Guy Gillette

Born in Cherokee, Iowa, he attended public school and graduated from Drake University Law School in Des Moines in 1900.[1] He was admitted to the bar in 1900 and commenced practice in Cherokee. During the Spanish–American War, he served as a sergeant in the Fifty-second Iowa Regiment in the United States Army, but never saw combat.[2] He volunteered to fight alongside the Boers in the Second Boer War (1898–1902), but was turned down.[2]

Returning to Iowa, he engaged in agricultural pursuits and was the city attorney of Cherokee in 1906–1907. He became the prosecuting attorney of Cherokee County from 1907 to 1909 and a member of the Iowa State Senate from 1912 to 1916.

During the First World War, he served as a captain in the United States Army. He ran unsuccessfully for Iowa State Auditor in 1918, and returned to Cherokee to farm.[3]

In 1932, in the Roosevelt landslide, he was elected as a Democrat to represent Iowa's 9th congressional district, in heavily Republican northwest Iowa. He was re-elected in 1934, and served nearly all of that term. He resigned upon his election to the United States Senate on November 3, 1936, to serve out the remainder of the term of Senator Richard Louis Murphy, who had died in an auto accident. Nearly two years remained in Murphy's term, which would end January 3, 1939. Although he generally supported the New Deal, he opposed the new wage and hours bill, a new farm bill, and aspects of the Social Security system.[3]

In 1938 the Roosevelt administration targeted Gillette for replacement because of Gillette's vote against Roosevelt's plan to expand the Supreme Court and other positions.[4] He nevertheless defeated Roosevelt's choice for the Democratic nomination, Congressman Otha D. Wearin, and was narrowly elected to his first full Senate term. During that term, his conflicts with the Roosevelt administration expanded, on topics as diverse as the terms of the Neutrality Act,[5] Roosevelt's pursuit of third and fourth terms,[3] and choices for judgeships.[6]

After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (where, coincidentally, Gillette's brother Captain Claude Gillette managed the Navy yard), Gillette became "more of an internationalist".[3] Nevertheless, he used his chairmanship on a Senate subcommittee to aggressively challenge the Roosevelt administration's failure to prepare for the prospect of a Japanese seizure of the source of the nation's rubber imports by developing synthetic farm-based alternatives.[3] In April 1943 a confidential analysis by British scholar Isaiah Berlin of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for the Foreign Office succinctly characterized Gillette:

[He] resembles Van Nuys in that he is a typical Mid-Western Senator with a moderately steady Isolationist voting record, although he is not an articulate opponent of the Administration's policy. Unlike Van Nuys, he is a supporter of reciprocal trade pacts but shares his suspicion of the President. A simple, confused, but very honest Presbyterian of considerable character, he views the corn interest, which he represents, with an almost religious devotion. He leads the Senate Lobby interested in producing synthetic rubber out of corn, and coming from the Republican corn belt, is virtually a Republican in sentiment and conduct. He is not at all anti-British, but as isolationist as his general environment. His speeches in Congress take the form of thinking aloud. On foreign policy he is not a bigoted anti-Rooseveltite but is exceedingly uncertain.[7]

Like several others who had opposed Roosevelt's efforts to aid the United Kingdom before Pearl Harbor but faced wartime elections, Gillette lost his next race, in 1944, to Iowa Governor and Republican Bourke B. Hickenlooper.[8]

Within days of Gillette's first defeat, Roosevelt nominated him as the chairman of the three-member Surplus Property Board, prompting The Washington Post and a Life editorial to quip that the president was confusing the problem of surplus property with the problem of surplus politicians.[9] He took an early dislike to the job,[10] and complained that he was often outvoted by the two other members.[11] After resigning from the Surplus Board in May 1945, he became president of the American League for a Free Palestine, serving until the committee's work ended with the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948.

He made a political comeback in 1948, unseating former governor George A. Wilson from Iowa's other Senate seat. In 1951 his Subcommittee on Privileges and Elections conducted an investigation of Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy's campaign practices.[3] Gillette served until January 3, 1955, after his own bid for re-election was thwarted by U.S. Representative Thomas E. Martin of Iowa City. His defeat was considered an upset because it conflicted with polls.[12] For the last time until 2022, it left every Iowa seat in Congress in Republican hands.From 1951 onwards Senator Gillette was one of the first to call for a North Atlantic Assembly.[13]

Following his second defeat, Gillette initially remained on Capitol Hill, serving as counsel with the Senate Post Office and Civil Service Committee (from 1955 to 1956) and the Senate Judiciary Committee (from 1956 to 1961).

He retired and resided in Cherokee until his death at age 94 on March 3, 1973.

• "The Forgotten Consumer." Challenge, vol. 1, no. 2 (Nov. 1952), pp. 29–33. JSTOR 40717307.
• "The Senate in Foreign Relations." Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 289 (Sep. 1953), pp. 49–57. JSTOR 1028480.
• "Preparing For UN Charter Review." World Affairs, vol. 117, no. 3 (Fall 1954), pp. 67–69. JSTOR 20668925.
• "United Nations Charter Review." Proceedings of the American Society of International Law at Its Annual Meeting (1921-1969), vol. 48 (Apr. 22–24, 1954), pp. 191–211. JSTOR 25657319.

• Guy M. and Rose (Freeman) Gillette House in Cherokee, Iowa

• "Gillette, Guy (Mark)." In: Current Biography, 1946: Who's News and Why. New York: H.W. Wilson (1947), pp. 207–210. ISBN 978-0824201128.
• Harrington, Jerry. "Senator Guy Gillette Foils the Execution Committee." The Palimpsest 62 (Nov./Dec. 1981), pp. 170–80

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Guy Gillette.

• United States Congress. "Guy Gillette (id: G000205)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
• A film clip "Longines Chronoscope with Guy M. Gillette" is available for viewing at the Internet Archive