National Affairs: One Long Year

High point of big, amiable, 54-year-old Frederick Steiwer’s eleven years as a U. S. Senator was his keynote speech at the Republican National Convention of 1936 on the “Three Long Years” of the New Deal. Since then Fred Steiwer has been notable chiefly as one of the 16 Republicans in the Senate. Even in Oregon, the memory of his patient services in boosting tariffs on lumber, wool, and fruit and his reputation as The Veterans’ Friend have been dimmed by more spectacular political personalities to the point where Fred Steiwer’s chances for re-election this year were doubtful indeed. Lately his colleagues understood that the only thing that kept him from resigning to return to private life was his loyalty to his senior colleague, Minority Leader Charles McNary.

Last week Fred Steiwer abruptly released himself from his pledge to remain one long year in the Senate, announced that he was resigning effective January 31 to practice law in Washington with Corporation Lawyer Kingman Brewster and reopen his own law office in Portland. With his wife, son, a daughter, little income outside his $10,000 salary, and few political prospects, Fred Steiwer explained that he could not afford to miss “an opportunity which would not wait until the end of my term of office.”

This was bigger news in Oregon than it was in Washington. Because many an Oregon Democrat, including popular ex-Townsendite Willis Mahoney who almost beat Leader McNary in the 1936 elections, was already primping for Fred Steiwer’s seat, Democratic Governor Charles H. Martin found the prospect of picking one for an eleven-month recess appointment highly perplexing. The Governor had to step carefully since he is up for re-election himself this year, on the outs with Oregon’s left-wing Democracy which has never forgotten that he registered Republican before he retired from the Army as a major general in 1927.

His choice for the first Democratic Senator to represent Oregon in 17 years was a corporation lawyer, Alfred Evan Reames. Having been turned down for a circuit court judgeship in 1933 because of his utility connections and for a district judgeship last year because he was too old (67), Lawyer Reames was satisfactory to conservative, 74-year-old Governor Martin on both counts. To the wary Governor, however, Alfred Evan Reames’ chief qualification was his solemn promise not “under any circumstances” to run for Senator in the Democratic primary this spring.