During
World War I, Bricker served as
first lieutenant and
chaplain in the
United States Army in 1917 and 1918. He was subsequently the
solicitor for
Grandview Heights, Ohio, from 1920 to 1928, assistant Attorney General of Ohio from 1923 to 1927, a member of the
Public Utilities Commission of Ohio from 1929 to 1932, and
Attorney General of Ohio from 1933 to 1937. He was elected governor for three two-year terms, serving from 1939 to 1945, each time winning with a greater margin of victory. Though most of his campaigning was in
New England, the
Midwest, and the
West, Bricker even visited the then-historically and -heavily Democratic state of
Texas, where in
Dallas, he called Franklin Roosevelt "a front for the
Hillman-
Browder Communist Party," referring to the respective leaders of the
Congress of Industrial Organizations and the
Communist Party of the United States of America. In 1946, Bricker was elected to the
United States Senate. He was re-elected in 1952, serving from January 3, 1947, to January 3, 1959. Governor Dewey was the Republican presidential nominee again in 1948, but Senator Bricker was not his running mate. Dewey chose instead
Governor Earl Warren of
California in the hope that the 1948 ticket would carry California, which the Dewey-Bricker ticket had failed to do. The Dewey-Warren ticket also lost California, and the absence of Bricker on the second ticket may have been a factor in Dewey's failure to win Bricker's home state of Ohio again. Bricker campaigned with Warren in 1944 in
Sacramento, where Bricker attacked the politics of war-time
rationing; then in
San Francisco Bricker charged that Roosevelt had packed the U.S. judiciary with
liberal jurists hostile to the
Constitution. Kaiser stated he was "trying to refresh" Bricker's memory. Kaiser had served on the police force as a protege of Bricker's predecessor in the Senate and had complained of losing substantial money on Columbus real estate. An investigation concluded that Kaiser may have fired blanks or else purposely missed Bricker. Bricker voted in favor of the
Civil Rights Act of 1957. In
1958, former U.S. representative
Stephen M. Young ran against Bricker. Bricker seemed invincible, but Young capitalized on widespread public opposition to the proposed "right to work" amendment to Ohio's constitution, which Bricker had endorsed. Few thought that Young, 69 at the time, could win; even members of his own party had doubts, particularly Ohio's other senator, Democrat
Frank J. Lausche. In an upset amid a national Democratic trend, Young defeated Bricker 52% to 48%. Bricker then retired from public life. ==Professional life and death==