California State Assembly and U.S. Congress In 1938, he was elected to the
District 56 seat of the
California State Assembly. He won a congressional seat four years later. After losing the seat in the 1944 election, he returned to the
United States Congress following the 1946 elections, remaining there until his election as
mayor of Los Angeles. During his years as a congressman, Poulson helped lead California in its fight against
Arizona over
Colorado River water. At the time of his departure from Congress, he was the chairman of the
Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs.
Mayor of Los Angeles in 1956. Poulson's victory in the Los Angeles mayoral race came after a contentious battle in which his opponent, incumbent mayor
Fletcher Bowron, claimed that the
Los Angeles Times wanted to control city government and, by endorsing Poulson, would have a puppet in the mayor's office. Poulson, for his part, challenged Bowron's support for public housing, in particular a project in the area known as
Chavez Ravine in
Elysian Park Heights (the site on which
Dodger Stadium would later be built). With the support of the group Citizens Against Socialist Housing (CASH) and drawing on the
anti-communist atmosphere of the time, Poulson promised to end support for such "un-American" housing projects and to fire city employees who were communists or who refused to answer questions about their political activities. During his eight years as mayor, Los Angeles became the third largest city in the United States, with Poulson instrumental in leading the construction of
Los Angeles International Airport and expanding the
Los Angeles Harbor. Most notably, he led the drive to lure baseball's
Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles. This led to what became known as the
Battle of Chavez Ravine, which resulted in the removal of Hispanic residents from land on which Dodger Stadium was later constructed. He helped integrate the city's fire and police departments and initiated a garbage recycling program that proved to be a factor in his defeat in 1961. In 1958 and 1959, Paulson served as president of the
United States Conference of Mayors. Perhaps the most memorable image of his mayoral career came on September 21, 1959, when he addressed Soviet premier
Nikita Khrushchev during a public ceremony. The comments came after Khrushchev had constantly touted Soviet superiority during his tour of the city by Poulson. Citing Khrushchev's phrase, "
We will bury you," Poulson responded, "You shall not bury us and we shall not bury you. We tell you in the friendliest terms possible we are planning no funerals, yours or our own." Poulson received over 3,600 letters following the incident, many of them praising him for his comments.
Later career and death Following the defeat, Poulson briefly returned to accounting before retiring to
La Jolla in
San Diego in 1962. He died at a hospital in
Orange, California, in 1982, after a
colostomy operation. His grandson Norris Brandt is a nationally recognized expert on water policy. == Electoral history ==