Public and party offices held by William O. Douglas
1934-1937: Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission
1939-1944: Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court
Confirmed by the Senate, 1939, 62-4
1945: Democratic, Vice President of the United States
Democratic vice-presidential nomination, 1944
First ballot
Henry A. Wallace: 366
William O. Douglas: 276
John H. Bankhead II: 222
Alben W. Barkley: 90
Scott W. Lucas: 62
Henry J. Kaiser: 32
Scattered: 128
Third ballot (after shifts)
William O. Douglas: 773
John H. Bankhead II: 391
Scattered: 12
General election, 1944
Franklin D. Roosevelt / William O. Douglas (Democratic): 52.5%, 413 EV
Thomas E. Dewey / John W. Bricker (Republican) 46.7%, 118 EV
1945-1949: Democratic, President of the United States
Democratic presidential nomination, 1948
First ballot
William O. Douglas: 840
James F. Byrnes: 346
Scattered: 39
General election, 1948
Douglas MacArthur / Raymond E. Baldwin (Republican) 47.8%, 269 EV
William O. Douglas / Francis J. Myers (Democratic) 47.2%, 212 EV
Benjamin Laney / Strom Thurmond (States’ Rights Democratic) 3.1%, 50 EV
1953-1969: Democratic, United States Senator from Washington
Blanket primary, 1952
Harry P. Cain (Republican), William O. Douglas (Democratic), Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson (Democratic), Carl V. Holman (Republican)
General election, 1952
William O. Douglas (Democratic) def. Harry P. Cain (Republican), Thomas C. Rabbitt (Pacifist—Bring Them Home)
Blanket primary, 1958
William O. Douglas (Democratic), William B. Bantz (Republican)
General election, 1958
William O. Douglas (Democratic) def. William B. Bantz (Republican), Archie Idso (Independent)
Blanket primary, 1964
Lloyd J. Andrews (Republican), William O. Douglas (Democratic), Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson (Democratic)
General election, 1964
William O. Douglas (Democratic) def. Lloyd J. Andrews (Republican)
1969-1971: Independent, United States Senator from Washington
General election, 1970
Slade Gorton (Republican) def. William O. Douglas (Independent), Brock Adams (Democratic), Norman Solomon (Pacifist—Shut Down Hanford), Bill Massey (Socialist Unity)
1972-1977: Citizens Party, National Committee member
Washington special gubernatorial election, 1974
Dixy Lee Ray (Independent) def. William O. Douglas (Citizens), Jack Metcalf (Independent Republican)
Citizens Party presidential primary, 1976
First count
Robert Drinan: 25.7%
Percy Sutton: 14.5%
LaDonna Harris: 11.3%
William O. Douglas: 6.5%
Others: 42%
Fourteenth count
Robert Drinan: 36.5%
LaDonna Harris: 28.2%
Percy Sutton: 16.3%
David McReynolds: 9.7%
William O. Douglas: 9.3%, eliminated
1978-1981: Independent, Honorary Mayor of Goose Prairie, Washington
Named unopposed, 1978
Already in the public eye as a fierce judicial defender of the New Deal, William O. Douglas found himself pulled into electoral politics when eccentric Vice President Henry A. Wallace fell out of favor during the waning days of Franklin Roosevelt's health. To appease the party bosses, who felt Wallace too radical and unreliable to succeed to the presidency, Roosevelt agreed to replace him on the ticket - eventually settling on either Douglas, who shared Wallace's politics but not his predilections for mystical woo-woo and Stalin, or Missouri senator Harry Truman. The latter declined for fear that his ties to the crooked Pendergast machine and his then-impolitic practice of employing his wife as a congressional aide would drag down the ticket, so Douglas it was.
FDR's death shortly after inauguration left Douglas in charge of his legacy. He would later look back proudly upon his creation of a stable peace in Europe (with a neutral, disarmed Germany at its center), his free education and health care for veterans, his desegregation of the federal government, his watering down of the anti-labor Taft-Hartley Act, and his support for unions during the postwar strike wave, which placed the CIO in a strong bargaining position for years to come. However, one of his first acts as president - the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan - would dog him for the rest of his life. Biographers have interpreted the rest of his long and unusual career as an extended form of penance.
