Orland K. Armstrong - Politics

Politics

Returning to Missouri in 1929, Orland Armstrong first entered politics the next year in an unsuccessful run for a seat in the state senate. Armstrong tried again in 1932 and, in a year dominated by Democratic landslides from the White House to the state house, became one of only ten Republicans elected to the Missouri House of Representatives. He would serve in the House until 1936 and then again from 1942 to 1944. Armstrong would continue his journalism career even while in the state legislature, some of his reporting would have national ramifications. A series of investigative articles in 1934 into political boss Tom Pendergast, gambling, and corruption in the Kansas City political machine. Pendergast at the time was the primary supporter of Harry S. Truman, who would become U.S. President in 1945. The articles would lead to Armstrong's appointment as a special investigator by Missouri governor Lloyd Stark in 1938, and his testimony the following year before a Jackson county grand jury looking into the Pendergast machine's activities.

With the advent of World War II, Armstrong expressed isolationist views and was among the earliest to join with his friend Charles Lindberg in the America First Committee. However, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor he wholeheartedly came out in support of the American war effort. Armstrong was elected to the Missouri House again in 1942 but chose not to seek reelection to the seat in 1944, instead running for Missouri Lieutenant Governor, an election which he lost. From 1944 until 1950 Orland Armstrong served in a variety of appointed governmental roles, including the U.S. Senate committee on the Post Office and civil service.

In 1950 Armstrong was elected to his only term in the U.S. Congress. Although just a freshman legislator, he still managed to create an international incident. While on a fact-finding trip to the Far East and Taiwan in 1951 Armstrong met with Nationalist Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek on a plan to bring Nationalist forces into the Korean War, a plan strongly opposed by President Truman's administration. Then during the Japanese Allied Peace Conference, Armstrong had a public and very heated exchange of words with the Soviet Union's chief delegate Andrei Gromyko over slave labor camps. Although Gromyko denied the charges, the exchange put a further chill in the Cold War and hampered U.S. diplomatic efforts to bring Soviet influence on North Korean and communist Chinese leadership in hopes of achieving a peace agreement in Korea.

Due to Congressional redistricting following the 1950 census, in 1952 Armstrong would have been forced to run against friend and fellow Republican Dewey Jackson Short. Rather than do so he did not seek re-election in 1952. Armstrong was selected by old friend John Foster Dulles to be Director of Publicity for the U.S. State Department, however before he could take the position it came to light he was under criminal investigation by the Internal Revenue Service. Eventually convicted on three counts of tax evasion, Armstrong paid a large sum in back taxes and penalties but avoided jail time. Orland Armstrong would mount two more unsuccessful campaigns for public office, in 1966 and 1982, failing in attempts to return to the Missouri House.