Wisconsin magazine of history: Volume 49, number 3, spring, 1966

              JOE MUST GOx
The Movement to Recall Senator Joseph R. McCarthy
By David P. Thelen and Esther S. Thelen
f I ¦'HE IDEA of recalling an elected official •*- is both highly romantic and daringly democratic. Recall is the embodiment of truly representative government, implying an ultimate faith in the electorate, a trust in the wisdom of the common man, a conviction that each voter can and shall be heard. Through the threat of recall the voter can keep his elected representatives responsive to his wishes.
It was much too democratic a proposition for the Founding Fathers. Although some Americans denounced the corruption of their elected officials even before the ink was dry on the Constitution, they recoiled, for over a century, from writing recall amendments. Not until the progressive revolt against the flagrant political corruption of the late nine¬ teenth century did some states enact such legislation as the initiative, the referendum, the direct primary, woman suffrage—and the recall. The latter made its first appearance in Los Angeles, where reformers seeking to wrest control of their city from the domina¬ tion of the Southern Pacific Railroad wrote a recall amendment into the city charter in 1903. Oregon, which originated many de¬ vices for direct democracy, in 1908 became the first state to adopt a recall amendment to its constitution. Following Oregon's lead, eleven other Western and Midwestern states added recall provisions.'^
Although Wisconsin was famous for such innovations as the direct primary, it was the
last of the twelve states to write a recall amendment. After passage by the legislature, this provision was ratified by the state's voters in November, 1926, and became Section 12 of Article XIII of the state constitution. This section stated that if 25 per cent of the quali¬ fied voters in the previous gubernatorial elec¬ tion should sign a notarized petition of recall within a sixty-day period, the elected repre¬ sentative would have to stand for re-election. This election would take place between forty and forty-five days after the requisite number of signatures had been obtained and notarized. The only qualification was that the representa¬ tive be accorded one year in office before his constituents could initiate recall proceedings. Wisconsin made up for its tardy acceptance of recall by providing the most spectacular attempt to date to put it into practice. Al¬ though some judges and mayors had been re¬ called in the past, no state had ever recalled either a United States Representative or a United States Senator."   And when the Wis-
^ Harold U. Faulkner, The Quest for Social Justice (New York, 1931), 85-86; Thomas C. Cochran and Wayne Andrews (eds.), Concise Dictionary of Ameri¬ can History (New York, 1962 ed.), 802; George E. Mowry, The California Progressives (Chicago, 1963 ed.), 39.
" Wisconsin's recall amendment had been tested only once between 1926 and 1954. In 1932 voters of the 25th Senatorial District, comprising Lincoln and Marathon counties, secured enough signatures to force their Republican state senator. Otto Mueller, to face a recall election, which he won. Wisconsin Blue Book, 1933, 551; New York Times, March 20, 1954.
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