Early Political Career
McKay won election to several local political offices as a Republican, becoming mayor of Salem, Oregon in 1932, and guided that city through fiscal troubles in the wake of the Great Depression. Steering his city into recovery, according to a contemporary journalist quoted by biographer Herbert S. Parmet, made McKay "a firm advocate of government as well as business preserving and guarding its financial foundation."
McKay was elected to the Oregon State Senate in 1934, serving four terms interrupted by service as a major in the army during World War II. In 1940, he was an alternate delegate to the Republican National Convention from Oregon.
Read more about this topic: Douglas McKay
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“He was at a starting point which makes many a man’s career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.”
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