Pat McCarran — the good and bad

By Ed Koch

Tuesday, Sept. 28, 2004 | 9:39 a.m.

Thirty-six million people pass through McCarran International Airport each year, but few of them know who it is named for or why.

In the U.S. Capitol, a 7-foot-tall bronze statue of Patrick Anthony McCarran in flowing judicial robes stands above the inscription: "Lawyer, Judge, Senator. A true American from Nevada."

In reality, the senator from Nevada, who served from 1932 to 1954, stood slightly under 6 feet.

To some, the man for whom Southern Nevada's busy international airport was named indeed was a giant. To others, he was a man whose faults -- particularly his vindictiveness and his obsessive pursuit of alleged communists -- overshadowed the rest of his life's work and in the end diminished his stature in history.

Longtime Las Vegas attorney Ralph Denton remembers McCarran as a man who helped him and many other Nevada youths get law degrees and then followed their careers.

"Nevada was one of the few states that did not have a law school, and Pat McCarran took a lot of Nevada kids to Washington, and got them patronage jobs so they could go to law school," Denton said. "Pat McCarran took a real personal interest in kids from Nevada.

"Pat McCarran loved Nevada, there is no question about that. He became a great lawyer and a great judge. And he was diligent in trying to improve his lot in life. He was terribly ambitious. He was ego-driven."

A native Nevadan born of illiterate Irish immigrants, McCarran tended to the family's sheep as a boy. He went on to become a defense attorney and Nevada Supreme Court justice. In 1932 he became a U.S. senator as a Democrat riding the coattails of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's landslide victory.

During McCarran's 22 years in the Senate, Nevada's population grew from 90,000 to 160,000, and McCarran became one of the most influential lawmakers in America.

McCarran's good deeds on behalf of Nevada included spearheading efforts that brought the Basic Magnesium plant to Henderson and turning the World War II Army gunnery school into Nellis Air Force Base. He championed gaming at a time when many wanted it outlawed.

"It's easier to admire the young McCarran," said Michael J. Ybarra, author of a new book, "Washington Gone Crazy: Senator Pat McCarran and the Great American Communist Hunt."

"He grew up relatively poor. He taught himself the law. He knew what hard work was. As a lawyer, he represented people who did not have the power to defend themselves. In his early career he was a fighter for the underdog. At the end of his career he pretty much was kicking the underdog."

Ybarra also said McCarran, who had four daughters and a son, all now deceased, "loved his country. But that did not excuse the manifest harm he caused it. His eminent virtues at the end of his life were few."

Michael Green, professor of history at the Community College of Southern Nevada and a leading expert on McCarran, said McCarran should be remembered more for what he did to shape Nevada, including protecting the gaming industry and bringing many federal projects to the state.

"We still feel his influence today," Green said. "However, except for his name on the airport, he is pretty much forgotten, which tends to happen to many historical figures as time passes.

"Pat McCarran deserves to be remembered for the good and for the ill."

University of Nevada, Reno history professor emeritus Jerome Edwards said McCarran did not grasp how his state was changing and the importance of the emergence of Las Vegas.

"Pat McCarran lost the resiliency of spirit in his last years," Edwards said. "If only he had retired in 1950, his historical reputation would be much better."

Nowhere was that more evident than in the 1952 Senate race in which McCarran backed Republican incumbent Sen. G.W. "Molly" Malone after his hand-picked Democratic candidate, Alan Bible, lost in the primary to political newcomer Thomas Mechling.

Although Malone beat Mechling by 2,722 votes in a state where Democrats had twice as many registered voters as Republicans, McCarran paid a dear price for his support of the GOP efforts.

Republican Dwight Eisenhower swept into the presidency, the Republicans took control of both houses of Congress and McCarran lost his chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Had Mechling defeated Malone, the Democrats would have kept control of the Senate by one seat and McCarran would have remained chairman.

That irony prompted Ybarra in his book to sum up McCarran's late political life with a quote from the Bible's Book of Judges:

"And Samson said, let me die with the Philistines. And he bowed himself with all his might; and the house fell upon the lords, and upon all the people therein. So the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life."