Edwin W. Pauley - Politics

Politics

Pauley became involved with the Democratic Party as a fundraiser in 1930s, eventually becoming Treasurer of the Democratic National Committee. In 1940, he served as a member of the Interstate Oil and Compact Commission. He was a friend and confidante of U.S. Senator Harry S. Truman, and through Truman's influence, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Pauley as Petroleum Coordinator of Lend-Lease Supplies for the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom in 1941. He was director of the 1944 Democratic National Convention.

As president, Truman appointed him United States representative to the Allied Reparations Committee from 1945–1947. With the rank of ambassador, as well as industrial and commercial advisor to the Potsdam Conference, his chief task was to renegotiate the reparations agreements formulated at the Yalta Conference (many of which affected eventual C.I.A. director Allen Dulles's former clients). When Truman tried to appoint him Under Secretary of the Navy in 1946, Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes resigned in protest, claiming that while Pauley was Treasurer of the Democratic National Committee, he had suggested to Ickes that $300,000 ($3.96 million in 2012 dollars) in campaign funds could be raised if the Interior Department would drop its fight against the State of California for ownership of oil-rich offshore lands. Ickes's resignation scuttled the appointment, and Pauley worked behind the scenes thereafter.

By successive appointments from several California governors, Pauley served as a University of California Regent from 1940 to 1972. The Pauley Pavilion at the University of California, Los Angeles is named in the honor of his philanthropy and service as a Regent. A smaller dedication to Pauley exists at his alma mater, the University of California, Berkeley: the Pauley Ballroom, which can seat up to 1,000 people in the Martin Luther King, Jr. Student Union.

By the 1960s, Pauley came to support Ronald Reagan. He was the Board of Regents' harshest critic of student protests on UC campuses.