Carey Estes Kefauver

United States Senator Carey Estes Kefauver (1903-1963) was an influential Tennessee Democrat who often broke ranks with his more conservative Southern colleagues to support economic and political reform. He became the first candidate of his region to develop a national political following during his two campaigns for the presidency.

Estes Kefauver was born in Madisonville, Tennessee, on July 26, 1903, to Robert Cooke Kefauver and Phredonia (Estes) Kefauver. The Kefauvers were a politically distinguished family: Estes' paternal great-grandfather was a successful banker who was elected to the Tennessee State Senate in 1847, while his maternal great-grandfather ran for Congress unsuccessfully against David Crockett in 1828.

Kefauver graduated from the University of Tennessee in 1924 and three years later received a law degree cum laude from Yale University. He returned to Tennessee, established a practice in Chattanooga, and during the next 12 years became one of the city's most successful corporate attorneys. Despite extensive family and professional connections with wealthy, conservative Chattanoogans, Kefauver's political and philosophical sympathies gravitated toward reform and liberalism. He became the attorney for the Chattanooga News, the city's daily newspaper which championed publicly owned utilities, revision of Tennessee's constitution, reforms in local government, and improved labor conditions. Kefauver embraced most of these causes, and in 1936 he became president of the Volunteers, a coalition of young business and professional men and labor union leaders who wanted to reform county government. Kefauver's work with the Volunteers introduced him to the low wages and poor working conditions in Chattanooga's textile mills, and his sympathy for workers won him union support throughout his political career.

Election to Congress

That career began in 1939 when Kefauver won a special election to fill the seat of Third District congressman Sam D. McReynolds, who died in office. During the campaign Kefauver supported President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal program and advocated federal aid to education and support of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), two positions he would maintain for the remainder of his legislative career. During nine years in the House of Representatives Kefauver successfully defended TVA from its critics, including powerful Tennessee senator Kenneth D. McKellar; advocated anti-monopoly legislation to protect small business from corporate takeover; and urged the elimination of the poll tax as a voting requirement.

In 1948 Kefauver, in his first campaign for the U.S. Senate, won an upset victory over Judge John A. Mitchell, the candidate of the Memphis-based political machine of Democratic boss Edward H. Crump. Kefauver assembled a coalition of labor, women's, African American, and professional groups as his chief supporters and adopted the coonskin cap as his trademark after Crump attacked him as a "pet coon."

Although Kefauver's surprising victory briefly attracted national attention, his early Senate years afforded prolonged nationwide exposure. In 1950 he coauthored the Kefauver-Cellar Act, which regulated corporate purchases of competitor's assets, and in 1950 and 1951 he chaired a special Senate committee appointed to investigate organized crime. The nationally televised "Kefauver Committee" hearings, held in a dozen major cities, generated little new information on the crime syndicate but gave the Tennessee senator important national publicity and influenced his decision to run for president in 1952. After entering the New Hampshire presidential primary and handily defeating President Harry S. Truman, who later withdrew from the race, Kefauver won 13 of the 15 remaining primaries, losing only in Florida and the District of Columbia. Although he seemed assured of the nomination, Kefauver's opponents— including President Truman, big city political bosses, and conservative Southern Democrats—combined to block his selection and eventually swung the convention to Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson. Stevenson and vice-presidential candidate John Sparkman of Alabama were in turn defeated by the Republican ticket of Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower and California Congressman Richard Nixon.

Kefauver ran for the Democratic presidential nomination a second time in 1956, but the party again chose Adlai Stevenson. The Tennessee senator, however, did score a dramatic second ballot victory over Massachusetts senator John F. Kennedy for the vice-presidential nomination. Kefauver vigorously campaigned for the ticket, particularly in the Midwest and West, hoping to capitalize on farm belt resentment over President Eisenhower's agricultural policies, but the Democratic ticket was again defeated by President Eisenhower and Vice-President Nixon.

