Dewey Jackson Short - Politics

Politics

Short was elected as a Republican to the Seventy-first Congress (March 4, 1929-March 3, 1931) and was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1930 to the Seventy-second Congress. He resumed his former professional pursuits and was a delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1932. Short was an unsuccessful candidate in 1932 for nomination to the United States Senate but was elected to the Seventy-fourth Congress and the ten succeeding Congresses (January 3, 1935-January 3, 1957). At the 1940 Republican National Convention, he received 108 delegate votes for the party's vice presidential nomination and was the runner-up to the eventual nominee, Charles L. McNary.

Short served as chairman of the Committee on Armed Services in the Eighty-third Congress. On April 30, 1955 he was presented with an Honorary Ozark Hillbilly Medallion by the Springfield, Missouri Chamber of Commerce during ABC-TV's Ozark Jubilee.

Short was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1956 to the Eighty-fifth Congress. He was defeated by Charles H. Brown, the vote being 90,986 for Brown to 89,926 for Short. In 1945 he had served as a congressional delegate to inspect concentration camps in Germany. Short served as Assistant Secretary of the Army from March 15, 1957, to January 20, 1961 and was later President Emeritus of the National Rivers and Harbors Congress. Short died in Washington, D.C. on November 19, 1979 and was interred in Galena Cemetery, Galena, Missouri.

Richard Nixon cited Short as perhaps the finest orator he had ever seen in his book, In the Arena.