Estes Kefauver for President
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kefauver4prez.bsky.social
Estes Kefauver for President
@kefauver4prez.bsky.social
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US Senator (D-TN), 1949-1963. Two-time Presidential candidate (1952, 1956); 1956 VP candidate. The voice for you, not for the few. https://estes-kefauver.com/
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Sadly, even if Kefauver's amendment had passed, it wouldn't have fixed all that. But it represented a serious approach to governing that's all too rarely seen today.
Kefauver asked his witnesses whether a mass shooting at the Capitol would qualify as a "disaster," allowing governors the power to appoint House members to fill vacancies.

Seeing the words "mass shooting" in a Senate hearing transcript from the Fifties was... jarring.
I didn't have room for this anecdote in the post, but Kefauver held his hearing on the amendment in 1955, the year after a group of Puerto Rican nationalists opened fire in the Capitol, wounding five Representatives.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Un...
1954 United States Capitol shooting - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
She always wanted to paint a portrait of her husband, but as she said, "I could never get him to sit still long enough." In 1956, she finally painted him... from photographs.
For our Nancy Week finale, here's Nancy the artist in action, painting a picture of her daughters.

Nancy got into art as a child, and practiced it throughout her life. In Washington, she and a friend opened an art school, eventually drawing classes over 100.

#skystorians #history #polisky
The couple that eats watermelon together, stays together!

Nancy and Estes Kefauver share a giant slice of melon at a Chattanooga picnic celebrating the end of his Senate re-election primary campaign in 1954.

#skystorians #history #polisky #watermelon
No question about it. She was at least as game as he was for the campaign-trail life, and she wasn't even a candidate!
Some men get their wives fur coats. Kefauver went another way!

Here's Nancy looking smashing in her coonskin cap, supporting her husband and the Tennessee delegation at the 1952 Sugar Bowl, between Kefauver's Vols and the Maryland Terrapins. (Maryland won 28-13.)

#skystorians #history #polisky
Smash that bottle, Nancy!

Today's Nancy Week entry is a fun action shot, as she officially launches the USS Andrew Jackson, a Lafayette-class nuclear submarine, on September 15, 1962.

#skystorians #history #polisky #nancy
I'm declaring this Nancy Week! Sharing photos of our favorite (almost) First Lady.

This is a rare color photo of Nancy, signing autographs at a rally in California. It's probably my favorite photo of her... she looks so chic and cool. (And her red hair stands out!)

#skystorians #history #polisky
Nancy Kefauver was the ideal partner for Estes. She was a loving wife and mother, a brilliant household manager… but also a talented artist, a capable campaigner, and a certified charmer.

As soon as America got to meet her, it fell in love.
He said that the Stevenson-Sparkman ticket "hasn't got a chance" against Ike and said that the Democrats had better not try to use his son's popularity to "put this ticket over."

Now, that's a loyal dad!

#skystorians #history #polisky
When Dem party bosses denied Estes Kefauver the Presidential nomination at the 1952 convention, he reacted with grace, His dad... did not.

During a press conference in the wake of the nomination, 82-year-old Cooke Kefauver shouted that the Democrats could "take the nomination and to hell with it."
Ripped from the headlines! Oh, wait... it is the headlines!

An ad for a theater showing Kefauver's Senate hearings on organized crime. I love the fact that the "companion feature" is.... an actual movie. But who cares about that when you can watch a Senate hearing?!

#skystorians #history #polisky
This 1956 button is 100% accurate.

Adlai and Estes were indeed best for you. Integrity, maturity, experience, stability… check, check, check, check!

And “right” did indeed prevail… if by “right” you mean the right-of-center party. Ah, well.

#skystorians #history #polisky
Another Herblock cartoon, this one from 1962.

Sen. James Eastland of Mississippi was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and he colluded with drug industry executives to try to gut Kefauver's pharmaceutical reform bill.

#skystorians #history #polisky
You’d get to eat sirloin and ice cream with rum sauce, watch Harry Truman do his bit with the “I Like Ike” glasses in person, watch Nancy Kefauver resist the urge to jam her salad fork into Truman’s neck, ans dance to the musical stylings of Sidney and his orchestra.

A bargain at twice the price!
This is a program from the Stevenson-Kefauver campaign dinner at the Statler Hotel in DC in October 1956.

For a mere $100 a plate (a little under $1200 today), you’d not only get to see the “Seventeen Days to Victory” telecast I wrote about yesterday.

#skystorians #history #polisky