Clinton Presba Anderson (October 23, 1895 – November 11, 1975) was an American politician who represented New Mexico in the United States Senate from 1949 until 1973. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served as United States Secretary of Agriculture from 1945 until 1948 and represented New Mexico's at-large congressional district from 1941 until 1945.
After his father broke his back in 1916, Anderson left the University of Michigan to go home to help to support his family. He worked for several months for a newspaper in Mitchell, South Dakota, until he became seriously ill with tuberculosis. He was not aware of his illness until he attempted to join the US military in 1917 upon America's entrance into World War I. Doctors gave him six months to live. One gave him the advice to check himself into the Methodist Sanitarium in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He promptly did so, and while recovering there, he occasionally wrote for the Albuquerque Herald.
In 1919, as soon as he was well enough to leave the sanitarium, he gained employment with the Albuquerque Morning Journal, now called the Albuquerque Journal, and he was sent to Santa Fe to cover the New Mexico Legislature. Very critical of how the Republican Party was running the state, he befriended some New Mexico Democratic legislators and gave them his ideas on bills before the legislature. Some of the ideas eventually became state law, and Anderson began a lifelong association with the Democratic Party.
His long career of public service began as executive secretary of the New Mexico Public Health Association in 1919. There, he raised money to fight tuberculosis, established county health programs, and was instrumental in founding the New Mexico Department of Health.
In the early 1920s, Anderson pursued private business affairs. In 1922, he started in the insurance business with the New Mexico Loan and Mortgage Company. Anderson was soon able to buy the business and change the name to the Clinton P. Anderson Agency, a successful and enduring enterprise.
Anderson returned to public life, becoming chairman of the New Mexico Democratic Party in 1928 and state treasurer of New Mexico in 1933. That was followed by appointments as director of the Bureau of Revenue, relief administrator for the State of New Mexico, Western States Field Coordinator for the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, State Director of the National Youth Administration, chairman of the New Mexico Unemployment Security Division, and managing director of the Coronado Cuarto Centennial Commission, among others. It was Anderson's style to take on a newly created position or an emergency situation, to organize it, and then to leave when he felt that all was running smoothly.
In 1940, a conflict among members of the state Democratic Party resulted in Congressman John J. Dempsey being disqualified from running for another term as New Mexico's only representative. Party members convinced Anderson to run for the seat, which he won by using his many business and political contacts throughout the state. For the next three decades, he divided his time between Albuquerque and Washington, D.C.
Anderson became known for his thorough investigative work, and during his three terms in the House of Representatives, he was assigned to several special committees, including the chairmanship of the Special Committee to Investigate Food Shortages in 1945. The committee argued for a streamlined food distribution system and emphasized long-range planning for increasing food production. His success in that assignment, along with their personal friendship, led to his appointment by President Harry S. Truman as United States secretary of agriculture.[2]
During his tenure, Anderson was one of the most outspoken proponents of the U.S. space program. He was instrumental in gaining funding for the program while chairing the Senate Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences from 1963 to 1973. As chairman of the committee during the most active period of space exploration and the most important time of the space race, Anderson held a key policymaking role in Washington, not to mention the purse strings for NASA.
Anderson sponsored the final wilderness bill, which passed the Senate by a vote of 73–12 on April 9, 1963, passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 373–1 on July 30, 1964, and it was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson on September 3, 1964. Richard McArdle, chief of the Forest Service from 1952 to 1962, remarked, "Without Clinton Anderson there would have been no Wilderness Law."[3] Anderson is also known for the Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act, and for forcing cancellation of the 1954 Dixon-Yates contract with the AEC for power from the TVA for the city of Memphis.
He also served as chairman of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy (84th and 86th Congresses), Joint Committee on Construction of Building for Smithsonian (84th-92nd), Joint Committee on Navaho-Hopi Indians (84th-92nd), Special Committee on Preservation of Senate Records (85th and 86th, Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs (87th and 88th), Special Committee on National Fuel Policy (87th).
