Sheridan Downey

Sheridan Downey (March 11 1884 – October 25 1961) was a lawyer and a Democratic U.S. Senator from California.

He was born in Laramie, the seat of Albany County in southern Wyoming, the son of the former Evangeline Victoria Owen and Stephen Wheeler Downey. He was educated in public schools and graduated from the University of Wyoming in Laramie in 1907, and from the University of Michigan Law School in Ann Arbor. He practiced law in Laramie and later in Sacramento, California, where he moved in 1913.

In 1934, he was the Democratic nominee for Lieutenant Governor of California as Upton Sinclair's running mate, stumping on the End Poverty in California plan (opponents called the ticket "Uppie and Downey"). After Sinclair's defeat, Downey became involved with Dr. Francis Townsend, advocate of the Townsend Plan for government old-age pensions. He served as Dr. Townsend's attorney. In 1936, the two drifted apart, as Townsend supported Union Party presidential nominee William Lemke of North Dakota, and Downey remained a Democrat committed to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

In 1938, Downey ran for the U.S. Senate as a supporter of the proposed "Ham and Eggs" government pension program. He defeated incumbent Senator William Gibbs McAdoo, the former son-in-law of Woodrow Wilson, in the Democratic primary by more than 135,000 votes. Downey then defeated the Republican Philip Bancroft in the general election, 54-46 percent. During the 1938 campaign, Downey appeared on the cover of "Time". He served two terms, having been reelected in 1944 with 52 percent of the vote over Republican Lieutenant Governor Frederick F. Houser.

Though he had been considered a staunch liberal, Downey, in office as senator, became a conservative Democrat who won the support of California's major oil interests. He supported the efforts of oil companies and agribusiness to procure state, rather than federal, control of California's oil resources. He also worked to exempt the California Central Valley from the Reclamation Act of 1902, an action which assisted corporate farms. [Kenneth Franklin Kurz, "Nixon's Enemies", NTC/Contemporary Publishing Group, 1998, p. 102]

Downey announced that he would seek a third term in the Senate in 1950, but he withdrew from the race in the primary season. His leading rival for the nomination was the liberal U.S. Representative Helen Gahagan Douglas, a former actress. Downey supported another candidate in the primary, Manchester Boddy, the owner and publisher of the "Los Angeles Daily News". He even indicated that if Douglas survived the primary, which she did, he would support Republican U.S. Representative Richard M. Nixon in the general election. In the ensuing Douglas-Nixon race, Nixon prevailed in what his critics called a smear campaign. From this race, Nixon emerged with the sobriquet "Tricky Dick". [Kenneth Franklin Kurz, "Nixon's Enemies", NTC/Contemporary Publishing Group, 1998, p. 103]

After he left the Senate, Downey practiced law in Washington, D.C., until his death in San Francisco in 1961. Upon his passing, he donated his body to University of California Medical Center in Berkeley.His papers are archived at the Bancroft Library in Berkeley.

Works

*"Onward America", 1933.
*"Courage America", 1933.
*"Why I Believe in the Townsend Plan", 1936.
*"Pensions or Penury?", 1939. - An early book of New Deal advocacy.
*"Highways to Prosperity", 1940.
*"They Would Rule the Valley", 1947. - A book written to inform Californians about the Federal Government's efforts to impose undue economic restrictions on agriculture via the Reclamation Bureau.

References

* [http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=D000469 Congressional Biographical Directory: Sheridan Downey] - From the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
* [http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=tf8779n9mg&doc.view=entire_text Guide to the Sheridan Downey Papers from 1929 to 1961] - Provided by the Online Archive of California and Bancroft Library.
*http://politicalgraveyard.com/bio/down-downey.html