Successful Fight for Re-election

Many supporters urged Kefauver to make one last campaign for the presidency in 1960, but he decided instead to concentrate his efforts on his upcoming re-election campaign to the U.S. Senate. Kefauver's nearly decade long focus on national affairs and his liberal voting record had eroded his support among many Tennessee voters. His votes for both the 1957 and 1960 civil rights acts were cited by opponents as examples of his incompatibility with Tennessee and Southern politics; his 1958 Senate committee hearings on the pharmaceutical industry prompted out-of-state drug manufacturing companies to contribute substantial campaign funds to his opponent, Judge Andrew T. Taylor; and his bitter rivalry with former Tennessee governor Frank Clement and his successor, Buford Ellington, further hampered the senator's re-election efforts. Nevertheless, Kefauver waged an intense campaign which took him to each of the state's 95 counties. He pulled together the coalition that first propelled him to the Senate in 1948, and, after receiving timely endorsements from Democratic vice-presidential nominee Lyndon Johnson and other Southern senators, he was reelected to a third term by a 2 to 1 margin in what the Nashville Banner called "one of the most surprising votes in Tennessee's political history."

No longer engaged in national politics nor restricted by its demands and compromises, Estes Kefauver devoted his full attention to legislative matters. In 1962 he supported the 24th amendment to the Constitution, which abolished the poll tax, and coauthored the Kefauver-Harris Drug Control Act, which reduced the price and raised the safety requirements for prescription drugs. In 1963 he led the fight against American Telephone and Telegraph's efforts to dominate the telecommunications satellite program. As part of that campaign he introduced on August 8 an amendment to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration appropriation act to require A. T. & T. to reimburse NASA for research that would specifically benefit that corporation. During the debate over the appropriations bill amendment Kefauver suffered a heart attack, was hospitalized, and died the next day, August 10, 1963.

Further Reading

The best biographies of Kefauver are Charles L. Fontenay, Estes Kefauver: A Biography (1980); Harvey Swados, Standing Up for The People: The Life and Work of Estes Kefauver (1972); and Bruce Gorman, Kefauver: A Political Biography (1971). The Kefauver Senate Hearings on Organized Crime are discussed in William Howard Moore, The Kefauver Committee and the Politics of Crime 1950-1952. Kefauver wrote three books outlining his political views: Crime in America (1951), In a Few Hands: Monopoly Power in America (1965), and A 20th Century Congress (1947). See Robert Sobel, editor, U.S. Congress, Senate, Biographical Directory of the American Congress, 1774-1971 (1971) for a discussion of Kefauver's legislative contributions. □

KEFAUVER, ESTES 1903-1963

DEMOCRATIC VICE-PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE, 1956

Reputation as a Grassroots Campaigner and Antimob Crusader

As a candidate for the 1952 and 1956 Democratic presidential nominations, Estes Kefauver employed a grassroots style of campaigning that won the hearts of many who had grown tired of party-machine politics. The senator from Tennessee had won a national reputation as a political crusader in 1950-1951, when he headed up a Senate investigative committee on organized crime. In 1939 Kefauver easily won a House seat.

An Independent Thinker

Despite having been sent to Washington with the help of Tennessee's Democratic party machine, Kefauver soon established his independence as a political thinker. His voting pattern on issues of civil rights often ran counter to that of his southern colleagues. In 1942 he voted for anti-poll tax legislation (the poll tax being one method used by racist whites to keep poor blacks away from the voting booth), and in so doing he provoked the ire of Mississippi's fiery prosegregationist legislator, John Rankin, who pointed a finger at the Tennessean and shouted, "Shame on you, Estes Kefauver." Rankin's famous line would be used many times again on the House and Senate floors and in party conventions to denounce the man who was quickly gaining a reputation as a liberal southern Democrat.

The "Coonskin Crusade."

