This essay is the second in a four-part series on the life and career of Senator Patrick Anthony McCarran (D-Nev.)
Senator Patrick A. McCarran’s parents, Patrick, and Margaret, immigrated to the United States from Ireland. Like so many Irish, the elder Patrick McCarran joined the U.S. Army upon arrival. After several years of Army service, and as the Civil War casualty lists grew longer, the elder McCarran deserted his post during a deployment in Nevada.
He bought land on the Truckee River that became the core of a ranch where his wife gave birth to the future senator in 1876. Young Pat McCarran remained an only child and lived in isolation on that ranch. In the absence of a public school, his mother and neighbors provided lessons. His mother focused on religious instruction in the Catholic faith.
At the age of fifteen, his father sent him to high school in Reno. At first the other students made fun of McCarran’s clothes and country ways, but he earned their respect through excellence in athletics and public speaking. These traits carried over to his years at the University of Nevada, Reno. Young McCarran’s university studies ended when his father suffered an injury and young Pat McCarran returned to work the ranch.
Friends and family noted that the younger McCarran inherited two things from his father: First, a violent temper; and second, the family’s Northern Nevada ranch. From his mother, he received an unwavering belief that the Catholic faith was the key to the Kingdom of Heaven. Senator McCarran carried each of those three bequests with him for the rest of his life.
Progressive Pat
In 1902, the local Bryan-wing of the Democratic Party sought out Pat McCarran to run for state assembly, the young rancher won the seat. He ran on the progressive populist platform of silver currency and the eight-hour workday.
On August 14, 1903, McCarran married Harriet Martha "Birdie" Weeks The union four daughters and one son. Two daughters became nuns.
In 1904, McCarran sought a seat in the State Senate rather than seek reelection to the Assembly. He came in sixth out of fourteen candidates but garnered enough attention that William Jennings Bryan came to Reno to speak on his behalf. Pat McCarran never again fully departed from political life even when he spent years in the political wilderness.
In addition to campaigning, McCarran “read the law” in preparation for the state bar examination, which he passed in 1905. He moved off the family ranch and bought land of his own near Tonopah, an area rich in silver, gold, and ambitious men. The region produced political and economic leaders with names like Nixon, Pittman, Wingfield, Odie, Baker, and Thatcher that dominated Nevada politics for the first half of the 20th century.
In 1906, when McCarran received the Democratic nomination, for Nye County District Attorney, the Republicans did not bother running anyone against him.
Wingfield
Then, in the months before the election for District Attorney, McCarran accepted the case of a high-profile client. One can assume the client retained an attorney with less than one-year experience because other advocates were not willing to oppose the respondent party in the case.
May Wingfield filed for divorce against her husband. George Wingfield was the richest man in Nevada. Wingfield’s wealth originated on gambling tables and cattle ranges, then expanded to mining, hotels, and banking. At the turn of the 20th Century, Wingfield’s business network touched on most commercial sectors in Nevada – and that state’s politics.
The divorce case turned particularly nasty when May Wingfield charged her husband with “forcing her to have marital relations with him when he had syphilis,” according to McCarran’s biographer Edwards. George Wingfield would not easily forget that allegation delivered in open court, nor the attorney who let it happen. May’s allegation did not sway the judge, who denied her a divorce. The couple ended the union through an annulment, which denied May Wingfield’s claim to half of her husband’s wealth.
McCarran had lost a high-profile case and gained a high-energy enemy. To make the relationship between McCarran and Wingfield worse, the former vocally opposed the latter’s attempts to put down strikes with state police and federal troops. Wingfield used his political influence to deny the Democratic Party organization to McCarran for a quarter century.
Organizer
But McCarran plodded on without the party organization. The role of lone wolf seemed matched to the only child that dwelt within McCarran. His ambition led him to the tedious vocation of building a statewide organization of his own outside the party regulars. His every action and every relationship had political implications.
In his law practice McCarran preferred representing little guys against the powerful. This included defense work in criminal cases because he believed personal failure was part of human nature. In addition, people who were in trouble remembered lawyers who provided support in a time of need. This outlook reflected the tenets of McCarran’s traditional Catholic Church.
Pat McCarran was a polarizing figure in Nevada politics. His supporters built a deep personal devotion to him, and he rewarded them with favors and patronage. Party regulars poisoned his reputation by calling him a double-crosser – which was probably accurate.
One can speculate that the attacks from party regulars and the strength he felt from his own organization started to shape McCarran’s authoritarian ideas. He could not depend on cooperation. Strength was the only means to wield power, which was the ultimate purpose of politics for McCarran.
A Hurry
In 1912, McCarran used his growing organization to win a seat on the Nevada State Supreme Court. Still a progressive, his written opinions stress the rights of defendants and support for social legislation. McCarran’s victory on a statewide ballot fueled his self-confidence.
