One City at a Time : Joe McCarthy’s Impact on State and National Politics

Abstract

The goal of this project is to look at both the personal life and the early political career of Senator Joe McCarthy to show how a man that has been so villainized by his country had a lasting impact on his state’s political culture. Most of the current research in this field has been focused on McCarthy’s time in the Senate during the height of the anti-Communist movement. This ignores the valuable portion of McCarthy’s political career, which was spent in Wisconsin, not just winning elections, but changing the way elections were won. To do this I examined newspapers, campaign speeches and personal correspondences regarding his 1946 run for the Senate with the Republican Party. Through the study of McCarthy’s elections and personal life, I conclude that he solidified the Republican Party base while also defeating a historically strong Progressive Party candidate in addition to changing the way elections are conducted in Wisconsin. To this day, I can still see the McCarthy style campaign in my state when the candidates show up at my door asking for my support.