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Created page with "{{Infobox officeholder |name=Earle Chester Clements |image=Earle Clements of KY.jpg |office=United States Senate Majority Whip |leader=Lyndon B. Johnson |term_start=Ja..."
{{Infobox officeholder
|name=Earle Chester Clements
|image=Earle Clements of KY.jpg
|office=[[United States Senate]] Majority Whip
|leader=[[Lyndon B. Johnson]]
|term_start=January 3, 1955
|term_end=January 3, 1957
|preceded=[[Leverett Saltonstall]] ([[Massachusetts]])
|succeeded=[[Mike Mansfield]] ([[Montana]])
|office2=U.S. Senator for [[Kentucky]]
|term_start2=November 27, 1950
|term_end2=January 3, 1957
|preceded2=Garrett Lee Withers
|succeeded2=[[Thruston B. Morton|Thruston Ballard Morton, Sr.]]
|office3=47th [[Governor]] of Kentucky
|lieutenant3=Lawrence Wetherby
|term_start3=December 9, 1947
|term_end3=November 27, 1950
|preceded2=[[Simeon Willis]]
|succeeded3=Lawrence Wetherby
|office 4=[[U.S. Representative]] for Kentucky's 2nd congressional district
|term_start4=January 3, 1945
|term_end4=December 1947
|preceded4=Beverly M. Vincent
|succeeded4=John A. Whitaker
|office5=Kentucky State Senator for<br> Henderson, Union, and Webster counties
|term_start=1941
|term_end=1944
|birth_date=October 22, 1896
|birth_place=Morganfield, Union County<br>Kentucky
|death_date=March 12, 1985<br> (aged 88)
|death_place=Morganfield, Kentucky
|resting_place=Odd Fellows Cemetery No. 37 in Morganfield
|party=[[Democratic Party|Democrat]]
|spouse=Sara Blue Clements (married 1927-1976, her death)<br>
'''Daughter''':<br>
Elizabeth "Bess" Hughes Clements Abell<br>
(Social secretary to [[Lady Bird Johnson]] and [[Walter Mondale]])
|alma_mater=[[University of Kentucky]]<br> (Bachelor of Science)
|branch=[[United States Army]]
|serviceyears=1917–1919
|rank=[[Captain]]
|battles=[[World War I]]
}}
'''Earle Chester Clements''' (October 22, 1896 – March 12, 1985) was a [[Kentucky]] [[farmer]] and [[politician]] who served in the middle 20th century in both houses of the [[United States Congress]]. He was also the 47th [[Governor]] of his state from 1947 to 1950.<ref name=findagrave>Earle Chester Clements (1896-1985) - Find A Grave Memorial, accessed November 18, 2021.</ref> For three decades, he led a faction of his state's [[Democratic Party]] that stood in opposition to his boyhood friend, [[A. B. "Happy" Chandler]], a two-time governor, U.S. Senator, and baseball commissioner.
==Background==
Clements was born in the small town of Morganfield in Union County in southwestern Kentucky.<ref name=congbio>"Earle C. Clements" in ''Biographical Directory''</ref> He was the youngest of two sons and four daughters born to Aaron Waller Clements (1853-1925) and the former Sallie Ann Tuley (1860-1934).<ref name=findagrave/> After he graduated from Morganfield High School in 1915,<ref name=congbio />he enrolled in the College of Agriculture at the [[University of Kentucky]] in [[Lexington, Kentucky|Lexington]], at which he played [[football]] in 1915 and 1916 for the popular Kentucky Wildcats.<ref name=powell100 />
Clements' studies were interrupted by the outbreak of [[World War I]].<ref name=harrison206>Harrison in ''The Kentucky Encyclopedia,'' p. 206.</ref> In 1917, he enlisted as a private in Company M of the Kentucky National Guard.<ref name=jillson377>Jillson, p. 377.</ref> The soldiers in his company were dispatched to Camp Taylor near [[Louisville]] where he was mustered into the infantry of the [[United States Army]].<ref name=jillson377/> Clements then entered the office training school at Fort [[Benjamin Harrison]] near [[Indianapolis]], [[Indiana]],<ref name=jillson377/> from which he graduated with the rank of first lieutenant. He remained within the country as a professor of military science.<ref name=kygovs185/><ref name=jillson377/> He reached the rank of [[Captain]] prior to his discharge from the Army in 1919.<ref name=jillson377/>
After the war, Clements worked for two years in the burgeoning [[petroleum]] fields of East [[Texas]]. His father was a county judge and [[sheriff]] in Union County.<ref name=kygovs185 />When the senior Clements' health began to fail, Clements returned to Kentucky to help with the farm and served as his deputy sheriff.<ref name=kygovs185 /> On January 18, 1927, Clements married the former Sara M. Blue (1894-1976).<ref name=findagrave/> Their only child, Elizabeth "Bess" Hughes Clements Abel (1933-2020), became the social secretary to First Lady [[Lady Bird Johnson]] and later U.S. Senator [[Walter Mondale]], who lost the 1984 presidential election to [[Ronald Reagan]].<ref name=kygovs190>Syvertsen, ''Kentucky's Governors,'' p. 190.</ref>
