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Prescott Bush

Prescott Bush (15 May 1895-8 October 1972) was the US Senator from Connecticut (R) from 4 November 1952 to 3 January 1963, succeeding William A. Purtell and preceding Abraham A. Ribicoff.

Biography[]

Prescott Bush was born in Columbus, Ohio on 15 May 1895, and he graduated from Yale University before serving in the US Army intelligence and field artillery during World War I. After the war, he became a businessman, working for an investment bank, a rubber company, and, later, the Yale Corporation. Bush and his close friend W. Averell Harriman co-founded the Union Banking Corporation, where they held money for Nazi leaders such as Fritz Thyssen during World War II; in 1942, the bank was raided by the US government.

Bush became involved with politics as a Rockefeller Republican; he was involved with the American Birth Control League, Planned Parenthood, and the United Negro College Fund before becoming a Republican Party activist. In 1950, he ran for a seat in the US Senate from Connecticut against William Benton, but his social liberal views led to him losing the election in the strongly-Catholic state. In 1952, he was elected to the Senate, and he supported the establishment of the Interstate Highway System, the Polaris submarine project, civil rights legislation, and the establishment of the Peace Corps. In 1954, he supported the censure of Senator Joseph McCarthy for McCarthy's accusations that his opponents were communists, communist dupes, or communist sympathizers. In 1960, he supported a Richard Nixon-Nelson Rockefeller presidential ticket, but he withdrew his support for Rockefeller after he remarried to his mistress. Bush retired from the Senate in 1963 and died in New York City in 1972 at the age of 77.

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