Senate Career
In 1920, Tyson made an unsuccessful effort to receive the vice presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention. In 1923, he purchased a newspaper, the Knoxville Sentinel, but upon his election to the U.S. Senate the following year, he sold the newspaper to Scripps-Howard. In 1926, Scripps-Howard merged the Sentinel with the Knoxville News to form the Knoxville News Sentinel.
In the early 1920s, the Democratic Party had grown frustrated with Senator John Knight Shields, who had opposed President Wilson's League of Nations, and had stalled a number of the Executive Branch's political appointments. Sensing Shields's vulnerability, Tyson ran against and defeated Shields in the Senate primary in 1924, and defeated Republican candidate, Hugh B. Lindsay, in the general election later that year. He was sworn in as a Senator on March 4, 1925.
Tyson's first major piece of legislation was the Tyson-Fitzgerald Act of 1925, which authorized federal compensation for disabled World War I officers. After President Calvin Coolidge vetoed the bill, Tyson rallied enough opposition in the Senate to override the president's veto. In 1926, Tyson sponsored legislation authorizing the creation of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
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