Homer E. Capehart - Political Career

Political Career

Being the center-point for a Republican Party revolution in Indiana and the Midwest, mainly by sponsoring a huge "Cornfield-Conference" on one of his farms in 1938, Capehart was first elected to the United States Senate in 1944, narrowly defeating Henry Schricker, going on to win subsequent victories in 1950 and 1956 against token opposition. Throughout the 1950s, Capehart was constantly at odds with his Senate colleague William E. Jenner. Jenner was a staunch isolationist Republican who consistently opposed President Eisenhower's "modern-Republicanism." Capehart, although an isolationist himself during his first term in the Senate, became increasingly more internationalist during his later years in the Senate and this eventually led to the split with Jenner.

By 1959, Jenner had retired and Democrat Vance Hartke had taken his place. Capehart was extremely critical of President John Kennedy and his New Frontier programs such as Medicare and the Peace Corps. In 1962, Capehart attained his greatest popularity and what would ultimately become his lasting legacy as one of the key figures in the Cuban Missile Crisis by calling for a "crack-down on Cuba" and warning of a missile build-up on the Island. Kennedy, before receiving the famous spy-plane photos, thought Capehart was "inventing an issue." This was not the case and Capehart, although not appreciated at the time, has come to be seen in a more positive light because of his early and aggressive stances on Cuba.

Capehart was an expert on Latin-American affairs in the US Senate. During the 1962 election, Capehart was narrowly defeated by 34 year-old Birch Bayh and subsequently, he retired to his farming and business interests in Indiana, occasionally returning to Washington to provide both foreign policy and domestic-issue advice. Jaded by the Watergate affair, Capehart later in life became increasingly critical of President Richard Nixon.

During World War II, when first elected to the Senate, Capehart supported efforts to compromise with the Japanese on terms of surrender in the Summer of 1945 when Senate Minority Leader Wallace H. White, Jr. stated that the war might end sooner if President Truman would state specifically in the upper chamber just what unconditional surrender meant for the Japanese.

He was critical of the Truman administration and the military for their postwar policies in Germany, accusing Truman and General Dwight D. Eisenhower of a conspiracy to starve the remains of the German nation.

He is most remembered for backing, with Senator Kenneth Wherry, legislation for building military family housing in the post World War II era, when there were critical shortages of such housing. However, his support of public housing for veterans was part of his support of a strong defence, which he considered a legitimate use of public money. He opposed social welfare schemes to give away houses to the poor at public expense as unconstitutional. In 1955 the U.S. Senate initiated a groundbreaking bill which authorized the construction of 540,000 public housing units over four years. Capehart, believing the bill was socialistic in nature, and lacking enough support to kill it, introduced an amendment which would have reduced the authorization to 35,000 units. Although Capehart thought he had enough votes to pass his amendment (even going so far as to tell Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson on the morning of the vote, "this time I'm going to rub your nose in shit."), his amendment was defeated by last minute maneuvering engineered by Lyndon Johnson.

He was also an advocate of clean air legislation.

He died at age 82 at Saint Vincent Hospital in Indianapolis in 1979.

He is honored (along with Indiana Senator Sherman Minton) in the Minton-Capehart federal building by the Indiana World War Memorial Plaza in Indianapolis.