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Sam Yorty

Samuel William Yorty (1 October 1909-5 June 1998) was a member of the US House of Representatives (D-CA 14) from 3 January 1951 to 3 January 1953 (succeeding Helen Gahagan Douglas and preceding Harlan Hagen) and from CA-26 from 3 January 1953 to 3 January 1955 (preceding James Roosevelt), and the Democratic Mayor of Los Angeles from 1 July 1961 to 1 July 1973 (succeeding Norris Poulson and preceding Tom Bradley).

Biography[]

Samuel Yorty was born in Lincoln, Nebraska in 1909, and he worked for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and served in the State Assembly from 1937 to 1941. He advocated state ownership of public utilities, strong labor unions, and social liberalism, and he won the backing of the Communist Party USA for supporting Republican Spain during the Spanish Civil War. This association with communism damaged his early political career, and he lost in his 1940 bid for the US Senate as a liberal internationalist. He served in the US Air Force intelligence during World War II, after which he re-entered politics and served in the US House of Representatives from 1951 to 1955. His political views began to shift after his loss of the CPUSA's support, and he endorsed the Republican Richard Nixon for President in 1960. Running on a populist platform, he was elected Mayor of Los Angeles in 1960, serving from 1961 to 1973. He became a passionate anti-communist and an opponent of the Civil Rights movement and feminism, and he was nicknamed "Saigon Sam" by his liberal opponents for his visit to American troops fighting in the Vietnam War. In 1972, he launched a failed presidential bid after Richard Nixon refused to offer him a position in his administration, but he was easily defeated due to his previous race-baiting rhetoric. In 1980, he ran for the US Senate as a Republican, but he was again defeated. He practiced law for several years, and he died in Studio City in 1998.

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