==Political career==
Clements began his political career in Union County in southwestern Kentucky. In 1935, he served as the chairman of the gubernatorial campaign of Thomas Stockdale Rhea, Sr. (1871-1946), of Logan County. In taking this role, Clements turned down an offer from Happy Chandler to chair Chandler's own 1935 campaign for governor. As a result, a rift developed between Clements and Chandler. Clements served in the Kentucky State Senate from 1941 to 1944, by which time he had been selected as Democratic floor leader of the body. He campaigned for a larger budget than that proposed by [[Republican Party|Republican]] Governor [[Simeon Willis]]. This stand against Willis increased Clements' popularity within the Democratic Party. He went on to serve two terms in the [[United States House of Representatives]] from 1945 to 1947.
Clements was elected to the Kentucky Senate in 1941 for Henderson, Webster, and Union counties.<ref name=powell100 /> By 1944, he had risen to the post of majority leader of the state Senate and played a central role in writing the state budget that year.<ref name=harrison206/> He then began the first of his two terms as a U.S. Representative.
In December 1947, Clements left Congress to succeed Governor Willis. He defeated Chandler's preferred candidate, Harry Lee Waterfield (1911-1988), in the Democratic [[primary]]. During the campaign, Waterfield proposed a tax on parimutuel betting which Clements at the time opposed.<ref name=klotter330 /> Waterfield also favored the development of electric power generation through public utilities. Clements, however, supported private development.<ref name=klotter331>Klotter, p. 331.</ref>
In the 1947 general election, Clements faced Republican state Attorney General Eldon Steven Dummit (1896-1973).<ref name=harrison206/> While Clements managed to keep the Democrats united following the primary, Dummit had fractured the minority Republicans by attacking the administration of sitting Republican Governor Simeon Willis. Clements defeated Dummit by 100,000 votes, 387,795 to 287,756.<ref name=harrison206/> He resigned his seat in the U.S. House to become governor.<ref name=congbio/>
Governor Clements raised taxes to fund the state park system and construct and maintain roads. He also achieved advancements in education. In 1950, Clements was elected to the United States Senate and therefore resigned the governorship to make the move back to [[Washington, D.C.]] He was elected by his colleagues as the Democratic Whip from 1955 to 1957, with service under Majority Leader and later [[U.S. President]] [[Lyndon B. Johnson]]. He was also the executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee from 1957 to 1959. In 1956, Clements was unseated after one term by the [[Moderate Republican]] [[Thruston B. Morton]] of [[Louisville]]. Chandler, then in his second nonconsecutive term as governor, offered no support to Clements' in his re-election bid, but Lyndon Johnson insisted that he resume the chairmanship of the reelection committee for the first two years that he was out of office.
In 1955, Clements supported Bertram Thomas "Bert" Combs (1911-1991) for governor against Chandler and did so again in 1959 against Harry Lee Waterfield. Combs defeated Waterfield. In 1961, Clements and Combs split over the state's leasing of a fleet of dump trucks from a Louisville dealership. When Combs canceled the deal, Clements resigned to work on the 1960 presidential campaign of his friend, Lyndon Johnson, who wound up with the vice presidency under [[John F. Kennedy]]. Following his split with Combs, Clements allied himself with the Chandler faction and opposed Combs' lieutenant governor, Wilson Watkins Wyatt (1905-1996), in his unsuccessful 1962 bid to unseat Senator Thruston Morton, who had coincidentally defeated Clements for his Senate seat in 1956. After the dispute with Combs, Clements' influence within the party declined. In the 1963 gubernatorial campaign, Clements could not even deliver his own county for Chandler, who unsuccessfully challenged his fellow Democrat, Edward Thompson "Ned" Breathitt (1924-2003), who went on to defeat narrowly his eventual successor as governor, Republican [[Louie B. Nunn]].
