Jerry Voorhis - Later Life

Later Life

After leaving office, Voorhis remained in his Alexandria, Virginia, house, completing his book, Confessions of a Congressman. In early 1947, he was offered the job of executive director of the Cooperative League of the USA. The Voorhis family relocated to Winnetka, Illinois, near the League's Chicago headquarters. The League, which included both consumer and producer cooperatives, had fallen on hard times in the postwar period. Under his leadership, the League's financial position gradually improved and some major cooperatives that had remained aloof from the League were persuaded to join. The League expanded its purview, founding the Group Health Association of America and the National Association of Housing Cooperatives.

Voorhis was urged to run again for Congress against Nixon in 1948 by Stephen Zetterberg, who, when Voorhis declined (in part due to health reasons), himself ran in the Democratic primary. Nixon, facing no opposition in the Republican primary, entered and won the Democratic poll, eliminating Zetterberg from the race and ensuring his re-election.

In 1954, the former congressman led the U.S. delegation to the International Cooperative Association congress in Paris, successfully opposing Soviet plans to give greater representation to Eastern European countries, which was seen as a means of eventual communist control of the organization. Voorhis occasionally testified before Congressional committees, usually in opposition to bills which would tax cooperatives. He shut down the League's moribund New York office and opened an office in Los Angeles. Voorhis encouraged the forming of cooperatives in Latin America and in 1963, the first hemisphere-wide conference of cooperatives took place in Montevideo, Uruguay. Stanley Dreyer, Voorhis's eventual successor as executive director, was put in charge of these international operations. In January 1967, Voorhis retired from the League.

Five days after Nixon's defeat in the 1962 California gubernatorial election, Voorhis appeared on TV as a Nixon detractor, with Murray Chotiner and Republican Michigan Congressman Gerald Ford defending the former vice-president on Howard K. Smith's ABC News and Comment program, "The Political Obituary of Richard M. Nixon". Voorhis complained about the way Nixon had conducted himself in the 1946 race. but was overshadowed by fellow detractor and Nixon nemesis Alger Hiss. Hiss's participation led to such an uproar that sponsors pulled back from underwriting the program, and News and Comment left the air in the spring of 1963.

Having spent 23 years in Winnetka, Voorhis moved back with his wife to the old 12th district to an apartment in Claremont. After almost a quarter century of silence on his defeat by Nixon, he wrote The Strange Case of Richard Milhous Nixon, a book in which he stated that Nixon was "quite a ruthless opponent" whose "one cardinal and unbreakable rule of conduct" was "to win, whatever it takes to do it". "I did not expect my loyalty to America's constitutional government to be attacked," he wrote.

As the Nixon presidency slowly collapsed, Voorhis spoke out more frequently. In 1972, he said, "Sour grapes to criticize the man who beat me, but I just wouldn't be human if I said I liked spending the second half of my life as 'the man who Nixon beat'". After Nixon resigned as President, Voorhis, noted, "Here is the philosophy of doing-anything-to-win receiving its just and proper reward." Voorhis, believing he had been labeled a subversive by Nixon, "took some satisfaction" in stating that Nixon himself had been the subversive, seeking, according to Voorhis, to impose "a virtual dictatorship" on the country.

In 1972, Voorhis and his wife entered a retirement home in Claremont. Nonetheless, he continued to work on a number of committees and advisory boards. His activities ranged from the California Commission on Aging (appointed by Governor Jerry Brown) to working as a teacher's aide to Tom Hayden's Campaign for Economic Democracy. Voorhis died at the retirement home from emphysema on September 11, 1984. In addition to his widow, he left two sons and a daughter. Fellow Nixon opponent and former California governor Pat Brown eulogized him, saying, "He was a great man. Not many like him these days." Voorhis is buried in Mountain View Cemetery in Altadena, California. His papers are held by the Claremont Colleges' Honnold-Mudd Library Special Collections.

An elementary school in El Monte, California, is named for the former congressman. Cal Poly Pomona considers Voorhis one of its founders and has named a park and an ecological reserve for him.