In 1918, Walsh was elected as a Democrat to the
United States Senate, serving his first term from March 4, 1919, to March 3, 1925. He was the first Irish Catholic senator from Massachusetts, and second Massachusetts senator to be elected by popular vote, after the passage of the
Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. A noted orator, he introduced Irish Republic President
Éamon de Valera at
Fenway Park on June 29, 1919. Walsh broke with Democratic President
Woodrow Wilson on the subject of the
Treaty of Versailles, joining fellow Massachusetts senator (and Republican)
Henry Cabot Lodge in opposition. His initial objections stemmed from the fact that the proposed
League of Nations would "make secure and assured the rights of every single nation in the world except Ireland." In general, he felt that the Treaty failed to adequately provide for the right to self-determination, which had been articulated in Wilson's
Fourteen Points. Walsh also became a vocal critic of Article 10, which would have allowed the League of Nations to make war without a vote by the US Congress. Consequently he was labeled one of the "
Irreconcilables", a bloc of 12–18 mostly Republican senators who refused to pass the treaty even with the "reservations" proposed by Lodge. At the
Democratic National Convention in 1924, he spoke in favor of condemning the
Ku Klux Klan by name in the party platform: "We ask you to cut out of the body politic with the sharpest instrument at your command this malignant growth which, injected, means the destruction of everything which has made America immortal. If you can denounce Republicanism, you can denounce Ku Kluxism. If you can denounce Bolshevism, you can denounce Ku Kluxism." Walsh was one of nine Senators to oppose the
Immigration Act of 1924. Walsh failed to win reelection by just 20,000 votes defeating
William Morgan Butler, a friend of Coolidge and head of the
Republican National Committee. In 1929,
Time published a detailed profile of Walsh and his voting record. It noted that he voted for the
Jones Act of 1929 that increased penalties for the violation of
Prohibition, but said the Senator "votes Wet, drinks Wet". Its more personal description said: A bachelor, he is tall and stout. A double chin tends to get out over his tight-fitting collar. His stomach bulges over his belt. He weighs 200 lbs. or more. Setting-up exercises every other day at a Washington health centre have failed to reduce his girth. He is troubled about it. His dress is dandified. He wears silk shirts in bright colors and stripes and, often, stiff collars to match. His feet are small and well-shod. Beneath his habitual derby hat his hair is turning thin and grey. Society is his prime diversion. Of secondary interest are motoring, sporting events, the theatre. In Washington he occupies an expensive suite of rooms at the luxurious Carlton Hotel on 16th Street. A good and frequent host himself, he accepts all invitations out, is one of the most lionized Senators in Washington.
Time reported that some commented on the contrast between his political populism and his luxurious life style. The profile noted he was a "gruff and bull-voiced debater" but that "in private conversation his voice is soft and controlled." In sum,
Time said that "Impartial Senate observers rate him thus: A good practical politician, a legislator above the average. His political philosophy is liberal and humane, except on economic matters (the tariff) which affect the New England industry, when he turns conservative. His floor attendance is regular, his powers of persuasion, fair." When attacking the Hoover administration following the
1930 elections, Walsh identified two principal causes of voter dissatisfaction: "the administration's indifference to economic conditions and its failure to recognize the widespread opposition to prohibition". Walsh won reelection in 1928, 1934 and 1940, failing in his final bid for reelection in 1946. During his Senate service, Walsh held the posts of chairman of the Committee on Education and Labor (73rd and 74th Congresses) and of the Committee on Naval Affairs (74th-77th and 79th Congresses). In 1932, he supported
Al Smith against FDR for the Democratic nomination for president. He objected to Justice
Hugo Black's failure to disclose his earlier membership in the
Ku Klux Klan and promoted the appointment of Jews to the judiciary, notably that of
Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, a longtime friend. Though a Democrat, he gave only reluctant support to President