When [[Alben Barkley]] resigned his Senate seat to assume the office of vice president in January 1949, Clements appointed Garrett Lee Withers (1884-1953) to fill the vacancy.<ref name=powell100 /> Barkley's term was to expire in January 1951, and near the end of the term, Withers resigned to allow Clements to run at the same time in a [[special election]] to finish Withers' term and a full six-year term as well.<ref name=powell100 /> Clements won the 1950 Senate election over Republican Charles I. Dawson (1881-1969), 300,276 to 256,876 votes.<ref name=harrison206 />
==Legacy==
Clements died at his home in Morganfield at the age of eighty-eight. He and Mrs. Clements are interred at Odd Fellows Cemetery. He once said ''I never ran for anything with the idea that it was a steppingstone to a higher job. I always got accused of that, but those folks were wrong. You run for office because you want to represent all your people. And when you get that office, you devote all your time to it.'' Republican former Governor Louie Nunn said on Clements' passing: "He was a bare-knuckle politician. ...He and I were ''political adversaries and warm friends.''<ref>EARLE CLEMENTS OF KENTUCKY; WAS GOVERNOR AND A SENATOR - The New York Times (nytimes.com), accessed November 18, 2021.</ref>
==References==
{{reflist}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Clements, Earle}}
[[Category:Kentucky]]
[[Category:Farmers]]
[[Category:Politicians]]
[[Category:Former Governors]]
[[Category:Democratic Governors]]
[[Category:Kentucky Governors]]
[[Category:Democrats]]
[[Category:Civil Rights]]
[[Category:Former United States Representatives]]
[[Category:Former United States Senators]]
[[Category:State Senators]]
[[Category:World War I]]
|name=Earle Chester Clements
|image=Earle Clements of KY.jpg
|office=[[United States Senate]] Majority Whip
|leader=[[Lyndon B. Johnson]]
|term_start=January 3, 1955
|term_end=January 3, 1957
|preceded=[[Leverett Saltonstall]] ([[Massachusetts]])
|succeeded=[[Mike Mansfield]] ([[Montana]])
|office2=U.S. Senator for [[Kentucky]]
|term_start2=November 27, 1950
|term_end2=January 3, 1957
|preceded2=Garrett Lee Withers
|succeeded2=[[Thruston B. Morton|Thruston Ballard Morton, Sr.]]
|office3=47th [[Governor]] of Kentucky
|lieutenant3=Lawrence Wetherby
|term_start3=December 9, 1947
|term_end3=November 27, 1950
|preceded2=[[Simeon Willis]]
|succeeded3=Lawrence Wetherby
|office 4=[[U.S. Representative]] for Kentucky's 2nd congressional district
|term_start4=January 3, 1945
|term_end4=December 1947
|preceded4=Beverly M. Vincent
|succeeded4=John A. Whitaker
|office5=Kentucky State Senator for<br> Henderson, Union, and Webster counties
|term_start=1941
|term_end=1944
|birth_date=October 22, 1896
|birth_place=Morganfield, Union County<br>Kentucky
|death_date=March 12, 1985<br> (aged 88)
|death_place=Morganfield, Kentucky
|resting_place=Odd Fellows Cemetery No. 37 in Morganfield
|party=[[Democratic Party|Democrat]]
|spouse=Sara Blue Clements (married 1927-1976, her death)<br>
'''Daughter''':<br>
Elizabeth "Bess" Hughes Clements Abell<br>
(Social secretary to [[Lady Bird Johnson]] and [[Walter Mondale]])
|alma_mater=[[University of Kentucky]]<br> (Bachelor of Science)
|branch=[[United States Army]]
|serviceyears=1917–1919
|rank=[[Captain]]
|battles=[[World War I]]
}}
'''Earle Chester Clements''' (October 22, 1896 – March 12, 1985) was a [[Kentucky]] [[farmer]] and [[politician]] who served in the middle 20th century in both houses of the [[United States Congress]]. He was also the 47th [[Governor]] of his state from 1947 to 1950.<ref name=findagrave>Earle Chester Clements (1896-1985) - Find A Grave Memorial, accessed November 18, 2021.</ref> For three decades, he led a faction of his state's [[Democratic Party]] that stood in opposition to his boyhood friend, [[A. B. "Happy" Chandler]], a two-time governor, U.S. Senator, and baseball commissioner.
