Electoral history McCarran's ambition to serve as a U.S. Senator was well known in Nevada, and often the subject of commentary and jokes in the press. He ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination in 1916, and lost to incumbent
Key Pittman. McCarran endorsed Pittman in the general election, and Pittman was reelected. In 1944, McCarran was challenged by
Vail M. Pittman in the Democratic primary, leading to an especially hard-fought campaign that was finally won by McCarran. He also served as co-chairman of the
Joint Committee on Foreign Economic Cooperation (
81st United States Congress). In a speech on the Senate floor, McCarran declared that he despised both
Adolf Hitler and
Josef Stalin but regarded the
Third Reich as the lesser evil and felt it was therefore profoundly wrong for the United States to aid the Soviet Union. McCarran was well known for his efforts at constituent services, often going to extraordinary lengths on behalf of Nevada residents who requested his aid. Other committee chairmen had the same powers over bills related to their fields, but the number of bills that had to be passed by the Judiciary Committee made McCarran far more influential than the other senate committee chairmen. McCarran was against the plans of the Roosevelt and Truman administrations for federal health insurance and increased education spending; favored restricting the power of unions; was opposed to increased immigration, saying he did not want "undesirables from abroad" coming to America; and was against the United Nations, which he called "a haven for spies and Communists".
Other initiatives In 1945, McCarran co-sponsored the
McCarran-Ferguson Act, which exempted the insurance industry from most federal regulations, including
antitrust rules. Instead, this act required states to regulate insurance, including mandatory licensing requirements. McCarran also co-sponsored the 1946
Administrative Procedures Act, which required federal agencies to keep the public informed of their organizational structure, procedures and rules, allowed for public participation in the rule making process, and established uniform standards for the conduct of formal rule making.
Anti-communism McCarran established himself as one of the Senate's most ardent anti-Communists. An admirer of Spanish dictator
Francisco Franco, he was nicknamed the "Senator from Madrid" by columnist
Drew Pearson over his efforts to increase
foreign aid to Spain. McCarran voted for President Truman's 1947 plan to provide aid to Greece and Turkey as part of an effort to prevent them from becoming communist, but in 1949 McCarran broke with Truman after he rejected McCarran's request for increased economic aid to Spain and military aid to
Chiang Kai-shek's nationalist Chinese government. McCarran's praise for Franco greatly annoyed Truman. During his visit to Spain, McCarran discussed potential U.S. aid for Franco, infuriating Truman, who angrily declared that McCarran did not have the right to conduct his own foreign policy. After
World War II, McCarran continued his anti-Communist efforts. He was a supporter of
Chiang Kai-shek and attributed the "
loss of China" to communists to Soviet influence in the
U.S. State Department. In 1952, McCarran and Republican Senators
Joseph McCarthy and
William Knowland attended a dinner hosted by the
Kuomintang Ambassador to Washington, toasting "Back to the mainland!" McCarthy sought McCarran's favor after he started his "crusade against Communism." President Truman vetoed the act, charging that it violated civil liberties and put the government in "the business of thought control," but Congress overrode Truman's veto. The act was never enforced due to numerous hearings, delays and
appeals before its major provisions were held unconstitutional by the
United States Supreme Court in 1965 and 1967. As chairman of the Judiciary Committee, McCarran created and chaired the
Senate Internal Security Subcommittee to investigate supposed communist spies and sympathizers within the
Franklin D. Roosevelt and
Harry S. Truman administrations. In acrimonious hearings in February 1951, McCarran questioned
Institute of Pacific Relations researcher
Owen Lattimore, whom Senator McCarthy accused of being the "top Russian agent" responsible for the "loss of China." During the hearings, McCarran and Lattimore frequently engaged in shouting matches and interrupted one another. At the end of the hearings, McCarran stated Lattimore was "so flagrantly defiant" and "so persistent in his efforts to confuse and obscure the facts that the committee feels constrained to take due notice of his conduct ... That he has uttered untruths stands clear in the record." Lattimore's lawyer
Abe Fortas defended him by claiming McCarran had deliberately asked questions about arcane and obscure matters that took place in the 1930s in the hope that Lattimore would not be able to recall them properly, thereby giving grounds for perjury indictments. Federal Judge
Luther Youngdahl later dismissed all seven charges against Lattimore on the grounds that the matters in question were insubstantial, of little concern to McCarran's inquiry, or the result of questions phrased in such a way that they could not be fairly answered. On July 27, 1953, the
armistice of Panmunjom was signed ending the Korean War. McCarran attracted national attention when he criticized President Dwight Eisenhower on the Senate floor for signing the armistice, which he called "a perpetuation of a fraud on this country and the United Nations". McCarran believed that the United States and the rest of its allies fighting under the United Nations banner in Korea should have fought on until all of Korea was unified under the leadership of President
Syngman Rhee, which led him to see the armistice as a sort of American defeat. The Act also stiffened the existing law relating to the admission, exclusion and deportation of dangerous aliens under the McCarran Internal Security Act. Of the Act, McCarran said: Some of the immigration provisions of the act were later superseded by the
1965 Immigration Act, but the power of the government to deny visas for ideological reasons remained on the books another 25 years after that. ==Personal life==