Since many people have little or no idea who Estes Kefauver was (hence the point of this site), here is a brief biography to acquaint you with the Senator’s life.
Kefauver was born in Madisonville, just west of the Smokies of eastern Tennessee, in July 26, 1903. His father Cooke was something of a serial entrepreneur: during Estes’ childhood, Cooke Kefauver owned a hardware store, a roller rink, and a hotel. He was also elected five times as mayor of Madisonville, despite being a proud Democrat in a Republican town.
Estes inherited his father’s populist Democratic politics. From his mother Phredonia, he learned kindness and a strong sense of right and wrong. Throughout his life, Estes tried to follow the advice that his mother wrote to him when he left for college: “Leave no tender word unsaid. Do good while life shall last.”
Estes got into politics at a young age. In 1912, Cooke Kefauver loaded his sons into his Model T Ford and barnstormed around Madison County in support of Woodrow Wilson’s presidential campaign. Cooke made speeches while nine-year-old Estes and his brother handed out flyers and nailed up posters on nearby trees. For their campaign efforts, Estes and his brother were paid in Coca-Colas.
After graduating from the University of Tennessee, where he was elected student body president and played on the varsity football team, Kefauver spent a year teaching and coaching high school football in Arkansas. Desiring to make more of his life, he went to Yale Law School.
After graduating, he returned home to Tennessee and practiced law in Chattanooga. He was renowned for his way with juries: as one of his law partners described it, “He would establish himself as a country boy, then recite the facts and lead the jury along. He used language the jurors could understand. He never tried to be eloquent or quoted poetry.”
Kefauver’s first political job was as Tennessee’s finance and taxation commissioner in 1939. Governor Prentice Cooper said he chose Kefauver because he was “an honest man, personally and politically.” What was the difference? According to Governor Cooper, “A politically honest man is not only honest himself – he sees to it that everyone who works for him is honest.”
Later that year, Kefauver was elected to Congress to succeed the late Rep. Sam McReynolds; he would hold the seat for nine years. As a Congressman, he established himself as a loyal supporter of FDR’s New Deal and a backer of the Tennessee Valley Authority.
He was already beginning to demonstrate, however, that he was not just a typical Southern politician. He was a supporter of the labor movement – voting against the anti-union Taft-Hartley Act. He also stood up in favor of civil rights, opposing poll taxes and attacking the use of the Senate filibuster to bottle up civil rights legislation.
He also championed political reforms. He spent virtually his entire time in the House advocating for the Speaker of the House to be added to the line of presidential succession (which finally came to pass with the Presidential Succession Act of 1947). He also co-authored a book, “Twentieth Century Congress,” which advocated an end to the the filibuster and other reforms.
In 1948, he decided to run for the Senate. Although considered a long shot at the outset, his energetic campaigning prevailed in a three-way primary over the incumbent, Tom Stewart, and a candidate backed by the powerful Memphis political machine. During this campaign, he adopted the coonskin cap that would become his political trademark.
The year after he joined the Senate, Kefauver rocketed to national fame when he chaired a Senate investigation into organized crime. The Kefauver Committee spent over a year traveling the country (the Senator himself logged over 50,000 miles on committee business), holding over 90 days of hearings in 14 cities and interviewing over 600 witnesses. The hearings were televised, and they because a nationwide sensation; as many as 30 million Americans tuned in.
The Kefauver Committee alerted many Americans to the existence of the Mafia for the first time. It also opened their eyes to the connections that existed in many cities before law enforcement officials, politicians, and organized crime. The hearings led to legal trouble for numerous criminals who testified before the Committee, and sank the careers of a number of corrupt sheriffs and crooked politicos.
Unfortunately for Kefauver, the hearings also made enemies of several powerful Democratic leaders, including President Truman (the committee revealed the mob’s ties to the Kansas City political machine that made his career) and Senate Majority Leader Scott Lucas (who lost his seat in Illinois thanks to voter anger at the committee’s revelations of Chicago police corruption).
In 1952, Kefauver made his first try at the presidency. Riding the wave of popularity from the crime hearings, he shocked observers by defeating President Truman in the New Hampshire primary (effectively ending Truman’s reelection hopes) and rolled through the primaries, winning all but three.
