Hiram Johnson
Hiram Warren Johnson (September 2, 1866 – August 6, 1945) was an American attorney and politician who served as the 23rd governor of California from 1911 to 1917. Johnson achieved national prominence in the early 20th century. He was elected in 1916 as the United States Senator from California, where he was re-elected to five terms and served until his death in 1945.
For the member of the Michigan House of Representatives, see Hiram Johnson (Michigan politician).
Hiram Johnson
As a governor, Johnson was a leading American progressive. He ran for vice president on Theodore Roosevelt's Progressive ticket in the 1912 presidential election. As a US senator, Johnson became a leading liberal isolationist, among those "Irreconcilables" who opposed the Treaty of Versailles and rejected the League of Nations. Later, Johnson was also a vocal opponent of the United Nations Charter.
After having worked as a stenographer and reporter, Johnson embarked on a legal career. He began his practice in his hometown of Sacramento, California. After he moved to San Francisco, he worked as an assistant district attorney. Gaining statewide renown for his prosecutions of public corruption, Johnson won the 1910 California gubernatorial election with the backing of the Lincoln–Roosevelt League. He instituted several progressive reforms, establishing a railroad commission and introducing aspects of direct democracy, such as the power to recall state officials. Having joined with Roosevelt and other progressives to form the Progressive Party, Johnson won the party's 1912 vice-presidential nomination. In one of the best third-party performances in U.S. history, the ticket finished second nationally in the popular and electoral votes.
Johnson was elected to the US Senate in 1916, becoming a leader of the chamber's Progressive Republicans. He made his biggest mark in the Senate as an early voice for isolationism, opposing U.S. entry into World War I and U.S. participation in the League of Nations.
He unsuccessfully sought the Republican presidential nomination in 1920 and 1924. He supported Democratic nominee Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1932 presidential election. While Johnson supported many of Roosevelt's New Deal programs, by November 1936 he became violently hostile to Roosevelt as a potential dictator. Johnson was in increasingly poor health in his later years, but remained in the Senate until his death in 1945.
Early years[edit]
Hiram Johnson was born in Sacramento on September 2, 1866.[1] His father, Grove Lawrence Johnson, was an attorney and Republican U.S. Representative and a member of the California State Legislature whose career was marred by accusations of election fraud and graft.[2] His mother, Mabel Ann "Annie" Williamson De Montfredy, was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution based on her descent from Pierre Van Cortlandt and Philip Van Cortlandt.[3] Johnson had one brother and three sisters.[2]
Johnson attended the public schools of Sacramento and was 16 when he graduated from Sacramento High School in 1882 as the class valedictorian.[4] Too young to begin attending college, Johnson worked as a shorthand reporter and stenographer in his father's law office and attended Heald's Business College.[4][5] He studied law at the University of California, Berkeley from 1884 to 1886, where he was a member of the Chi Phi Fraternity.[4] After his admission to the bar in 1888, Johnson practiced in Sacramento with his brother Albert as the firm of Johnson & Johnson.[6] When the State Bar of California was organized in 1927, William H. Waste, the Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court, was given license number one [7] and Johnson received number two. Both his son, Hiram Jr. and grandson, Hiram III, were later members of the California State Bar.[8]
In addition to practicing law, Johnson was active in politics as a Republican, including supporting his father's campaigns.[9] In 1899, Johnson backed the mayoral campaign of George H. Clark.[9] Clark won, and when he took office in 1900, he named Johnson as city attorney.[9]
In 1902, Johnson moved to San Francisco, where he quickly developed a reputation as a fearless litigator, primarily as a criminal defense lawyer, while becoming became active in reform politics.[10] He attracted statewide attention in 1908 when he assisted District Attorney Francis J. Heney in the prosecution of Abe Ruef and Mayor Eugene Schmitz for graft.[10] After Heney was shot in the courtroom during an attempted assassination, Johnson took the lead for the prosecution and won the case.[11]
Legacy[edit]
During his first term gubernatorial inaugural address on January 3, 1911, Johnson declared that his first duty was "to eliminate every private interest from the government and to make the public service of the State responsive solely to the people." Committed to "arm the people to protect themselves" against such abuses, Johnson proposed amending the state Constitution with "the initiative, the referendum and the recall." All three of these progressive reforms were enacted during his governorship, forever guaranteeing Johnson's stature as the preeminent progressive reformer of California politics. His contribution as the driving force behind the direct democratic process for removal of elected officials was revisited in the media and by the general public during the successful 2003 California recall election of Democrat governor Gray Davis. Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger, the eventual winner, referred to Johnson's progressive legacy in his campaign speeches. Johnson's stature in fostering the California recall and ballot initiative direct democratic processes again surfaced in the media during the unsuccessful 2021 California recall election of Democrat governor Gavin Newsom.[26]
On August 25, 2009, Governor Schwarzenegger and his wife, Maria Shriver, announced that Johnson would be one of 13 inducted into the California Hall of Fame that year.
Johnson held the record as California's longest-serving United States Senator for over 75 years, until it was broken by Democrat Dianne Feinstein on March 28, 2021. He remains the longest serving Republican senator and the longest serving male senator from California.[27]
The Hiram Johnson papers, consisting primarily of hundreds of letters that Johnson wrote to his two sons over the course of decades, and that his son, Hiram Jr. donated in 1955, reside at the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley.[28]
Hiram Johnson High School in Sacramento, California is named in his honor.