Hughes on the court — Confirmation vote fallout

This is the latest in an occasional series of posts about Charles Evans Hughes and the Supreme Court.

U.S. Sen. William Henry McMaster’s vote against confirmation of Charles Evans Hughes as Chief Justice of the United States may have contributed to the South Dakota Republican losing re-election in 1930.

The Associated Press on April 25, 1930 reported that the South Dakota Republican establishment was urging George Danforth, a lawyer, to challenge McMaster, a first-term Senator and former South Dakota governor, in a primary.

“His vote against confirming Charles Evans Hughes as chief justice of the United States started the search for an opponent,” stated the Associated Press report, published April 25, 1930 in the New Britain Daily Herald of Connecticut.

I was not able to discover whether the primary materialized, but McMaster was the nominee.

He lost in the general election to Democrat William J. Bulow in a race that was at the beginning of a trend in South Dakota Democratic victories.

McMaster, with 48.3 percent of the vote in a two-way race, received about 9,000 more votes in 1930 than in 1924, when he won a 7-way general election with 45.4 percent of the vote.

New Yorkers have another reason not to be a fan of McMaster.

The Senator was among those who urged President Calvin Coolidge to vacation for the summer in the Black Hills of South Dakota in 1927 instead of returning to the Adirondacks, the Evening Star of Washington, D.C. reported on June 5, 1927.

Click here to read the most recent previous post in the series.