page_title: Jerry Voorhis
section_title: 1946 campaign
hierarchical_section_title: Jerry Voorhis / Political career / Record and campaigns / 1946 campaign
caption_attribution_description: English: South Pasadena Middle School, formerly South Pasadena Junior High School. South Pasadena, Los Angeles County, California.
context_page_description: Horace Jeremiah "Jerry" Voorhis was a Democratic politician from California. He served five terms in the United States House of Representatives from 1937 to 1947, representing the 12th Congressional district in Los Angeles County. He 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.
  Voorhis was born in Kansas, but the family relocated frequently in his childhood. He earned a bachelor's degree from Yale University and a master's degree in education from Claremont Graduate School. In 1928, he founded the Voorhis School for Boys and became its headmaster. He retained the post into his congressional career.
  In the House of Representatives, Voorhis was a loyal supporter of the New Deal and compiled a liberal voting record. His major legislative achievement was the Voorhis Act of 1940 requiring registration of certain organizations controlled by foreign powers.
context_section_description: As Voorhis served his fifth term in the House, local Republicans searched for a candidate capable of defeating him. Richard Nixon answered the call. Nixon, who was still in the Navy when approached, wrote of Voorhis, "His 'conservative' reputation must be blasted. But my main efforts are being directed toward building up a positive, progressive group of speeches that tell what we want to do, not what the Democrats have failed to do ... I'm really hopped up over this deal, and I believe we can win." However, "wheelhorse" Republicans deemed Nixon's campaign hopeless.
  As was usual in California at the time, both Nixon and Voorhis cross-filed in the other party's primary, a practice Voorhis had long adopted. Winning both primaries virtually assured election. Each candidate won his own party's primary, with Voorhis garnering a considerable number of votes in the Republican primary, and outpolling Nixon by 7,000 votes overall. Nixon gained momentum, however, when the newspapers pointed out that Voorhis's total percentage of the vote had decreased from 60% in 1944 to 53.5%.
  Voorhis had the advantage of incumbency, but this was balanced by other factors favoring Nixon. Due to the press of Congressional business, Voorhis was able to devote only two months to the campaign, while Nixon campaigned in the district for ten months. Voorhis's time was further limited when, while en route to California from Washington D.C. in August, he was forced to have surgery for hemorrhoids in Ogden, Utah. He spent two weeks in an Ogden hotel recuperating from the operation.
  Nixon alleged that a vote against Voorhis was "a vote against the P.A.C. Political Action Committee, affiliated with the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), its Communist principles, and its gigantic slush fund." The Nixon campaign distributed 25,000 thimbles labeled "Nixon for Congress/Put the needle in the P.A.C."
  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. Nixon's campaign manager claimed to have proof of Voorhis's involvement with the group. On September 13, the two candidates met at a debate at South Pasadena Junior High School. When Nixon was challenged to produce proof of the allegation, Nixon took from his pocket a local bulletin of the National Citizens Political Action Committee that contained an endorsement of Voorhis. This was a different group, also affiliated with the CIO. While Voorhis's staff was aware of this endorsement, no one had told the representative. Voorhis, confronted with the bulletin, noted that they were two different groups. Nixon responded by reading the names of the boards of directors of the two groups, with many names in common. After the debate, Voorhis asked Congressman Chester E. Holifield for his view of how it had gone, and Holifield responded, "Jerry, he cut you to pieces." Voorhis had been successfully linked with "the PAC", though he had refused to accept the endorsement of any PAC unless it renounced Communist influence. Nixon defeated Voorhis by over 15,000 votes and Time magazine praised the future president for "politely avoid[ing] personal attacks on his opponent".
  The day after the election, Voorhis issued a concession statement, "I have given the best years of my life to serving this district in Congress. By the will of the people, that work is ended. I have no regrets about the record I have written." In his 1947 book, Confessions of a Congressman, Voorhis attributed his defeat to tremendous amounts of money supposedly spent by the Nixon forces. When Nixon read the book, he commented, "What I am wondering is where all the money went that we were supposed to have had!"
  Nixon's defeat of 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. Voorhis later deemed himself "the first victim of the Nixon-Chotiner formula for political success." In 1958, Vo
caption: South Pasadena Middle School (formerly South Pasadena Junior High School)
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