Kefauver ran for the Senate in 1948 in what would prove to be one of the most exciting campaigns in Tennessee history. His candidacy was bitterly opposed by state party bosses, who used red-baiting tactics throughout the campaign to assail his voting record and label him "pink." Kefauver sought to emphasize his political independence, and he began traveling the state with a live raccoon to symbolize his connection with pre-party-machine frontier politics. The live raccoon was later replaced by a coonskin cap. The campaign gimmick was a stunning success and created something of a fad. He would address thousands of coonskin-cap-wearing supporters. Kefauver won a close election, and in so doing he dealt a crushing blow to the state party bosses.

The Kefauver Committee

Kefauver had become interested in the growth of organized crime when he served as the chairman of a House subcommittee charged with investigating a corrupt federal judge; and in January 1950 he introduced a resolution on the Senate floor calling for an investigation of organized crime. A Senate committee, with Kefauver as its chairman, was soon formed. Popularly known as the Kefauver committee, the special body was given three responsibilities: (1) determine whether organized crime used interstate-commerce facilities to circumvent federal law; (2) investigate the "manner and extent" of such criminal operations; and (3) determine whether these corrupting influences were spreading. The committee's hearings were held in fourteen major U.S. cities and held the American public spellbound. The hearings in New York were televised, and many Americans sat glued to their television sets as the committee members grilled known hoodlums such as Frank Costello. Costello's testimony provided fascinating television imagery; to protect his identity, the gangster asked that his face not be shown, and instead the camera focused on his hands, which he increasingly wrung as the questions got tougher. The crime hearings also implicated many urban Democratic political bosses—an exposure of the dirtier side of politics that the bosses never forgot and for which Kefauver would later pay at the Democratic conventions.

Convention Losses

Kefauver went to both the 1952 and 1956 Democratic conventions with large numbers of delegates from states mostly outside of the South. His maverick style as a campaigner and a legislator, however, alienated him from too many in the party. Fellow southerners were by and large opposed to his candidacy due to his liberal-to-moderate stance on issues such as civil rights. Northern urban political bosses—who controlled the labor vote—had their score to settle with the Tennessean and worked hard to block his candidacy. In 1952 he was beaten out by Adlai Stevenson for the presidential nomination. In 1956 Stevenson's organizational strength forced Kefauver to relinquish his campaign during the primaries. At the convention, however, Kefauver managed to win a vice-presidential spot on the Stevenson ticket. Kefauver proved to be a tireless campaigner as Stevenson's running mate. Yet the incumbent team of Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard M. Nixon was too strong and too popular for the Democrats. Kefauver returned to the Senate, where he continued to attract national attention for his refusal to join the Dixiecrats' anti-civil-rights voting bloc.

Carey Estes Kefauver , 1903–63, U.S. Senator from Tennessee (1949–63), b. Madisonville, Tenn., known as Estes Kefauver. He became a Chattanooga lawyer and in 1938 was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served until he entered the Senate in 1949. His victory in the senatorial race was conspicuous because it ended "Boss" Edward H. Crump's domination of Tennessee politics. As chairman of the Senate crime investigating committee in 1950 and 1951, Kefauver attracted nationwide publicity. Crime in America (1951) was Kefauver's own book on the results of this investigation. Reelected to the Senate in 1954, he won the Democratic party's nomination for Vice President in 1956, but, with Adlai Stevenson, was defeated in the Eisenhower landslide. A supporter of civil-rights legislation, Kefauver won (1960) reelection after overcoming the active opposition of a staunch segregationist in Tennessee's Democratic primary. He was a principal sponsor of a law enacted in 1962 to protect the public from harmful and ineffective pharmaceuticals.

Bibliography: See biography by J. B. Gorman (1971) and C. L. Fontenay (1980).

Kefauver, Carey Estes (1903–63) US politician. A state Senator (1949–63), he came to national prominence in the early 1950s when, as chairman of a US Senate committee investigating organized crime, he exposed nationwide gambling and crime syndicates, which had infiltrated legitimate business and gained control of local politics. The evidence of corruption among federal tax officials led to several dismissals and the resignation of the commissioner of Internal Revenue. Kefauver won the Democratic Party's nomination for Vice-President (1956), but President EISENHOWER (Republican) was re-elected.