the Senate's most powerful anti-Communists. As chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, McCarran created and was the first chairman of the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee that investigated the administrations headed by Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman. In 1951, investigators from the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee seized the records of the Institute of Pacific Relations. McCarran made much of these records when questioning the Sinologist Owen Lattimore during 12 days of acrimonious testimony in February 1951. McCarran subsequently pushed very strongly for Lattimore to be indicted for alleged acts of perjury during his testimony. Lattimore's lawyer Abe Fortas accused McCarran of deliberately asking questions about arcane and obscure matters that took place in the 1930s in hopes that Lattimore wouldn't be able to recall them properly, thereby giving grounds for a perjury indictment because of discrepancies between the I.P.R. records and Lattimore's testimony.

In September 1950 he was the chief sponsor of the McCarran Internal Security Act. This legislation required registration with the Attorney General of the American Communist Party and affiliated organizations, and established the Subversive Activities Control Board to investigate possible Communist-action and Communist-front organizations so they could be required to register. Due to numerous hearings, delays and appeals, the act was never enforced, even with regard to the United States Communist Party itself, and the major provisions of the act were found to be unconstitutional in 1965 and 1967.^[2]

In June 1952, McCarran joined Francis Walter in instigating the passing of the McCarran–Walter Act; a bill that imposed more rigid restrictions on entry quotas to the United States. It also stiffened the existing law relating to the admission, exclusion and deportation of "dangerous" aliens as defined by the McCarran Internal Security Act. In response to the act he made a well known statement:

The immigration provisions of the act were later superseded by the 1965 Immigration Act, but the power of the government to deny visas for ideological reasons remained on the books another 25 years after that.

Cartoonist Walt Kelly introduced a new character into his Pogo comic strip at this time called 'Mole MacCaroney'. Mole's near-blindness and concerns about 'germs' were seen as an attack on McCarran and his immigration-restriction policies.

Pat McCarran remained in the Senate until his death in Hawthorne, Nevada in 1954. In 1960, the state of Nevada donated a bronze statue of McCarran to the National Statuary Hall Collection at the United States Capitol.

Popular culture

• McCarran International Airport located in Las Vegas, Nevada, is named after Senator McCarran.^[4]

• McCarran Boulevard is a major roadway in Reno, Nevada, also named after the senator.

• The senator was allegedly the inspiration for the fictional character, United States Senator Patrick Geary (also from Nevada), in the film The Godfather Part II.^[5]

• McCarran's chair from his tenure in the U.S. Senate was featured on an episode of the History channel reality television series Pawn Stars.^[6]

Notes

References and further reading

• Edwards, Jerome E. Pat McCarran: Political Boss of Nevada (1982), highly detailed scholarly biography
• Fried, Richard M. (1990). Nightmare in Red: The McCarthy Era in Perspective. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-504361-8.. 
• Klingaman, William (1996). The Encyclopedia of the McCarthy Era. New York : Facts on File. ISBN 0816030979. 
• Ybarra, Michael (2004). Washington Gone Crazy: Senator Pat McCarran and the Great American Communist Hunt. Steerforth Publishing. ISBN 1586420658. 
• Edwards, Jerome E. (1982). Pat McCarran, Political Boss of Nevada. University of Nevada Press. ISBN 0874170710. 

• Newman, Robert P. (1992). Owen Lattimore And The "Loss" of China. Berkeley : University of California Press. ISBN 0520073886. 
• Schrecker, Ellen (1986). No Ivory Tower : McCarthyism and the Universities. New York : Oxford University Press,. ISBN 0195035577.. 
• Schrecker, Ellen (1998). Many Are The Crimes : McCarthyism In America. Boston ; London : Little, Brown. ISBN 0316774707. 
• Hopkins, A. D. (1999). "Pat McCarran, Perennial Politician". The First 100; Portraits of the Men and Women Who Shaped Las Vegas. Stephens Media Group. http://www.1st100.com/part2/mccarran.html. 
• "Patrick McCarran (1876–1954)". Las Vegas: An Unconventional History. American Experience, PBS. 2005. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/lasvegas/peopleevents/p_mccarran.html. 

By Pat McCarran

• McCarran, Pat (1950). Three years of the Federal Administrative Procedure Act: A study in Legislation. Georgetown Law Journal Association. 
• McCarran, Pat. Build the West to Build the Nation; Address Before Guests And Members of the Board of Trustees of Builders of the West, Inc.. 
• McCarran, Pat. Displaced Persons: Facts Versus Fiction. U.S. Government Printing Office.