Roosevelt's agenda. In 1936, when some Democrats looked for an alternative presidential candidate, he supported Roosevelt, "although their relations are none too good". A newspaper reported that "He is not of the insurgent type ... At heart, observers [in Boston] say, he dissents from many of the policies of the New Deal", but "he will stay on the reservation" and "he will avoid an open break". During the campaign, he failed to speak in support of the President until October 20, 1936. In 1936, Walsh, as head of the Senate Labor Committee, lent his name an administration bill to establish labor standards for employees of government contractors, known as the
Walsh–Healey Public Contracts Act It provided for minimum wages and overtime, safety and sanitation rules, and restrictions on the use of child and convict labor. In 1937, he declared himself an opponent of the administration and joined the opposition to FDR's plan to
enlarge the Supreme Court. Speaking at New York City's
Carnegie Hall, Walsh argued his position in terms of the separation of powers, judicial independence, and the proper role of the executive. He described the public's reaction as "a state of fear, of apprehension, of bewilderment, of real grief, as a result of the proposal to impair, if not indeed to destroy, the judicial independence of the Supreme Court". He also emphasized the role of the Court in protecting civil liberties, citing two examples: He continued: One Cabinet official described his overall relationship to the administration as "not sympathetic ... to put it mildly". Despite his differences with the Roosevelt Administration, Walsh was nevertheless ideologically progressive, supporting various social reform proposals during the course of the Roosevelt presidency such as those aimed at improving housing, social security, and working conditions. Along with four of his colleagues, Walsh condemned antisemitism in Nazi Germany in a Senate speech on June 10, 1933.
World War II Immediately following the defeat of France, Walsh was the sponsor, along with Representative Vinson, of the
Vinson–Walsh Act of July 1940 that increased the size of the U.S. Navy by 70 percent. It included seven battleships, 18 aircraft carriers and 15,000 aircraft. In the Senate, Walsh was a consistent
isolationist He supported American neutrality with respect to the
Spanish Civil War and opposed an American alliance with the United Kingdom until the
attack on Pearl Harbor. Speaking in the Senate on June 21, 1940, he denounced Roosevelt's plans to provide armaments to Great Britain: At the
1940 Democratic National Convention, where Walsh supported
James Farley for president rather than FDR, he and his fellow isolationist Senator
Burton Wheeler of Montana proposed a plank for the party platform that read: "We will not participate in foreign wars and we will not send our army or navy or air force to fight in foreign lands outside of the Americas." When the President added the words "except in case of attack", they accepted the change. In that year's election, he out-polled Roosevelt in Massachusetts despite being opposed by the
CIO for his anti-New Deal positions. After the 1940 election in particular, he opposed any action that would compromise American neutrality, first in closed-door hearings of the Naval Affairs Committee, which he headed, and then in attacking the
Lend-Lease program on the floor of the Senate. He was a leading member of the
America First movement, opposing U.S. involvement in World War II. In 1940,
The New York Times described Walsh as a "more moderate critic" of the administration's attempts to aid Great Britain even as he called the August
commitment FDR made to Churchill one "that goes far beyond the Constitutional powers of the President and one that no other President in our history even presumed to assume. ... The President alone, and on his own initiative, has undertaken to pledge our government, our nation, and the lives of 130,000,000 persons and their descendants for generations to come." When the Senate considered the
Burke–Wadsworth Act to establish peacetime conscription for the first time in U.S. history, Walsh offered an amendment, which failed to pass, that would have delayed the law's effective date until war was declared. In June 1940, he authored an amendment to the naval appropriations bill, sometimes called the Walsh Act of 1940, which permitted "surplus military equipment" to be sold only if it was certified as useless for American defense. To aid Great Britain, the administration evaded the Walsh provision by substituting leases for sales and by trading equipment for bases. In 1941, when the administration used the
Greer incident, an exchange of fire between a German submarine and an American destroyer, to authorize American forces to "shoot on sight", Walsh held hearings of the Naval Affairs Committee to demonstrate that the administration was misrepresenting the facts of the encounter to support its case for American military action against Germany. Walsh also was an outspoken fan of the periodical
Social Justice, published by Father
Charles Coughlin.