==Background==
Clements was born in the small town of Morganfield in Union County in southwestern Kentucky.<ref name=congbio>"Earle C. Clements" in ''Biographical Directory''</ref> He was the youngest of two sons and four daughters born to Aaron Waller Clements (1853-1925) and the former Sallie Ann Tuley (1860-1934).<ref name=findagrave/> After he graduated from Morganfield High School in 1915,<ref name=congbio />he enrolled in the College of Agriculture at the [[University of Kentucky]] in [[Lexington, Kentucky|Lexington]], at which he played [[football]] in 1915 and 1916 for the popular Kentucky Wildcats.<ref name=powell100 />
Clements' studies were interrupted by the outbreak of [[World War I]].<ref name=harrison206>Harrison in ''The Kentucky Encyclopedia,'' p. 206.</ref> In 1917, he enlisted as a private in Company M of the Kentucky National Guard.<ref name=jillson377>Jillson, p. 377.</ref> The soldiers in his company were dispatched to Camp Taylor near [[Louisville]] where he was mustered into the infantry of the [[United States Army]].<ref name=jillson377/> Clements then entered the office training school at Fort [[Benjamin Harrison]] near [[Indianapolis]], [[Indiana]],<ref name=jillson377/> from which he graduated with the rank of first lieutenant. He remained within the country as a professor of military science.<ref name=kygovs185/><ref name=jillson377/> He reached the rank of [[Captain]] prior to his discharge from the Army in 1919.<ref name=jillson377/>
After the war, Clements worked for two years in the burgeoning [[petroleum]] fields of East [[Texas]]. His father was a county judge and [[sheriff]] in Union County.<ref name=kygovs185 />When the senior Clements' health began to fail, Clements returned to Kentucky to help with the farm and served as his deputy sheriff.<ref name=kygovs185 /> On January 18, 1927, Clements married the former Sara M. Blue (1894-1976).<ref name=findagrave/> Their only child, Elizabeth "Bess" Hughes Clements Abel (1933-2020), became the social secretary to First Lady [[Lady Bird Johnson]] and later U.S. Senator [[Walter Mondale]], who lost the 1984 presidential election to [[Ronald Reagan]].<ref name=kygovs190>Syvertsen, ''Kentucky's Governors,'' p. 190.</ref>
==Political career==
Clements began his political career in Union County in southwestern Kentucky. In 1935, he served as the chairman of the gubernatorial campaign of Thomas Stockdale Rhea, Sr. (1871-1946), of Logan County. In taking this role, Clements turned down an offer from Happy Chandler to chair Chandler's own 1935 campaign for governor. As a result, a rift developed between Clements and Chandler. Clements served in the Kentucky State Senate from 1941 to 1944, by which time he had been selected as Democratic floor leader of the body. He campaigned for a larger budget than that proposed by [[Republican Party|Republican]] Governor [[Simeon Willis]]. This stand against Willis increased Clements' popularity within the Democratic Party. He went on to serve two terms in the [[United States House of Representatives]] from 1945 to 1947.
Clements was elected to the Kentucky Senate in 1941 for Henderson, Webster, and Union counties.<ref name=powell100 /> By 1944, he had risen to the post of majority leader of the state Senate and played a central role in writing the state budget that year.<ref name=harrison206/> He then began the first of his two terms as a U.S. Representative.