As a sitting Justice, McCarran could not run for other state offices; however, in 1916 a new political avenue opened for his ambitions. Nevada would implement direct election of US Senators for the first time, in response to the ratification of the 17th Amendment to the Constitution. McCarran challenged Senator Key Pittman and lost but managed to maintain his seat on the State Supreme Court.
Justice McCarran pondered another nomination challenge against an incumbent Democratic Senator Francis Newlands, who was up for his first contested election in 1920. (Newlands was an unreconstructed bigot who before moving to Nevada developed Chevy Chase developments in Maryland and the District of Columbia, as Whites-Only enclaves.)
On Christmas Eve 1917, Newlands unexpectedly died. Three weeks later, Democratic Governor Emmet D. Boyle appointed Charles B. Henderson to the seat. In November, Henderson won a special election to serve out the remainder of Newlands’ term.
McCarran lost his reelection to the State Supreme Court in 1918 and left office in January 1919. Some biographers opine that Justice McCarran spent so much time considering senate contests, that he lost his seat on the Supreme Court. From the perspective of a political activist and organizer, McCarran’s raw ambition alienated Democratic leaders, who ceased extending support to the “young man in a hurry.”
The Reno Cure
After leaving the State Supreme Court, McCarran revived his legal practice by welcoming divorce cases. Despite the loss in the Wingfield case, McCarran proved skillful in making each case comply with the state’s legal grounds for divorce.
In addition, McCarran lobbied state legislators to reduce the length of time necessary to establish residency for legal standing. In a case of strange bedfellows, Wingfield – who owned hotels that would benefit from people lingering in Nevada to establish residency -- also lobbied for the reduced residency period.
The Nevada State Constitution established a six-month residency requirement for state citizenship. This relatively short residency requirement aided the territories effort to claim enough citizens to achieve statehood. It also established a precedent for reducing residency requirements for other reasons.
Nevada reduced its residency requirement to file a divorce in the state to 6 weeks. In addition to hoteliers, this change pleased the state’s expanding Dude Ranch sector, which started offering 6 week-stay specials.
Readers may find it difficult to square McCarran’s devout Catholicism with the importance of divorce cases to his legal practice. But keep in mind that as a boy, he lived on that remote ranch close to his mother in the presence of a father with a bad temper.
In 1920, another aggrieved wife hired Patrick A. McCarran to manage her divorce case. The wife’s name was Mary Pickford, of Los Angeles, California. She wanted the divorce from her husband Owen Moore expedited, so she could marry her lover Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.
McCarran developed a legal strategy for Gladys Moore, Mary Pickford’s legal name at the time, which allowed her to successfully file for and receive a divorce after just three weeks. Word of McCarran’s residency loophole spread like wildfire.
The well-publicized case revived Reno’s standing as a “Divorce Colony” in popular culture. Nevada’s short statutory waiting periods made the “Reno Quickie Divorce” or “The Reno Cure” well known options to unhappy couples – especially in the randy world of California’s motion picture industry.
This practice brought McCarran into the attention of Judge George A. Bartlett, who oversaw as many as 20,000 divorces in the state. “Judgie” Bartlett proved immensely popular with the women who sought divorces in his court. His daughter Dorothy became a successful real estate agent who specialized in short-term leases for residential property.
Judge Bartlett formed the politically influential law firm of Bartlett and Vargas, which McCarran would maintain close connections to.
Wilderness
After he twice failed to win election to the US senate, McCarran wandered in the political wilderness. He continued to suffer from the ire of George Wingfield. By this time, McCarran baked into any of his political plans the understanding that the party regulars would oppose him. Furthermore, McCarran seemed predisposed to find something wrong with everything the Democratic Party establishment did.
The 1920 Democratic Presidential Campaign serves as an example of McCarran’s opposition to Ohio Governor James M. Cox’s nomination for president. McCarran wielded a fierce Irish hatred of the British, and he believed Cox’s support for the League of Nations primarily benefitted “John Bull.”
In 1924, the Democratic Party disappointed him when they rejected New York Governor Al Smith’s presidential bid. Although the Teapot Dome scandal still simmered, the Democrats took 103 ballots to cull through a list of fifty-eight candidates to arrive at Wall Street Lawyer John W. Davis as their presidential nominee. The campaign ended before it began, President Calvin Coolidge, a Republican with prior knowledge of the Teapot Dome corruption, walked back into the White House.
In 1927, a public corruption scandal that involved Wingfield and his chief lieutenants cleared the way for McCarran’s reentry into politics. In a civil suit, McCarran fueled rumors of conspiracy that allowed Wingfield to benefit from the misuse of public funds through a bank the mine owner controlled. In 1931, Wingfield agreed to repay the state $500,000, which led to his bankruptcy.
Wingfield’s temporary weakness allowed McCarran the freedom to seek and win the Democratic US Senate Nomination in 1932. McCarran, Democrat from Nevada won the senate seat on a ticket led by Franklin D. Roosevelt, Democrat from New York.
End of Part II