No Nevadan affected his state more in the 20th century than Pat McCarran. He was Nevada's first native born United States Senator. Raised on his family sheep ranch outside of Reno. He entered politics in 1902 as a Democratic candidate for the assembly at the age of 26. His support came from forces trying to elect another Nevada's powerful politician, Francis Newlands to the United States Senate.
McCarran won, voted for Newlands in the state legislature, and followed in his footsteps as a senator and a Nevada political power eventually, but first, McCarran went through years in the wilderness. He was defeated for the state senate in 1904 but went on to hold several offices. He didn't like any of them. He studied law, passed the BAR and became Nye County District Attorney, but he hated being a prosecutor. What he really wanted to be was a great defense attorney, and he was. He won a seat on the state Supreme Court, which he wound up calling a burying ground. Worse, McCarran ran afoul of George Wingfield, the political boss of Nevada, for more than a quarter of a century.
He represented a woman claiming to be Wingfield's wife in a divorce case. When McCarran put Wingfield on the witness stand, he forced him to admit to some escapades that no one likes to discuss. Wingfield never forgot that. He also remembered that it was McCarran who opposed his efforts to break the Goldfield miners' union, and that it was McCarran who challenged a Wingfield ally in a congressional race, and later, when he tried to buy off McCarran with the judgeship, McCarran flat turned him down. Above all, McCarran wanted to be a United States senator, and Wingfield wasn't going to help him get there.
McCarran tried to challenge Newlands in 1914 and Key Pittman in 1916 that merely made even more people mad at him. For the most part, McCarran had to be satisfied with being an attorney, which enabled him to represent several Wingfield cronies when the political boss tried to put the onus on them for a political scandal. But in 1932 his fortune changed, and McCarran got a chance. He won the Democratic Senate primary, Democrats didn't much care. Republican Tasker Oddy, a Wingfield man, looked like a cinch for a third term, but events were now working in McCarran's favor.
The depression was on, and Boulder Dam construction brought thousands of new residents to Southern Nevada seeking jobs. They blamed the Republican President Herbert Hoover for their plight. Many of them registered Democrat ready to vote against Republicans and the depression hurt Wingfield. He owned most of Nevada's major banks, and like other bankers, he was in financial trouble. Finally, Governor Fred Bowser had to declare a two week bank holiday on November 1, 1932 and close all of Nevada's banks just before the general election. Thousands of Nevada's didn't know if they'd ever see their life savings again, and the banker responsible for it was known to be behind Oddy. With all of that, and with Franklin Roosevelt leading the ticket and a national Democratic landslide, McCarran received only about 52% of the vote, but he had been elected a United States senator now he planned to make the most of it.
He took office in 1933 and served until his death in 1954. By that time, he became the most powerful Nevada ever to represent his state and a power to be reckoned with at home and across the country. One key to his power was his committee service. He eventually chaired the Judiciary Committee, giving him influence with presidents and other senators who wanted their judicial appointments confirmed. As a senior Democrat on the Appropriations Committee. He controlled a lot of federal money and made sure that Nevada got its fair share.
McCarran was a key player behind Nevada getting world war two military bases in Las Vegas, in Tonopah, in Fallon and in Reno. He helped guide basic magnesium into what today is modern day Henderson, he obtained funding for the airport that bears his name, and he backed the Nevada Test Site. They all meant money, jobs and respect for his state, for Nevada and for McCarran, respect was an issue. Today, gaming is a worldwide corporate industry. In his time, it was considered a vice controlled by mobsters, and Nevada was viewed by many as a pariah state. McCarran didn't like gamblers or gaming, but they helped Nevada's economy, and he fought ferociously to protect them when others, including Senator Estes Kefauver, went after them. McCarran also built a powerful political machine at home, in a way his counterparts today can't use. Nevada now boasts a first class law school. Then it had none.
If you were a would be lawyer from Nevada, you frequently went to Washington, DC to get a legal education and work in Senator McCarran's office. Through his patronage, McCarran set up jobs for dozens of young Nevada's who then came home and became powerful lawyers, office holders and behind the scenes players in their own right. Alan Bible, who himself enjoyed a distinguished 20 year career in the United States Senate, Grant Sawyer, probably the state's most important and influential governor, John Collins, a Supreme Court Justice, Harvey Dickerson, a state Attorney General, distinguished attorneys like Virgil wedge, Ralph Denton, Cal Corey and the list goes on and on. Most of them remained loyal to McCarran and became known as the McCarran boys.
Not that supporting him was always easy, McCarran backed legislation against immigrants and free speech because he really believed there was a communist conspiracy, and whether or not communists were a problem. McCarran was no defender of civil liberties, and McCarran could be ruthless. He pitted fellow Democrats against one another if they thought they might threaten his dominance. He got his political opponents fired from jobs, and he saw to it that critical editors lost advertising and printing contracts.
In his later years, McCarran encountered a critic that he couldn't silence, Hank Greenspun of the Las Vegas Sun after some especially blunt attacks on McCarran, almost every Las Vegas casino canceled its advertising in The Sun. Greenspun sued, claiming a conspiracy. In court, he produced the switchboard operator who took the phone call from McCarran's office to organize the plan and to boycott advertising in the Las Vegas Sun. Greenspun won a settlement and kept on attacking.
The attacks cut into McCarran's power, and so did Las Vegas' new growth. New arrivals neither knew nor cared much about Pat McCarran. It was ironic the area's growth had helped to elect him in 1932 and many of those newcomers came because McCarran made possible so much of the Las Vegas economy of tourism and federal projects.
Yet Pat McCarran planned to run for reelection in 1956 but on September 28, 1954 he died at age 78. That ended the dream, but not his influence the Nevadans he aided trained another generation of politicians and businessmen. The industry he protected has grown beyond anyone's wildest dreams, and Pat McCarran's legacy is large and keeps growing.