After losing the 1948 election narrowly to the bellicose anti-communist General MacArthur, who decried "appeasement" in Asia and "treachery" at home, Douglas briefly returned to private practice, notably defending alleged spy Alger Hiss in court. However, MacArthur's dramatic escalation of the conflict in China, culminating in the shockingly one-sided Three Day War with the Soviet Union in 1951, spurred him to return to politics: privately, he considered himself partially culpable for the nuclear carnage. He ran for the open Senate seat in Washington, having been informed that he could never again win the presidential nomination (he only survived in 1948 thanks to the Roosevelt family's grudging support; James had considered running against him, but left the Southerners to fire a "warning shot" instead). The new president's warrior aura had faded by the 1952 election with chaos succeeding Communism overseas and extended labor unrest at home, and Douglas defeated both "MacArthur Democrat" Scoop Jackson and incumbent Republican Harry Cain. He was the first former President to enter the legislature since Andrew Johnson and only the second after Taft to serve in all three branches of government.
As a Senator, Douglas was initially known as an ally of the CIO in their brutal jurisdictional battles with the AFL and the government. By the end of the 50s, however, he had become a prominent environmentalist and an internal critic of the new American hegemon. Breaking with the stultifying National Consensus on foreign policy, he criticized the paternalistic violence with which the USA, under the flimsy mask of the United Nations, governed the planet - no matter how many votes it cost him in the home of Boeing. In the late 1960s, with American troops fighting on three continents and a peace movement fermenting across the country, Douglas traveled to Yokohama to publicly apologize for the bombing and for his support of Japanese-American internment. (Several of his ex-wives observed to the papers that it was the first time he'd apologized for anything in his life.)
A few months later, with rumors swirling that President Kennedy was personally recruiting candidates to challenge him in the primaries, he left the Democratic Party. His loss to a conservative state senator several decades his junior ended his legislative career, although not for lack of trying. Douglas's most lasting achievements in Congress had been the great Wilderness Acts, and he was naturally one of the first defectors to the green, pacifist, and generally alt Citizens' Party when it formed in 1972 out of several smaller organizations. His candidacy in the 1974 gubernatorial special election was one of the party's highest profile efforts that year. It only became more so when the National Consensus parties united behind his opponent, the bluntly pro-development scientist Dixy Lee Ray. After a very dirty campaign, Ray would prevail, leaving Douglas and GOP dissident Jack Metcalf squabbling about who spoiled the other's chances.
By this point, Douglas's behavior was becoming erratic and his always privately acerbic personality was beginning to show through in public. His venomous personal attacks against Ray were considered by many in the Citizens' Party to have cost them a winnable election, and his salacious private life had begun to alienate the party's leading feminists. Members still appreciated his ideological input on the National Committee - his book
Trees Have Standing, arguing eloquently in favor of legal representation for ecosystems, was a bestseller - but began to ease him out of public roles. Against the advice of his friends, he entered the party's 1976 presidential primary, received a remarkably poor result given that he had the best name recognition of any candidate, and quit the Citizens' Party in disgust shortly after the general election.
Upon his retirement, Douglas was named mayor of the tiny hamlet of Goose Prairie, where he had kept a home for decades, by his fellow residents. As the town was unincorporated, the position was entirely honorary and carried no responsibilities. Nevertheless, it kept him busy for the last few years of his life as a spokesman for local issues - primarily around pollution and road safety. William O. Douglas died in 1981. Denied a state funeral by the Anderson administration, he was buried in a private ceremony in Yakima.
Douglas's "backwards career" and his eccentricities were mocked for years by the political right, but he has recently undergone rehabilitation by historians, especially after Barbara Ehrenreich's election in 2004 and the end of the National Consensus. Despite his acrimonious departure from the Citizens Party, his work continues to shape party policy:
Trees Have Standing directly inspired the Ecosystem Ombudsman Act of 2006, and a unit of the Wilderness System near Yakima was renamed in his honor later that year. The Western Division of the CIO has raised funds for a statue in his honor and an overhaul of his presidential library.