Alan MacGregor Cranston (19 June 1914 – 31 December 2000) was an American
journalist and Democratic Party
politician and United States Senator from California.
Education
Cranston earned his high school diploma from Mountain
View High School. He attended Pomona College and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México before graduating from Stanford University in 1936.
Early career
Cranston was a correspondent for the International News Service for two years preceding World
War II. When an abridged English-language translation of Adolf Hitler's
Mein Kampf was released, sanitized to exclude some of Hitler's anti-semitism and militancy, Cranston published an unexpurgated and annotated translation which he believed
more accurately reflected the contents of the book. In 1939, Hitler's publisher sued him for copyright violation in the state of
Connecticut; a judge ruled in Hitler's favor and publication of the book was halted.
Before enlisting in the armed forces in 1944 as a private (he held the rank of
sergeant at his discharge), he worked in the Office of War Information. The following year he wrote a second book, The
Killing of the Peace, a synopsis of the failed bid to get the United States to join
the League of Nations immediately following World War
I.
Cranston, a supporter of world government, became president of the World Federalist Association in 1948[1]. He successfully pushed for his state's
legislature to pass the 1949 World Federalist California
Resolution, calling on Congress to amend the Constitution to allow
U.S. participation in a federal world government.
Public office
State Controller
A Democrat, Cranston was elected California State Controller in 1958 and reelected in 1962.
Senator
In 1968, he was elected to the first of what would prove to be four six-year terms United States Senate, defeating Republican Max Rafferty in
the general election after Rafferty had defeated the liberal Republican incumbent,
Thomas Kuchel, in that party's primary, which was so acrimonious that many of Kuchel's
supporters spitefully backed Cranston in the November election.
The general election itself was also marred by mudslinging, as a conservative writer, Frank Capell, authored a pamphlet suggesting that Cranston may
have had Communist leanings in his youth, and that during his stint at the Office of War
Information he helped falsely convince President Franklin D. Roosevelt that Nazi Germany and not the
Soviet Union had perpetrated the Katyń
massacre.
(Many of the same allegations were recycled in an article that ran in American Opinion
magazine in 1974 entitled Alan Cranston: The Shadow in the Senate. The article's title was a reference to Lamont Cranston, the name of the main character in the popular mid-century radio program The Shadow.)
Presidential candidate
Cranston was Democratic Whip, or Assistant Leader from 1977 to 1991.
Cranston was an unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic Presidential
nomination for the 1984 election. He became the first
announced candidate on February 1, 1983. Despite his age (69)
and appearance that seemed even older (Cranston dyed his little remaining white hair a color that most called orange[citation needed]), Cranston quickly became a
recognized candidate. His strong support for a nuclear freeze won him an intense following among anti-nuclear activists, support
that translated into campaign donations, committed staff (future Washington State Senator Maria
Cantwell moved to the state in 1983 to head up Cranston's caucus campaign effort there) and volunteers and "straw poll"
victories in Wisconsin, California, and Alabama. However, the entry of George McGovern into the race in September 1983 cut into
Cranston's support. He finished a weak fourth in Iowa in February 1984 and dropped out a week later after finishing seventh out
of eight candidates in New Hampshire, with only 2% of the vote. Cranston also faced a campaign debt of $2 million as he began
gearing up for an expensive and tough re-election fight in 1986 that he narrowly won.
Reprimand
He was reprimanded by the U.S. Senate Select Committee on
Ethics for "improper conduct" on November 20, 1991
after he accepted $1 million in campaign contributions from the Lincoln
Savings head, Charles Keating. Keating had wanted federal regulators to stop
"hounding" his savings and loan. The committee deemed Cranston's misconduct
the worst among the Keating Five. Cranston decided against running for a fifth term while
he battled prostate cancer.
Retirement and death
He dedicated his retirement to the global abolition of nuclear weapons, first through the Nuclear Weapon Elimination
Initiative of the State of the World Forum, and then as President of the Global Security Institute, which he founded in
1999.[1]
He lived in Los Altos, California from his retirement until his death.
See also
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
Global Security Institute
References
External links
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