Thomas Kuchel

Early life

Kuchel was born in Anaheim, Orange County, the son of Henry Kuchel, a newspaper editor and the former Letitia Bailey. |access-date=2009-10-01 |access-date=September 29, 2009}} Kuchel attended public school as a child. While he was at Anaheim High School, he was student body president, a yell leader and a member of the debate team. While there, he debated a team from Whittier High School, winning his own debate against his opponent and later intraparty rival, Richard Nixon.

Kuchel graduated from both the University of Southern California in 1932, where he was a member of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity and the University of Southern California Law School before he entered the state government.

Career

Kuchel served in the California State Assembly from 1937 to 1941, in the California State Senate from 1941 to 1945, and as California State Controller from 1946 to 1953. During World War II, Kuchel was a lieutenant commander in the U.S. Naval Reserve.

In 1953, Kuchel was appointed to the U.S. Senate by Governor Earl Warren to fill the vacancy created after Republican Senator Richard Nixon was elected Vice President. Kuchel was elected to the remainder of Nixon's term in 1954 and to full terms in 1956 and 1962.

As a U.S. Senator, Kuchel had first attempted to steer clear of the factional infighting within the California Republican Party, which took place in the 1950s between Vice President Nixon, U.S. Senate Republican Leader William F. Knowland, a conservative, and Republican Governor Goodwin J. Knight, a liberal. Known as a moderate, Kuchel eventually backed Knowland in his campaign to oust Knight in the Republican primary for governor in 1958. Knight withdrew his re-election bid and ran for Knowland's Senate seat, but he and Knowland both lost that year.

While running for a second full term in 1962, Kuchel pointedly refused to endorse ticket-mate Nixon's candidacy for governor in a heated race against incumbent Democrat Edmund G. "Pat" Brown Sr. The 1962 election favored incumbents, as Brown beat Nixon by a comfortable margin and Kuchel coasted to victory. To date, Kuchel is the last senatorial candidate to win all 58 California counties in a single election.

However, Kuchel broke with Knowland in 1964 when the latter asked him to endorse Barry Goldwater for the Republican nomination for president, and Kuchel instead endorsed Nelson Rockefeller, who narrowly lost the California presidential primary to Goldwater.

While Kuchel was campaigning against Goldwater, a "vicious document" circulated that purported to be an affidavit signed by a Los Angeles police officer, saying that in 1949, he had arrested Kuchel. The document said that the arrest was for drunkenness while Kuchel had been in the midst of a sex act with a man. Four men were indicted for the libel: Norman H. Krause, a bar owner and ex-Los Angeles policeman, who had actually arrested two people in 1950 who worked in Kuchel's office for drunkenness; Jack D. Clemmons, a Los Angeles police sergeant until his resignation two weeks before his arrest; John F. Fergus, a public relations man for Eversharp, who was charged with possession of a concealed weapon and given a suspended sentence in 1947; and Francis A. Capell of Zarephath, New Jersey, the publisher of a right-wing newsletter.

During the 1966 California gubernatorial primary, Kuchel was urged by moderates to run against conservative actor Ronald Reagan. Citing the hostilities of the growing conservative movement, Kuchel decided not to run. He instead issued a negative statement about the conservatives: "A fanatical neo-fascist political cult of right-wingers in the GOP, driven by a strange mixture of corrosive hatred and sickening fear that is recklessly determined to control our party or destroy it!" In May 1963, Kuchel attacked the right-wing movement in the Senate in a speech, describing them as not conservatives, but "radicals with a capital R" and that the movement defiled conservatism.

Kuchel was one of thirteen Republican senators to vote in favor of Medicare. In 1981, he described himself as a progressive Republican, a type of Republican that governs for the many.

Kuchel was narrowly defeated in the Republican primary in 1968 by conservative state Superintendent of Public Instruction Max Rafferty, who went on to lose the general election to Alan Cranston, the former State Controller, a position that had once been held by Kuchel himself. Kuchel returned to California and moved to Beverly Hills, where he practiced law until his retirement in 1981.

He was appointed by the Supreme Court to represent the appellee in United States v. 12 200-ft. Reels of Film.

Death

He died of lung cancer on November 21, 1994, in Beverly Hills.

Legacy

Secretary of Defense and former White House Chief of Staff and CIA Director Leon Panetta began in politics as a legislative assistant to Kuchel. Panetta would cite Kuchel as "a tremendous role model."

On August 17, 2010, the Beverly Hills City Council paid tribute to Senator Kuchel on the 100th anniversary of his birth. His widow Betty Kuchel and daughter Karen Kuchel accepted a proclamation from then Councilman and now mayor William Warren Brien, a grandson of Governor Earl Warren, at the council meeting.

References

References

1. "Senate – August 7, 1957". [[United States Government Publishing Office.
2. "Senate – August 29, 1957". [[United States Government Publishing Office.
3. "Senate – April 8, 1960". [[United States Government Publishing Office.
4. "Senate – June 19, 1964". [[United States Government Publishing Office.
5. "Senate – March 27, 1962". [[United States Government Publishing Office.
6. "Senate – May 26, 1965". [[United States Government Publishing Office.
7. "Senate – August 4, 1965". [[United States Government Publishing Office.
8. "Senate – August 30, 1967". [[United States Government Publishing Office.
9. "Senate – March 11, 1968". [[United States Government Publishing Office.
10. During his campaign for Rockefeller, Kuchel warned in campaign ads that control by the right-wing movement of the California Republican party would lead to the destruction of the two-party system.Nelson A. Rockefeller [Republican] 1964 Campaign Ad "Kuchel"
11. (5 March 1965). "The Smear".
12. (25 February 1965). "Surrenders On Charges In Kuchel Libel". [[Chicago Tribune]].
13. (25 February 1965). "Publisher Appears In Coast Libel Case". [[The New York Times]].
14. Kabaservice, Geoffrey. (2012). "Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, From Eisenhower to the Tea Party (Studies in Postwar American Political Development)". Oxford University Press, USA.
15. Column: In late Orange County senator, one finds a Republican who would have stood up to Trump; Gustavo Arellano, The Los Angeles Times, February 14, 2021
16. TO PASS H.R. 6675, THE SOCIAL SECURITY AMENDMENTS OF 1965
17. "Thomas Henry Kuchel".
18. "United States v. 12 200-ft. Reels of Super 8MM. Film". Oyez.
19. Binder, David. (24 November 1994). "Thomas H. Kuchel Dies at 84; Ex-Republican Whip in Senate". [[The New York Times]].
20. "Conversation with Leon Panetta, p. 2 of 5".