As a young lawyer he became part of the Tammany Hall Democratic machine in Manhattan. He was elected to
New York State Assembly in
1905 (New York Co., 30th D.),
1907 and
1908 (both New York Co., 22nd D.).
New York State Senate He was a member of the
New York State Senate (16th D.) from 1909 to 1918, sitting in the
132nd,
133rd,
134th,
135th,
136th,
137th,
138th,
139th,
140th and
141st New York State Legislatures. He was
President pro tempore of the New York State Senate from 1911 to 1914. Wagner became Acting
Lieutenant Governor of New York after the impeachment of Governor
William Sulzer, and the succession of Lieutenant Governor
Martin H. Glynn to the governorship. In 1914, while Wagner remained President pro tempore,
John F. Murtaugh was chosen Majority Leader of the State Senate. That was the only time before 2009 that the two offices were not held by the same person. After the Democrats lost their Senate majority, Wagner was Senate Minority Leader from January 1915 until he retired in 1918. In the aftermath of the horrible
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, he was Chairman of the State Factory Investigating Committee (1911–1915). His Vice Chairman was fellow Tammany Hall politician,
Al Smith. They held a series of widely publicized investigations around the state, interviewing 222 witnesses and taking 3500 pages of testimony. They started with the issue of fire safety and moved on to broader issues of the risks of injury in the factory environment. Their findings led to 38 new laws regulating labor in New York State and gave each of them a reputation as leading progressive reformers working on behalf of the working class. In the process, they changed Tammany's reputation from mere corruption to progressive endeavors to help workers. Wagner was a delegate to the
New York State Constitutional Conventions of 1915 and 1938 and a justice of the
New York Supreme Court from 1919 to 1926.
U.S. Senate into law, August 14, 1935. (Wagner second from left) Wagner was elected as a Democrat to the
United States Senate in
1926 and re-elected in
1932,
1938, and
1944. He resigned on June 28, 1949, due to ill health. He was unable to attend any sessions of the 80th or 81st Congress from 1947 to 1949 because of a heart ailment. Wagner was the Chairman of the
Committee on Patents in the
73rd Congress, of the
Committee on Public Lands and Surveys in the
73rd and
74th Congresses, and of the
Committee on Banking and Currency in the
75th through
79th Congresses. He was a delegate to the
United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference in
Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in 1944. Wagner, who had known the future President when they were in the New York state legislature together, was a member of
Franklin Roosevelt's
Brain Trust. He was very involved in labor issues, fought for legal protection and rights for workers, and was a leader in crafting the
New Deal. In April 1943, a confidential analysis by British scholar
Isaiah Berlin of the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee for the British
Foreign Office stated of Wagner: His most important legislative achievements include the
National Industrial Recovery Act in 1933 and the
Wagner–Steagall Housing Act of 1937. After the
Supreme Court ruled the National Industrial Recovery Act and the National Recovery Administration unconstitutional, Wagner helped pass the
National Labor Relations Act (also known as the Wagner Act) in 1935, a similar but much more expansive bill. The National Labor Relations Act, perhaps Wagner's greatest achievement, was a seminal event in the history of organized labor in the United States. It created the
National Labor Relations Board, which mediated disputes between unions and corporations, and greatly expanded the rights of workers by banning many "unfair labor practices" and guaranteeing all workers the right to form a union. He also introduced the
Railway Pension Law and cosponsored the Wagner–O'Day Act, the predecessor to the
Javits–Wagner–O'Day Act. Wagner was instrumental in writing the
Social Security Act, and originally introduced it in the United States Senate. The
Wagner–Hatfield amendment to the
Communications Act of 1934, aimed at turning over twenty-five percent of all radio channels to
non-profit radio broadcasters, did not pass. In 1939 he co-sponsored with Representative
Edith Nourse Rogers (R–MA) the
Wagner–Rogers Bill to admit 20,000 Jewish refugees under the age of 14 to the United States from
Nazi Germany, but the bill never passed. Wagner and
Edward P. Costigan sponsored a federal anti-lynching law in 1934. They tried to persuade President Roosevelt to support the bill but Roosevelt refused for fear of alienating Southern Democrats and losing their support for New Deal programs. There were 18 lynchings of blacks in the South in 1935, but after the threat of federal legislation, the number fell to eight in 1936 and to two in 1939. On June 28, 1949, Wagner resigned from the Senate because of ill health;
John Foster Dulles was appointed by Governor
Thomas E. Dewey on July 7, 1949, to fill the vacancy temporarily. ==Personal life and death==