Alben W. Barkley - U.S. Senator

U.S. Senator

Because of Barkley's influence in crafting the Railway Labor Act, the Associated Railway Labor Organizations endorsed him to unseat Ernst even before his formal announcement of his candidacy on April 26, 1926. In the years since the 1923 gubernatorial contest, he had distanced himself somewhat from Haly and made an agreement with the Bourbon faction that he would not push a ban on parimutuel betting if elected. Consequently, he had no opposition from fellow Democrats in the primary. U.S. Representative (and later Chief Justice of the Supreme Court) Fred M. Vinson managed his general election campaign.

Coolidge supported Ernst, and his Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover came to the state to campaign on his behalf. Ernst had opposed a bonus for veterans of World War I, an unpopular position in Kentucky, and at 68 years old, his age worked against him. Barkley contrasted his impoverished upbringing with Ernst's affluent lifestyle as a corporate lawyer, and also attacked him for supporting Michigan Senator Truman Handy Newberry, who was forced to resign due to allegations of election fraud. Republican voters were angered that Ernst did not support his fellow Republican legislator, Kentucky Representative John W. Langley, when Langley was charged with illegally aiding a large bootlegging operation in Louisville. Ernst futilely tried to resurrect the issues of Barkley's support for the coal tax and opposition to parimutuel betting, but in the general election, Barkley prevailed by a vote of 287,997 to 266,657.

Upon taking his seat in the Senate, Barkley was assigned to numerous committees, including the Committee on the Library, and the committees on Finance and Banking and Currency; later, he was added to the Commerce Committee. In early 1928, Vice-President Charles G. Dawes selected Barkley as part of a special committee to investigate the campaign expenditures of the leading candidates in the upcoming presidential election. As a result of his service on this prestigious committee, he was considered for his party's vice-presidential nomination that year. Supporters touted his party loyalty and his appeal to rural, agricultural constituents and prohibitionists, which could help balance a ticket headed by likely presidential nominee Al Smith, an urban anti-prohibitionist.

Soon after the Kentucky delegation arrived at the 1928 Democratic National Convention, they approached Smith supporters about pairing Barkley and their candidate. The delegation was received cordially, but Smith's advisors thought placing candidates with such widely differing views on the same ticket would seem too contrived to the electorate. They did not tell Barkley of their decision, however, until after he had delivered a speech seconding Smith's nomination for president. Smith then announced Arkansas Senator Joseph T. Robinson as his preferred running mate. The persistent Kentuckians nominated Barkley in spite of Smith's stated preference, but after the overwhelming majority of delegates voted for Robinson, Barkley announced that Kentucky was changing its support in order to make the nomination unanimous. Barkley and his wife took a cross-country vacation, after the convention, returning to Kentucky in August 1928 to find that, despite his absence, Barkley had been chosen state chairman of Smith's campaign. He campaigned vehemently for Smith, but Republican nominee Herbert Hoover won the election in a landslide.

After the election, Barkley became the leader of a coalition of liberal Democrats and Republicans that opposed Hoover's use of tariffs to protect the prices of American goods. From mid-1929 through mid-1930, the debate over tariffs consumed much of Congress' time, and the issue took particular urgency following the Wall Street Crash of 1929. Barkley stridently opposed the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act, which he claimed would cost Americans both jobs and exports, but Congress approved it, and Hoover signed it on June 17, 1930. When Congress adjourned, Barkley embarked on a tour of Europe, accompanying Sherwood Eddy and fellow senators Burton K. Wheeler and Bronson M. Cutting to the Soviet Union in August 1930. He was impressed by the industrial development brought about by Joseph Stalin's First Five-Year Plan, but he did not advocate closer diplomatic ties with the Communist nation, as some of his congressional colleagues did.

Maintaining that that Hoover's response to the continuing depression and the severe drought in 1930 were inadequate, Barkley pointed out that the $45 million in loans to farmers that Hoover reluctantly approved amounted to less than half the losses sustained by farmers in Kentucky alone. Hoover's refusal to call a special congressional session to adopt further relief measures in early 1931 angered Barkley, but injuries sustained in an automobile accident in June 1931 limited his political activities for the remainder of the year.