Shipstead entered politics as a Republican, serving one term in the
Minnesota House of Representatives from 1917 to 1919. In
1918, he ran for
Congress in
Minnesota's 7th congressional district, narrowly losing the Republican primary to incumbent
Andrew Volstead.
Two years later, he ran for
governor of Minnesota as an
independent, losing to Republican
J. A. O. Preus but coming in second place with over 35% of the vote. He finally returned to public office in
1922, when he was elected to the U.S. Senate under the banner of the new Farmer-Labor Party. While he generally shared the party's left-wing agenda, he rejected the extreme anti-capitalism of some members. Although he was the only Farmer-Laborite in the Senate, he won appointment to the powerful
Foreign Relations Committee. Shipstead opposed U.S. entry into the
League of Nations and the
World Court. He called for the cancellation of German reparations, which he regarded as vindictive. Unlike non-interventionists in the
Old Right, he objected to the U.S. occupation of
Haiti, the
Dominican Republic and
Nicaragua. He blamed these interventions on the
Roosevelt Corollary to the
Monroe Doctrine of 1905, which had turned the United States into an arrogant "policeman of the western continent."
Isolationism Senator
Magnus Johnson, 1923 Shipstead did not consider himself an isolationist. While he favored a policy of political non-intervention overseas, he opposed the
Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930, which he called "one of the greatest and most vicious isolationist policies this government has ever enacted." He argued that high tariffs "raise prices to consumers" and make "monopolies richer and people poorer." Affable and dignified, his adversaries generally liked him personally. He concluded, "It doesn't necessarily follow that a radical has to be a damned fool." Along with Congressman
Robert Luce of
Massachusetts, he introduced the bill that enlarged the purview of the
United States Commission of Fine Arts to include new buildings on private land facing federal property. The commission, established in 1910, reviews new buildings, memorials, monuments, and public art constructed on federal property in
Washington, D.C. The bill, the
Shipstead-Luce Act, is still in effect. Shipstead defected from the Farmer-Labor party in the late 1930s, charging that Communist elements were taking control. He won reelection to the Senate in 1940 as a
Republican.
Antisemitism Shipstead was an outspoken ally of
Henry Ford and
Charles Lindbergh, and he trafficked in anti-Jewish conspiracy theories, as well as straightforward bigotry against Jewish people. Shipstead said he believed that
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion were fact, and he frequently encouraged other people to read them. Meanwhile, few fought more tenaciously against
Franklin D. Roosevelt's efforts to enter the war in Europe. Although Shipstead voted for the declaration of war after the
attack on Pearl Harbor, he still maintained his independence from Roosevelt. In October 1942, for example, he was one of the very few to vote against
Selective Service, just as he had in 1940.
World War II In April 1943
Isaiah Berlin, a top British expert on American politics, secretly prepared an analysis for the British
Foreign Office that stated that Henrik Shipstead was: In protest of his views, a group of southern senators including
J. Lister Hill,
John H. Bankhead II,
Tom Stewart,
Kenneth McKellar,
Richard Russell Jr. and
Walter F. George stopped conversing, got up, and left from the Senate's lunch counter when Senator Shipstead tried to join them, with Hill later telling reporters they "would not associate" with the Senator due to his isolationist views. Later, after a private argument with the same six Senators, Shipstead lamented what he called the "extreme Anglophilia of the southern states."
Richard Russell Jr. said that Shipstead was "a chicken" who was "in kahoots" with Germany.
Postwar Shipstead's vote against US entry into the
United Nations was entirely predictable by anyone who had followed his career. It was the capstone of decades of opposition to foreign entanglements. Like many modern conservative critics of the UN, he feared that it would foster a world superstate. But he also believed that the major powers would use the UN as a tool to dominate smaller countries. He and
William Langer were the only two senators to vote against the
United Nations Charter. Not surprisingly, Shipstead and Langer were also among the seven senators who opposed full United States entry into the
United Nations. These votes may have cost him reelection a year later; a new breed of "internationalists", led by Governor
Edward John Thye and former
Governor Stassen, assumed leadership of the Minnesota state GOP, and in
1946, Shipstead lost the Republican primary to Thye. ==Later life and death==