Unfortunately for him, most delegates weren’t selected that way at the time. His underfunded and understaffed campaign did virtually nothing to win over unpledged delegates, and many party leaders – still smarting over the crime hearings – hated him (including Truman, who privately called him “Cowfever”). He wound up losing the nomination to Adlai Stevenson, who didn’t even run in the primaries and had to be drafted. Adding insult to injury, the day Kefauver lost the nomination was his 49th birthday.
Undaunted, he returned to the Senate, cruising to reelection in 1954 after crushing Rep. Pat Sutton in the primary. He remained in the public eye, holding hearings on juvenile delinquency. He also continued his defiance of the segregationists; he was one of three Southern senators (joining Lyndon Johnson and fellow Tennessean Albert Gore, Sr.) who refused to sign the Southern Manifesto, which called for the South to defy the Supreme Court’s ruling on school integration in Brown v. Board of Education.
In 1956, Kefauver tried for the Presidential nomination again. He did well in the beginning, scoring a major upset by winning the Minnesota primary, even though Stevenson had the backing of virtually every major politician in the state.
However, Kefauver later lost the critical California and Florida primaries to Stevenson, and dropped out before the convention. When Stevenson let the convention pick his VP nominee, Kefauver managed to get the nod (beating out a young Massachusetts senator named John F. Kennedy).
Putting the primary rivalry with Stevenson behind him, Kefauver went out and campaigned vigorously for the ticket across the country, traveling over 54,000 miles through 38 states and making over 450 speeches. His nonstop campaigning and common-man touch led one reporter to call Kefauver “the single best asset Stevenson’s got.”
Alas, the Stevenson/Kefauver ticket got stomped by Dwight Eisenhower, losing the popular vote by 15 points and winning only seven states. They lost both Stevenson’s native Illinois and Kefauver’s native Tennessee.
Although Kefauver was considered a potential contender in 1960, he ultimately chose not to make a third run at the Presidency. Instead, he focused on his Senatorial work, becoming chair of the Senate Antitrust and Monopoly Subcommittee. Antitrust and consumer protections dear to Kefauver’s heart, and they’d long been a focus for him. His Senate subcommittee looked into industries from steel to sports to bread to automobiles (he even recommended breaking up General Motors).
One of his main targets was the pharmaceutical industry; his subcommittee held many hearings into their corrupt practices. This led to the Kefauver-Harris Drug Act, which mandated crazy things like requiring drug companies to prove their drugs were effective and safe, and requiring accurate disclosure of side effects in drug ads. Kefauver considered the act his finest work as a senator.
His continued support of civil rights – he voted for the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960 – earned him a primary challenge in his 1960 Senate reelection campaign from a virulent segregationist, Judge Tip Taylor. Kefauver steamrolled Taylor by a 2-to-1 margin, earning a third Senate term – which would, sadly, be his last.
On the Senate floor in August of 1963, in the middle of a filibuster, Kefauver fell ill. His colleagues begged him to leave and go see a doctor, but he refused to go until the next day. Doctors, after initially calling it a minor heart attack, eventually diagnosed him with an aortic aneurysm and prepared for open-heart surgery, but Kefauver wouldn’t let them start until Nancy (in Colorado at the time) could be by his side. At 3:30 in the morning, while Nancy was headed back, his aorta burst and he died at the age of 60.
Upon Kefauver’s death, the accolades that often eluded him in life came pouring in. Former Tennessee governor and longtime ally Gordon Browning said of Kefauver: “His life was a crusade for better government and a high standard of living for all Americans.” President Kennedy mourned him as “a public servant of energy, integrity, and talent” and praised his “devotion to the public interest and the welfare of the people”. Republican Senator Everett Dirksen called Kefauver “a very extraordinary person who had deep convictions, a rare persistence and tremendous courage in pursuing those convictions.” Rep. Emmanuel Cellar of New York said, “His sincerity was as genuine as his intellect was keen. His humility, sense of justice, human interest and dedication were badges of his greatness.” David McDonald, president of the steelworkers’ union, said Kefauver was not only “a friend to labor, but in the truest sense a friend to all mankind.”
With this site, I hope to demonstrate why all of those tributes were richly deserved.
Estes Kefauver for President 