GetWiki

{{Short description|Former United States senator from California}}{{distinguish|Thomas Tuchel}}

factoids

Party leaders of the United States Senate>Senate Minority Whip|term_start = January 3, 1959|term_end = January 3, 1969|predecessor = Everett Dirksen|successor = Hugh Scott|jr/sr1 = United States Senator|state1 = California|term_start1 = January 2, 1953|term_end1 = January 3, 1969|predecessor1 = Richard Nixon|successor1 = Alan CranstonCalifornia State Controller>Controller of California|governor2 = Earl Warren|term_start2 = February 11, 1946|term_end2 = January 2, 1953|predecessor2 = Harry B. Riley|successor2 = Robert C. Kirkwood|state_senate3= CaliforniaCalifornia's 35th State Senate district>35th|term3 = January 6, 1941 – February 11, 1946|preceded3 = Harry Clay Westover|succeeded3 = Clyde A. Watson|state_assembly4 = CaliforniaCalifornia's 75th State Assembly district>75th|term4 = January 4, 1937 – January 6, 1941Edward Craig (politician)>Edward Craig|successor4 = Sam L. Collins|birth_name = Thomas Henry Kuchel 191015}}Anaheim, California>Anaheim, California, U.S.{{death date and age11191015}}}}Beverly Hills, California>Beverly Hills, California, U.S.Republican Party (United States)>RepublicanBetty Mellenthin|1942}}|children = 1University of Southern California (Bachelor of Arts>BA, LLB)United States|1912}}United States Navy}}United States Navy Reserve>Reserves|battles = World War II}}Thomas Henry Kuchel ({{IPAc-en|ˈ|k|iː|k|É™l}} {{respell|KEE|kÉ™l}}; August 15, 1910 – November 21, 1994)WEB,weblink Social Security Death Index location=United States, 2009Rockefeller Republicans>moderate Republican Party (United States), he served as a US Senator from California from 1953 to 1969 and was the minority whip in the Senate, where he was the co-manager on the floor for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Kuchel voted in favor of the Civil Rights Act of 1957>Civil Rights Acts of 1957,SENATE – AUGUST 7, 1957>JOURNAL=CONGRESSIONAL RECORDISSUE=10UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE>U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICEURL=HTTPS://WWW.GOVINFO.GOV/CONTENT/PKG/GPO-CRECB-1957-PT10/PDF/GPO-CRECB-1957-PT10-9-1.PDFCONGRESSIONAL RECORD>VOLUME=103PUBLISHER=UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE>PAGE=16478ACCESS-DATE=FEBRUARY 18, 2022, Civil Rights Act of 1960,SENATE – APRIL 8, 1960CONGRESSIONAL RECORD>VOLUME=106PUBLISHER=UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE>PAGES=7810–7811ACCESS-DATE=FEBRUARY 18, 2022, and Civil Rights Act of 1964,SENATE – JUNE 19, 1964CONGRESSIONAL RECORD>VOLUME=110PUBLISHER=UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE>PAGE=14511ACCESS-DATE=FEBRUARY 18, 2022, as well as the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution,SENATE – MARCH 27, 1962CONGRESSIONAL RECORD>VOLUME=108PUBLISHER=UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE>PAGE=5105ACCESS-DATE=FEBRUARY 18, 2022, the Voting Rights Act of 1965,SENATE – MAY 26, 1965>JOURNAL=CONGRESSIONAL RECORDISSUE=2UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE>U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICEURL=HTTPS://WWW.GOVINFO.GOV/CONTENT/PKG/GPO-CRECB-1965-PT9/PDF/GPO-CRECB-1965-PT9-2-2.PDFCONGRESSIONAL RECORD>VOLUME=111PUBLISHER=UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE>PAGE=19378ACCESS-DATE=FEBRUARY 18, 2022, and the confirmation of Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court of the United States,SENATE – AUGUST 30, 1967CONGRESSIONAL RECORD>VOLUME=113PUBLISHER=UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE>PAGE=24656ACCESS-DATE=FEBRUARY 5, 2022, while Kuchel did not vote on the Civil Rights Act of 1968.SENATE – MARCH 11, 1968>JOURNAL=CONGRESSIONAL RECORDISSUE=5UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE>U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICEURL=HTTPS://WWW.GOVINFO.GOV/CONTENT/PKG/GPO-CRECB-1968-PT5/PDF/GPO-CRECB-1968-PT5-4-2.PDF, February 18, 2022,

