Sam Yorty

Samuel William Yorty (October 1, 1909 – June 5, 1998) was an American politician, attorney, and radio host from Los Angeles, California. He served as a member of the United States House of Representatives and the California State Assembly, but he is most remembered for his turbulent three terms as the 37th Mayor of Los Angeles from 1961 to 1973. Although Yorty spent almost all of his political career as a Democrat, he became a Republican in 1973.

Sam Yorty was born and raised in Lincoln, Nebraska, the son of Frank Patrick and Johanna (Egan) Yorty. His paternal grandfather was Pennsylvania Dutch, while the rest of his ancestors were Irish, his mother being a native of Clonmel, Ireland. He began his political education as the son of a Democratic father in a Republican state, with a mother who also showed a strong interest in politics. The family moved to Southern California when Yorty completed high school. He retained his Midwestern inflection and was known for pronouncing the city's name as /lɒs ˈæŋɡəliːz/ los-ANG-gə-leez (with a hard "G").

Yorty enrolled at Southwestern University and later the University of California at Los Angeles, working for a time at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. He was admitted to the bar in 1939. He married Elizabeth Louise Hensel on December 1, 1938. They had one son, William Egan.

Elected as a Democrat to the California State Assembly in 1936, Yorty established himself as a politician with integrity, but watched his popularity plummet when he reported a bribery attempt on a pending bill. Yorty advocated state ownership of public utilities and strong labor unions, showing a liberal approach to politics. His support of the Republicans in Spain's civil war against General Francisco Franco and his fight against using the California Highway Patrol to end labor strikes helped earn him support of the local Communist Party United States of America organization. That support haunted Yorty in 1938, when he was branded a communist by Folsom Prison inmate Arthur Kent during testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Kent, who claimed to have been a local membership chairman of the Communist Party, proved to be untrustworthy and Yorty was vindicated. That episode, plus the refusal of the local Communist Party to endorse him for mayor of Los Angeles that year, began a shift of Yorty's political beliefs.

Losing a 1940 bid for U.S. Senator, when he ran unsuccessfully as a liberal internationalist against isolationist Republican and longtime incumbent Hiram Johnson, Yorty left politics during World War II to serve in the United States Army Air Corps in the Pacific Theater, attaining the rank of captain in the Intelligence Branch. After his discharge, he was reelected to his Assembly seat in a special election. He was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1950 and was reelected in 1952, but again lost his race for the U.S. Senate in 1954. In the special election for the remaining two years of Richard M. Nixon's term, Yorty received 1,788,071 votes (45.5%) to Senator Thomas H. Kuchel's 2,090,831 (53.2%). Kuchel, a liberal Republican, had been appointed to the seat in 1953 by then-Governor of California Earl Warren when Nixon became vice president.

In 1960, Yorty endorsed fellow Californian Richard Nixon over Massachusetts Senator and fellow Democrat John F. Kennedy for president. This angered many in the Democratic Party.

Although municipal elections in California are non-partisan, the resources of the party were directed against him when he ran for mayor of Los Angeles the following year against incumbent Republican Norris Poulson. The bitter campaign was marked by Poulson's claim that Yorty was backed by members of organized crime, a comment that caused Yorty to sue Poulson for $3.3 million.

Yorty prevailed, however, running as a populist. He railed against "a little ruling clique" of "downtown interests" and promised to revise the city charter, which had become unwieldy with the city's growth from a quiet West Coast town to the third largest metropolis in the country. He was a strong advocate of expanding the freeway network. Perhaps his most popular promise was to end residents' sorting of wet and dry garbage; dry garbage was typically burned in backyard incinerators which contributed to the city's notorious smog. There had been two independent collections: wet garbage (including food waste), and bottles and cans; dry combustible trash was burned in incinerators until Los Angeles County ordered an end to backyard trash burning in 1957, when Poulson was still mayor. After that, there were three collections: wet garbage, bottles and cans, and dry garbage.