John Sherman Cooper
| John Sherman Cooper | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| |||
| U.S. Senator from Kentucky From: November 7, 1956 – January 3, 1973 | |||
| Predecessor | Robert Humphreys | ||
| Successor | Walter Huddleston | ||
| U.S. Senator from Kentucky From: November 5, 1952 – January 3, 1955 | |||
| Predecessor | Thomas R. Underwood | ||
| Successor | Alben Barkley | ||
| U.S. Senator from Kentucky From: November 6, 1946 – January 3, 1949 | |||
| Predecessor | William A. Stanfill | ||
| Successor | Virgil Chapman | ||
| Kentucky House of Representatives, 41st District From: 1928 – 1930 | |||
| Predecessor | F. T. Nichols | ||
| Successor | William E. Randall | ||
| Information | |||
| Party | Republican | ||
| Spouse(s) | Evelyn Pfaff (1944 - 1947) Lorraine Shevlin (1955 - 1985) | ||
John Sherman Cooper (August 23, 1901 – February 21, 1991) was a U.S. ambassador and Moderate Republican U.S. Senator from Kentucky. He was elected to the U.S. Senate three times non-consecutively before serving two full terms and was considered a career politician and a particularly liberal Republican.[1]
Contents
Early life
Cooper was born in Somerset, Kentucky. He attended and graduated from Yale College in 1923, and then attended Harvard from 1923 to 1925.
U.S. Senate
First term
Cooper served as the circuit judge of Kentucky's 28th judicial district until 1946, when he resigned to run for the Senate seat vacated by A. B. "Happy" Chandler, Sr. During this period, he voted against his party so much so that colleague Robert A. Taft was prompted to ask if Cooper was a Republican or a Democrat.[2]
Second term
After the death of Virgil Chapman, Cooper faced the temporarily-appointed Thomas R. Underwood in a special election in 1952. Cooper won by a slim margin of just over 3%, and would soon lose his next election in 1954 to Alben W. Barkley.
Third & last terms
After Alben W. Barkley's death in 1956 while serving in the Senate, Eisenhower encouraged Cooper to run for the seat.[3] Cooper accepted, and won the election by 6.5% of the vote.
Warren Commission
Cooper was appointed by Lyndon B. Johnson to the Warren Commission after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Along with Senator Richard Russell Jr., and U. S. Representative Hale Boggs, Cooper dissented from the verdict of the Warren Commission that concluded on the single-bullet, lone-assassin theory.[1]
