52 Facts About Jerry Voorhis

Horace Jeremiah "Jerry" Voorhis was an American politician and educator from California who served five terms in the United States House of Representatives from 1937 to 1947.

Jerry Voorhis was the first political opponent of Richard M Nixon, who defeated Voorhis for re-election in 1946 in a campaign cited as an example of Nixon's use of red-baiting during his political rise.

Jerry Voorhis earned a bachelor's degree from Yale University and a master's degree in education from Claremont Graduate School.

Nixon won the Republican-leaning district by over 15,000 votes and Jerry Voorhis refused to run against Nixon in 1948.

Jerry Voorhis died in a California retirement home in 1984 at the age of 83.

Charles Jerry Voorhis took work in an investment company and as a semi-professional baseball player and rose to become an executive of the Kingman Plow Company.

When that company dissolved, Charles Jerry Voorhis became an executive of the Oakland Motor Car Company, which became the Pontiac division of General Motors, and finally of the Nash Motor Company before his 1925 retirement.

Jerry Voorhis began school in Ottawa, but attended school in Oklahoma City, Peoria, Illinois and Pontiac, Michigan.

Jerry Voorhis attended the Hotchkiss School, an elite boys' boarding school in Connecticut with close ties to Yale University, and subsequently attended Yale, graduating in 1923.

Jerry Voorhis was elected as a member of Phi Beta Kappa, was president of the Christian Association, and was greatly influenced by the Social Gospel movement.

Jerry Voorhis resisted all encouragement toward a business or management career, much to his father's disappointment.

Jerry Voorhis later stated that he lacked the faith in his own judgment to leave Yale and get a job in "the real world [which] lay beyond the college walls".

However, once he graduated, Jerry Voorhis engaged a room at a boarding house and went to work as a receiving clerk, a job he soon exchanged for one as a freight handler.

Charles Voorhis's job with Nash had taken him to a new home in Kenosha, Wisconsin; Jerry Voorhis joined his parents there on his return from Europe.

In 1927, the now-retired Charles Jerry Voorhis offered his son an opportunity to found a boys academy near the elder Jerry Voorhis's home in Pasadena, California.

Charles and Jerry Voorhis would put much of the family fortune into the school.

Jerry Voorhis organized cooperatives among the local ranchers and farmers.

Jerry Voorhis gave lectures at Pomona College from 1930 until 1935.

Jerry Voorhis was a candidate for the California State Assembly in 1934, changing his registration from Socialist to Democrat, but was defeated by popular incumbent Herbert Evans despite receiving the backing of writer and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Upton Sinclair.

Hoeppel was weakened by a recent conviction for attempting to sell a nomination to West Point and Jerry Voorhis won the Democratic nomination, with Hoeppel finishing in third place.

Jerry Voorhis was reelected to Congress four times and had one of Congress's most liberal voting records.

Jerry Voorhis supported New Deal initiatives, including Franklin Roosevelt's controversial court packing plan.

Jerry Voorhis advocated the purchase by the Federal Government of the stock in the Federal Reserve Banks, which was held by the member banks, as a way of financing government expenditures and briefly got President Roosevelt to support the measure until the President's advisers caused Roosevelt to change his mind.

Jerry Voorhis later allied with future House Banking Committee chairman Wright Patman to force Federal Reserve Banks to pay most of the interest they earned on federal securities to the US Government, rather than to the bank stockholders.

Jerry Voorhis proposed enactment of a law which would require a national referendum on whether to go to war.

In September 1939, when interviewed by The New York Times for his reaction to the President calling Congress into special session to consider amendments to the Neutrality Act, Jerry Voorhis stated that a special session should quickly increase relief to the working poor.

In early November 1939 Jerry Voorhis announced his support for repealing the arms embargo mandated by the Act, at the same time urging that the country remain neutral.

Once war was declared, Jerry Voorhis supported the internment of Japanese-Americans, though he suggested that the evacuations be done in as voluntary a manner as possible and that officials be appointed to administer their property to avoid forced sales at bargain prices.

Jerry Voorhis opposed dominance of big business in the war effort.

Jerry Voorhis often opposed the petroleum industry, questioning the need for the oil depletion allowance.

The Washington Post hailed him as a hero, and House Naval Affairs Committee Chairman Carl Vinson of Georgia stated that Jerry Voorhis had performed "the greatest kind of service".

However, the Los Angeles Times suggested that Jerry Voorhis had harmed the war effort by depriving the people of California of gasoline.

In 1945, Jerry Voorhis fought a bill which would have given oil companies offshore drilling rights.

Jerry Voorhis sponsored the Voorhis Act of 1940, which required political organizations which were controlled by a foreign power or which engaged in military activities to subvert the American government to register with the Justice Department.

Jerry Voorhis was generally highly regarded by his colleagues and others in Washington.

Jerry Voorhis was a conscientious congressman towards his constituents, careful to remember births, anniversaries, and in-district events.

Jerry Voorhis had the advantage of incumbency, but this was balanced by other factors favoring Nixon.

Jerry Voorhis spent two weeks in an Ogden hotel recuperating from the operation.

Jerry Voorhis's supposed involvement with and endorsement by the CIO-PAC, which was believed to be a Communist front organization, was a major issue in the campaign.

Jerry Voorhis, confronted with the bulletin, noted that they were two different groups.

Nixon's defeat of Jerry Voorhis has been cited as the start of a number of red-baiting campaigns by the future president that later elevated him to the Senate and the vice presidency, and eventually put him in position to run for president.

In spite of any hard feelings, Jerry Voorhis sent Nixon a letter of congratulations in early December 1946.

The Jerry Voorhis family relocated to Winnetka, Illinois, near the League's Chicago headquarters.

Jerry Voorhis was urged to run again for Congress against Nixon in 1948 by Stephen Zetterberg, who, when Jerry Voorhis declined, himself ran in the Democratic primary.

Jerry Voorhis occasionally testified before Congressional committees, usually in opposition to bills which would tax cooperatives.

Jerry Voorhis shut down the League's moribund New York office and opened an office in Los Angeles.

Jerry Voorhis encouraged the forming of cooperatives in Latin America and in 1963, the first hemisphere-wide conference of cooperatives took place in Montevideo, Uruguay.

Five days after Nixon's defeat in the 1962 California gubernatorial election, Voorhis appeared on TV as a Nixon detractor, with Murray Chotiner and Republican Michigan Congressman Gerald Ford defending the former vice-president on Howard K Smith's ABC News and Comment program, "The Political Obituary of Richard M Nixon".

Jerry Voorhis complained about the way Nixon had conducted himself in the 1946 race.

Jerry Voorhis's activities ranged from the California Commission on Aging to working as a teacher's aide to Tom Hayden's Campaign for Economic Democracy.

Jerry Voorhis died at the retirement home from emphysema on September 11,1984.

Jerry Voorhis's papers are held by The Claremont Colleges Library Special Collections.