In December 1947, Clements left Congress to succeed Governor Willis. He defeated Chandler's preferred candidate, Harry Lee Waterfield (1911-1988), in the Democratic [[primary]]. During the campaign, Waterfield proposed a tax on parimutuel betting which Clements at the time opposed.<ref name=klotter330 /> Waterfield also favored the development of electric power generation through public utilities. Clements, however, supported private development.<ref name=klotter331>Klotter, p. 331.</ref>
In the 1947 general election, Clements faced Republican state Attorney General Eldon Steven Dummit (1896-1973).<ref name=harrison206/> While Clements managed to keep the Democrats united following the primary, Dummit had fractured the minority Republicans by attacking the administration of sitting Republican Governor Simeon Willis. Clements defeated Dummit by 100,000 votes, 387,795 to 287,756.<ref name=harrison206/> He resigned his seat in the U.S. House to become governor.<ref name=congbio/>
Governor Clements raised taxes to fund the state park system and construct and maintain roads. He also achieved advancements in education. In 1950, Clements was elected to the United States Senate and therefore resigned the governorship to make the move back to [[Washington, D.C.]] He was elected by his colleagues as the Democratic Whip from 1955 to 1957, with service under Majority Leader and later [[U.S. President]] [[Lyndon B. Johnson]]. He was also the executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee from 1957 to 1959. In 1956, Clements was unseated after one term by the [[Moderate Republican]] [[Thruston B. Morton]] of [[Louisville]]. Chandler, then in his second nonconsecutive term as governor, offered no support to Clements' in his re-election bid, but Lyndon Johnson insisted that he resume the chairmanship of the reelection committee for the first two years that he was out of office.
In 1955, Clements supported Bertram Thomas "Bert" Combs (1911-1991) for governor against Chandler and did so again in 1959 against Harry Lee Waterfield. Combs defeated Waterfield. In 1961, Clements and Combs split over the state's leasing of a fleet of dump trucks from a Louisville dealership. When Combs canceled the deal, Clements resigned to work on the 1960 presidential campaign of his friend, Lyndon Johnson, who wound up with the vice presidency under [[John F. Kennedy]]. Following his split with Combs, Clements allied himself with the Chandler faction and opposed Combs' lieutenant governor, Wilson Watkins Wyatt (1905-1996), in his unsuccessful 1962 bid to unseat Senator Thruston Morton, who had coincidentally defeated Clements for his Senate seat in 1956. After the dispute with Combs, Clements' influence within the party declined. In the 1963 gubernatorial campaign, Clements could not even deliver his own county for Chandler, who unsuccessfully challenged his fellow Democrat, Edward Thompson "Ned" Breathitt (1924-2003), who went on to defeat narrowly his eventual successor as governor, Republican [[Louie B. Nunn]].
When [[Alben Barkley]] resigned his Senate seat to assume the office of vice president in January 1949, Clements appointed Garrett Lee Withers (1884-1953) to fill the vacancy.<ref name=powell100 /> Barkley's term was to expire in January 1951, and near the end of the term, Withers resigned to allow Clements to run at the same time in a [[special election]] to finish Withers' term and a full six-year term as well.<ref name=powell100 /> Clements won the 1950 Senate election over Republican Charles I. Dawson (1881-1969), 300,276 to 256,876 votes.<ref name=harrison206 />
==Legacy==
Clements died at his home in Morganfield at the age of eighty-eight. He and Mrs. Clements are interred at Odd Fellows Cemetery. He once said ''I never ran for anything with the idea that it was a steppingstone to a higher job. I always got accused of that, but those folks were wrong. You run for office because you want to represent all your people. And when you get that office, you devote all your time to it.'' Republican former Governor Louie Nunn said on Clements' passing: "He was a bare-knuckle politician. ...He and I were ''political adversaries and warm friends.''<ref>EARLE CLEMENTS OF KENTUCKY; WAS GOVERNOR AND A SENATOR - The New York Times (nytimes.com), accessed November 18, 2021.</ref>
==References==
{{reflist}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Clements, Earle}}
[[Category:Kentucky]]
[[Category:Farmers]]
[[Category:Politicians]]
[[Category:Former Governors]]
[[Category:Democratic Governors]]
[[Category:Kentucky Governors]]
[[Category:Democrats]]
[[Category:Civil Rights]]
[[Category:Former United States Representatives]]
[[Category:Former United States Senators]]
[[Category:State Senators]]
[[Category:World War I]]