"House of Degradation" scandal On May 7, 1942, the
New York Post, which had long favored U.S. involvement in the European conflict, implicated Walsh in a sensational sex and spy scandal uncovered at a Brooklyn male brothel for U.S. Navy personnel that had been infiltrated by Nazi spies. and the brothel's owner-operator, Gustave Beekman. Though promised leniency for cooperating with the police, Beekman received the maximum sentence of 20 years for sodomy and was not released from prison until 1963. The scandal was complex in that it implicated the Senator as a homosexual, as a patron of a male bordello, and as a possible dupe of enemy agents. At one point a sub-headline in
The New York Times called it a "Resort". The
Post first suggested a scandal. Over the course of several weeks it hinted an important person was involved, then named "Senator X", and finally identified Walsh by name. Its sensational treatment of the story detracted from the seriousness of its charges. The
Post was not alone in its coyness; before Walsh was named, Winchell teased that the mystery man was "one of four Senators with the same last initial...the 23rd letter of the alphabet." The brothel's owner and several others arrested in a police raid identified Walsh to the police as "Doc", a regular client, whose visits ended just before police surveillance began. Some furnished intimate physical details.
President Roosevelt believed the charge that Walsh was homosexual was true. He told Vice President
Henry Wallace that "everyone knew" about Walsh's homosexuality and he had a similar conversation with
Alben W. Barkley, the Senate
majority leader. Without discussing details, Walsh issued a brief statement calling the story "a diabolical lie" and demanding a full investigation. An FBI investigation produced no evidence to support the
New York Post specific charges against the Senator, though it accumulated much "derogatory information" in its files. On May 20, 1942, with a full report from FBI Director
J. Edgar Hoover in hand, Senator Barkley addressed the Senate at length on the irresponsibility of the
New York Post, the laudable restraint of the rest of the press, the details of the FBI's report, and the Senate's affirmation of Walsh's "unsullied" reputation. He declined to insert the FBI report in the Congressional Record, he said, "because it contains disgusting and unprintable things". He denied the charges related to espionage. He provided no specifics about the sexual activity at issue and said the details of the charges were "too loathsome to mention in the Senate or in any group of ladies and gentlemen". The press conflated the charges in a similar way. For example,
The New York Times report of Barkley's speech said that the FBI reported that "there is not the 'slightest foundation' for charges that Senator Walsh, 69-year-old chairman of the Naval Affairs Committee, visited a 'house of degradation' in Brooklyn and was seen talking to Nazi agents there." Isolationist senators promptly denounced the charges as an attack on their political position.
Senator Bennett Clark asserted that
Morris Ernst, attorney for the
New York Post, had contacted the White House trying to engage the administration to smear FDR's opposition. Senator
Gerald Nye contended the incident represented a larger effort on the part of a "secret society" that for two years had been trying to discredit him and his fellow isolationists. In private, the
New York Post's publisher became concerned about the newspaper's libel exposure and hired a team led by Daniel Doran to conduct an investigation into Walsh's behavior and the Post's own reporting. Doran learned that Walsh had been in attendance at the Senate in Washington at the same times he was alleged to have been visiting the gay brothel. "Not a single item of legal evidence has been obtained," Doran reported back to the Post, which never amended or corrected its reporting.
Final Senate years During the 1944 presidential race, with FDR seeking a fourth term, his running mate
Harry S. Truman referred to Walsh as an "isolationist", a characterization Walsh resented. On November 2, just five days before the election, the President called Walsh at his home in Clinton, Massachusetts, and invited him to join the presidential party in Worcester, Massachusetts. Walsh accepted the invitation to the relief of the Democrats. The contretemps gave Walsh an opportunity to define his position, that he was no isolationist because he favored the war and seeing the war through to total victory. He also believed the troops should return home quickly, allowing only that some may be required to perform "police duties in enemy territory", and the reserves demobilized. He hoped for a "democratic peace ... free from the influences of political expediency which compromises with imperialism and surrenders to power politics". In 1945, demonstrating that his isolationism was not absolute, Walsh voted in favor of the
United Nations Charter. He was one of a dozen senators who protested the failure of the United Nations to invite a Jewish delegation to its founding
San Francisco Conference. Given his poor relationship with the White House, Walsh anticipated that the administration might even support an opponent in a Democratic primary when he next ran for reelection. He faced no such challenge, but was defeated in his 1946 race for reelection by
Henry Cabot Lodge Jr by a landslide. ==Personal life and death==