Early life

Kuchel was born in Anaheim, Orange County, the son of Henry Kuchel, a newspaper editor and the former Letitia Bailey.WEB , WEB,weblink California Death Index, 1940-1997 location=United States, 2000, 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 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. 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" File:Thomas Kuchel with Lyndon Johnson.jpg|thumb|180px|left|Senator Kuchel with President Lyndon Johnson in the Oval OfficeOval OfficeWhile 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.MAGAZINE, The Smear,weblinkweblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20120105170434weblink">weblink dead, January 5, 2012, Time (magazine), Time, 5 March 1965, 2009-12-12, NEWS, Surrenders On Charges In Kuchel Libel,weblink Francis. A. Capell, 57, one of four men indicted by the Los Angeles county grand jury for conspiracy to criminally libel Sen. Thomas H. Kuchel..., Chicago Tribune, 25 February 1965, 2009-12-14, 2012-10-24,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20121024091740weblink">weblink dead, NEWS, Francis A. Capell of Zarephath, N.J., surrendered voluntarily here today to face an indictment charging him and three others with conspiracy to commit criminal libel against Senator Thomas H. Kuchel Republican of California.,weblink Publisher Appears In Coast Libel Case, The New York Times, 25 February 1965, 2009-12-14, 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.BOOK, Kabaservice, Geoffrey, 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), 2012, 978-0199768400, 220, Oxford University Press, USA, 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, 2021Kuchel 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.TO PASS H.R. 6675, THE SOCIAL SECURITY AMENDMENTS OF 1965Kuchel 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.WEB,weblink Thomas Henry Kuchel, 2009-12-12, Senator from California; born in Anaheim, Orange County, Calif., August 15, 1910; attended the public schools; graduated from the University of Southern California in 1932 and from the law school of the same university in 1935; admitted to the bar the same year and began practice in Anaheim, Calif.; member, State assembly 1936-1939; member, State senate 1940-1945, and while serving as State senator volunteered and was called to active duty in the United States Naval Reserve as a lieutenant (junior grade), serving until 1945; State controller 1946-1953; appointed on January 2, 1953, and subsequently elected on November 2, 1954, as a Republican to the United States Senate to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Richard M. Nixon; reelected in 1956 and again in 1962 and served from January 2, 1953, to January 3, 1969; unsuccessful candidate for renomination in 1968; Republican whip 1959-1969; resumed the practice of law in Washington, D.C. and California, until his retirement in 1981; resided in Beverly Hills, Calif., until his death on November 21, 1994., He was appointed by the Supreme Court to represent the appellee in United States v. 12 200-ft. Reels of Film.weblink {{Bare URL inline|date=August 2022}}

Death

He died of lung cancer on November 21, 1994, in Beverly Hills.NEWS, Thomas H. Kuchel Dies at 84; Ex-Republican Whip in Senate,weblink Thomas H. Kuchel, a Californian who spent 16 years in the United States Senate and who as Republican whip there played a vital role in enactment of major civil rights legislation in the 1960s, died on Monday night at his home in Beverly Hills. He was 84. He had been under treatment for lung cancer, said Dick Arnold, a former law partner., The New York Times, 24 November 1994, 2009-12-12, David, Binder,

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."WEB,weblink Conversation with Leon Panetta, p. 2 of 5, 2009-10-14, 2009-09-07,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20090907112757weblink">weblink dead, 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

{{Reflist}}

External links

{{CongBio|K000335}}

• {{find a Grave|7494661}}
• weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20100611120834weblink">Oral History Interview with Thomas Kuchel, from the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library
• {{YouTube|EgYX56iaHHQ|Television interview with Senator Kuchel on Longines Chronoscope in 1955}}
• Join California Thomas H. Kuchel

Further reading

• "weblink" title="archive.today/20121213130310weblink">Honoring a True Public Servant: Senator Thomas Kuchel," Congressional Record, October 11, 2002.

{{USSenCA}}{{USSenMinWhips}}{{USSenRepWhip}}{{authority control}}

- content above as imported from Wikipedia
- "Thomas Kuchel" does not exist on GetWiki (yet)
- time: 7:59pm EDT - Sat, May 04 2024