George W. Norris - Political Career

Political Career

Norris relocated to the larger town of McCook in 1900, where he became active in local politics. In 1902, running as a Republican, he was elected to the House of Representatives for Nebraska's 5th congressional district. In that election, he was supported by the railroads; however, in 1906 he broke with them, supporting Theodore Roosevelt's plans to regulate rates for the benefit of shippers, such as the merchants who lived in his district. A prominent insurgent after 1908, he led the revolt against Speaker Joseph G. Cannon in 1910. By a vote of 191 to 156, the House created a new system in which seniority would automatically move members ahead, even against the wishes of the leadership.

In January 1911, he helped create The National Progressive Republican League and was its vice president. He originally supported Robert M. La Follette, Sr. for the 1912 nomination but then switched to Roosevelt. However, he refused to bolt the convention and join Roosevelt's Progressive Party. He instead ran for the Senate as a Republican. As a leading Progressive Republican, Norris supported the direct election of senators. He also promoted the conversion of all state legislatures to the unicameral system. This was implemented in 1934 only in the Nebraska Legislature; however, all other states have retained a two-house system.

Norris supported some of Wilson's programs but became a firm isolationist, fearing that bankers were manipulating the country into war. In the face of enormous pressure from the media and the administration, Norris was one of only six senators to vote against the declaration of war on Germany in 1917.

Looking at the war in Europe he said, "Many instances of cruelty and inhumanity can be found on both sides." Norris believed that the government wanted to take part in this war only because the wealthy had already aided British financially in the war. He told Congress that the only people who would benefit from the war were "munition manufacturers, stockbrokers, and bond dealers" and added that "war brings no prosperity to the great mass of common and patriotic citizens.... War brings prosperity to the stock gambler on Wall Street–to those who are already in possession of more wealth than can be realized or enjoyed."

He joined the "irreconcilables" who vehemently opposed and defeated the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations in 1919.

Seniority brought him the chairmanship of the Agriculture and Forestry and the Judiciary committees. Norris was a leader of the Farm Bloc, advocated the rights of labor, sponsored the ("Lame Duck") Twentieth Amendment to the United States Constitution, and proposed to abolish the Electoral College. He failed on these issues in the 1920s, but blocked Henry Ford's proposals to modernize the Tennessee Valley, insisting that it be a project the government should handle. Although a nominal Republican (which was essential to his seniority), he routinely attacked and voted against the Republican administrations of Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover. Norris supported Democrats Al Smith in 1928 and Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932. Republicans regulars called him one of the "sons of the wild jackass."

In 1932, along with Fiorello H. La Guardia, then a US Representative from New York, Norris secured passage of the Norris-La Guardia Act, which outlawed the practice of requiring prospective employees not to join a labor union as a condition of employment (the so-called yellow-dog contract) and greatly limited the use of court injunctions against strikes.

A staunch supporter of President Roosevelt's New Deal programs, Norris sponsored the Tennessee Valley Authority Act of 1933. In appreciation, the Norris Dam and Norris, Tennessee, a new planned city in Tennessee, were named after him. Norris was also the prime Senate mover behind the Rural Electrification Act, which brought electrical service to underserved and unserved rural areas across the United States. It is also a testament to Norris' belief in "public power" that there have been no privately owned electric utilities operating in Nebraska since the late 1940s.

Norris believed in the wisdom of the common people and in the progress of civilization. "To get good government and to retain it, it is necessary that a liberty-loving, educated, intelligent people should be ever watchful, to carefully guard and protect their rights and liberties," Norris said in a 1934 speech, "The Model Legislature." The people were capable of being the government, he said, affirming his populist/progressive credentials.

Norris left the Republicans in 1936 since seniority in the minority party was useless, and the Democrats offered him chairmanships. He was re-elected to the Senate as an Independent with some Democratic Party support in 1936. Norris won with 43.8% of the vote against Republican former congressman Robert G. Simmons (who came in second) and Democratic former congressman Terry Carpenter (who came in a distant third).

Norris opposed Roosevelt's Judiciary Reorganization Bill of 1937 to pack the Supreme Court and railed against corrupt patronage. In late 1937, when Norris saw the famous photograph "Bloody Saturday" (showing a burned Chinese baby crying in a bombed-out train station), he shifted his stance on isolationism and non-interventionism. Siding against Japanese violence in China, he called the Japanese "disgraceful, ignoble, barbarous, and cruel, even beyond the power of language to describe."

Unable to secure Democratic support in the state in 1942, he was defeated by Republican Kenneth S. Wherry.