Thomas Harold Werdel (September 13, 1905 – September 30, 1966) was an American politician and lawyer who served as an assembly member and

Representative Representative may refer to: Politics * Representative democracy, type of democracy in which elected officials represent a group of people * House of Representatives, legislative body in various countries or sub-national entities * Legislator, som ...

from California as a member of the Republican Party. Werdel was staunchly conservative and supported Senator Robert Taft's 1952 presidential bid and later served as T. Coleman Andrews's vice presidential running mate on the State's Rights Party ticket.

Early life

Thomas Harold Werdel was born to Mary Laura Burke and Bernard Werdel in Emery, South Dakota on September 13, 1905. In 1912, Werdel moved with his parents to California and three years later in 1915, they settled in

Kern County, California Kern County is a county located in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 909,235. Its county seat is Bakersfield. Kern County comprises the Bakersfield, California, Metropolitan statistical area. The county s ...

. He attended the public schools and Kern County Union High School. He graduated from the

University of California at Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant uni ...

in 1930, and from the

UC Berkeley School of Law The University of California, Berkeley, School of Law (commonly known as Berkeley Law or UC Berkeley School of Law) is the law school of the University of California, Berkeley, a public research university in Berkeley, California. It is one of 1 ...

in 1936. He was

admitted to the bar An admission to practice law is acquired when a lawyer receives a license to practice law. In jurisdictions with two types of lawyer, as with barristers and solicitors, barristers must gain admission to the bar whereas for solicitors there are dist ...

in 1936, and started to practice law in Bakersfield, California.

Career

State Assembly

On June 24, 1942, he announced his candidacy for the 39th Assembly District and won both the Democratic and Republican nominations leading him to run unopposed in the general election. Shortly before the election he was selected as Kern County's delegate to the California Republican state convention. After taking office Werdel was appointed as chairman of the Judiciary Committee and also appointed as a member of the Conservation, Natural Resources and Planning, Roads and Highways, Government Efficiency and Economy, and Elections and Reapportionment committees. The first legislation he proposed in the state Assembly was a resolution requesting the federal government to grant funds to help in the construction of the Madera and Friant-Kern canals. Following the riot on Hollywood Black Friday in 1945, he served on a committee investigation into the Conference of Studio Unions and accused them of being guilty of conspiracy. Werdel submitted a resolution to condemn Attorney General Robert W. Kenny that accused him of being an associate of subversive communist groups, but was overwhelmingly rejected by a vote of 57 to 19 in the Assembly. In 1946, he announced that he would not seek reelection and that he would not run for the state Senate as he was quitting state politics. In 1947, after leaving office, he was appointed to the Citizens Advisory Committee on Legislative Constitutional Revision.

House of Representatives

In March 1948, he announced his intention to run for California's 10th Congressional District seat and filed to run in both the Democratic and Republican primaries where he easily won the Republican primary and narrowly won the Democratic primary. During the campaign Governor and Republican vice presidential nominee Earl Warren showed support for Werdel. In the general election he easily defeated the Progressive nominee; he was one of the four Republican gains that year, and would serve in the Eighty-first and Eighty-second Congresses from 1949 to 1953. In 1949, he accused union leaders, specifically from the

National Education Association The National Education Association (NEA) is the largest labor union in the United States. It represents public school teachers and other support personnel, faculty and staffers at colleges and universities, retired educators, and college stude ...

AFL AFL may refer to: Sports * American Football League (AFL), a name shared by several separate and unrelated professional American football leagues: ** American Football League (1926) (a.k.a. "AFL I"), first rival of the National Football Leagu ...

and CIO, of plotting to use an education aid bill created by Democrats to defeat Senator

Robert A. Taft Robert Alphonso Taft Sr. (September 8, 1889 – July 31, 1953) was an American politician, lawyer, and scion of the Republican Party's Taft family. Taft represented Ohio in the United States Senate, briefly served as Senate Majority Leade ...

in Ohio's 1950 Senate election. During the 1952 Republican primaries Werdel announced that he would run a slate of seventy delegates in the California primary to lead a pro-Taft delegation to the Republican National Convention rather than a pro-Warren one and he attacked Warren for supporting

socialized medicine Socialized medicine is a term used in the United States to describe and discuss systems of universal health care—medical and hospital care for all by means of government regulation of health care and subsidies derived from taxation. Because of ...

. However, Governor Earl Warren, a favorite son candidate, once again controlled California's votes.

Later life

He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1952 to the Eighty-third Congress after he was redistricted into the 14th Congressional District and was defeated by Harlan Hagen. He resumed the practice of law. In 1956, he was the running mate of T. Coleman Andrews as the State's Rights Party candidates; they won 107,929 votes (0.17%), doing best in Virginia, where they received 6.16% of the vote. During the

1960 It is also known as the "Year of Africa" because of major events—particularly the independence of seventeen African nations—that focused global attention on the continent and intensified feelings of Pan-Africanism. Events January * Ja ...

and

1964 Events January * January 1 – The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland is dissolved. * January 5 - In the first meeting between leaders of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches since the fifteenth century, Pope Paul VI and Patriarch ...

presidential elections he served as a campaign adviser to

Richard Nixon Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was ...

and

Barry Goldwater Barry Morris Goldwater (January 2, 1909 – May 29, 1998) was an American politician and United States Air Force officer who was a five-term U.S. Senator from Arizona (1953–1965, 1969–1987) and the Republican Party nominee for presiden ...

. On September 30, 1966, he died in Bakersfield, California and was survived by his wife and three sons. He was interred in Greenlawn Memorial Park.

Electoral history

References

External links

Join California - Thomas H. Werdel
{{DEFAULTSORT:Werdel, Thomas Harold 1905 births 1966 deaths 1956 United States vice-presidential candidates 20th-century American politicians California lawyers Candidates in the 1952 United States presidential election Republican Party members of the California State Assembly Old Right (United States) Politicians from Bakersfield, California People from Hanson County, South Dakota Republican Party members of the United States House of Representatives from California UC Berkeley School of Law alumni American anti-communists